Diana's age at time of marriage.

[Peedoffo]

I'm in my 20s so I really don't remember Diana. I did more reading on the subject and I can't believe the establishment thought it was ok to marry a 19 year old off to a man 13 years older than her who had no interest in her. No wonder she struggled this was the 1980s as well not the Victorian times! Could anyone around then tell me , why did her family back/support the marriage? Was there any concerns from the public ? I would be horrified at the thought of marrying my DD off at 19 to a much older man who wasn't really interest.

Who do you think will understand their dynamics with your thread and who will it help?

They are an extraordinary family living extraordinary lives. The current generation parents with young dc (Eugenie, Beatrice, William, Zara, Harry) have all married later and are on the whole more aware about how to raise a less dysfunctional family. They are all doing their best. This thread is mud slinging, trying to tarnish the RF. You are adding to the families' trauma with it. I think that's really unkind and irresponsible.

no need to be rude. i was reporting what some publications were printing

We all come from different backgrounds, so have different experiences and memories.

Diana was nearly 2 years younger than me. Yes, I recall that eyebrows were raised at the age difference, but there was a general open acceptance that Charles had basically run out of other eligible options, and this one would do nicely.

Societally -- I went to the local comp then on to university. We were told that only about 10% of the population went to university. Really you only did so if you were doing a vocational degree (eg medicine, vet, law), or had a passion/vocation for a subject and were academic enough to want to study it for the sake of study. There were plenty of jobs around that required intelligence but didn't require a degree - many healthcare jobs (including nursing), teaching, financial sector etc etc. I don't think that's a bad thing either.

As a graduate, I married when I was 24 and my DH was 22. That wasn't considered young. There were a couple of people in my year at uni who married before graduating. Several of my schoolmates who didn't go to uni were married by their early 20s. And I knew a small number of girls (including one of my neighbours) who were "forced" by their families to marry because they were pregnant -- at age 16 or 17!! Having a child outside marriage was still seen as a pretty big (and for many, unacceptable) thing.

Agree with this.

Its why William is much more suited to be King than Harry ever would be. You couldn’t see William wearing a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party could you?

You need to be very diplomatic and less wild/emotional.

I equate the role of a royal to a snooker player. Dull snooker players like Steve Davis and Stephen (and his little sips of water during games) Hendry are far more suited to snooker than excitable, live wires like Alex (I piss on the plants) Higgins, Jimmy White and Ronnie O’Sullivan. Snooker is tedious, you are sat on your seat for hours during games while your opponent is at the table, so it’s best you are a dull character who is able to withstand the boredom. You won’t see Stephen Hendry put a towel over his head like O’Sullivan does nor look completely fed up with life.

Diana was much too wild to be Queen. Marrying that loon Charles definitely had an impact on her. FGS she was married to a man who was the target of an assassination attempt when he was in Australia and he didn’t flinch, and not because he was as “cool as a cucumber” (as the press tried to make out at the time), he was just oblivious to what was going on around him (as he generally is). Being married to someone as distant as that would have driven her nuts.

Diana was a megastar though (it’s hard to describe to people who weren’t around then just how big she was as there is nothing remotely close to her now, and there can’t be as the media is much more fractured and spread out now so there’s less attention to specific individuals). I can only think of the Queen rivalling her in terms of fame but no-one from the post millennium era would come near her.

Didn’t she have a boyfriend before William while they were at University? Bloke called Rupert something?

I'm early 50s so I was a young girl when Diana got married and loved the whole wedding hype and the community parties and trashy souvenirs. but I remember in the late 80s having a discussion in A-level history class about royal marriages. I think 2 or 3 out of a class of 20 still believed Diana and Charles married for mutual love.

My sister got married in her late 20s in 1990 and was shown the 'second-time or older bride' range in one of the the wedding dress shops! And even then although it wasn't covered in lace, it still meant a big ivory satin dress with puff sleeves, a bow and a hooped skirt! She got pregnant asap afterwards because she already felt old to be a mother compared to her friends.

I think the age difference was commented on a lot because Charles looked old for a 30 year old at the time. But it was much more common although a bit risque, eg for 14 year olds to have 18 or 19 yr old boyfriends, and for people to marry in their early 20s. A fair number of people in my university in the early 90s were engaged before they started the course, and married (possibly to a new boyfriend but still married quickly) after graduation.

I really like the way Gen Z are so often quite definite about the limited age difference they will consider in prospective partners.

Everyone said she was too young. Everyone knew he wasn’t in love when he made the ‘whatever ‘in love’ means’ comment. Everyone knew he had a mistress. Everyone felt for sweet young ‘shy Di’ who loved children and hoped for the best for her. Her aristocratic family were obviously delighted about the match because marrying into the RF (to the heir to the throne, no less) is the ultimate aim. I was only 12 but remember being mesmerised by the sight of a real princess in a real princess wedding dress.

CharityShopChic, you are right and explained the context and expectations of marriage amongst royalty and the aristocracy at that time and for centuries before v well.

With regards to Kate, I am sure she is not dull in rl. She is just very good at her job and seems to enjoy it.

As pp said, she has a supportive family apparently free of deep-seated trauma and therefore is mentally much more able to cope with 'grey-rocking' the tabloid crap many other Royals can't help poking.

Also she is an English posho and knows her manners and history so curtseying and etiquette etc is not a stretch for her to manage.

She was desperate to marry him. She was not particularly bright or talented- marrying someone was her career and she hit the jackpot. She very much wanted to do it and she wasn’t so young she couldn’t consent.

She struggled with mental illness - i doubt it was her marriage that made her unhappy. Although it wasn’t a happy marriage of course. But it allowed her to be a celebrity which she liked.

I think the RF are unlikely sat here reading MN are they ? Ridiculous , they aren't above criticism. Considering they are born to be above us , their family dynamics aren't something to aspire too.

Yes Diana was naive and sheltered in the ways of the world, poorly educated and living in the sloaney bubble. But she would have been very familiar with the marrying patterns of the aristocracy and I don't buy the fact that she thought he was madly in love with her. More that she really really wanted to be Princess of Wales and thought that the rest of it would follow in time - the idealistic teenage "i'll make him fall in love with me" thing.

Yes, CharityShopChic

I was a teenager in the 1980s, at an all-girls school. I read a lot of Mills and Boon at the time - as I believe Diana did too. It's an entirely standard plot, older sophisticated man with money & status is somehow thrown together with - or maybe even marries, for some convoluted reason - our young heroine. They start off at loggerheads, she shows him what real love is, their marriage moves from convenience to passion.

It's necessary for this storyline that the man is older and jaded, has had many girlfriends but has never experienced true love. The woman has to be fresher and younger and more fun, as those are the qualities which make him fall in love with her.

It wasn't only the Royal Family that stitched Diana up.

I got married at 18. I am 25 so it wasn't long ago! It is unusual to be married young, but not unusual strangely to have DC so young 🤷‍♀️

I was married around that time and I was 21. 19 is fine if you want a virgin surely and some of us are quite mature then, not kidults for life. However at 21 I was a law graduate and had even finished a post grad year (my first degree was at age 20 as I was a year young) so I felt well able to marry at 21 and am glad I did. First baby in our case was 1984 13 months after our wedding just after we bought a house.

I also take issue with whoever said that in the eighties only a small percentage went to university and most people left school at 16. It was the heyday of free university education, full grants and "new universities" popping up all over the place

You can take issue all you like, but I left school in 1986, and only about 10 people out of 200 stayed on till 6th form, let alone went to Uni. I started work in a Bank aged 16, and went on to make lifelong friends there of a similar age - absolutely none of us went to Uni. Even my ExH, who is now on a 6 figure salary at a Bank didn't go. My children are the first people on both sides of the family to go to Uni. Maybe you're posher than us or your family had more money.

If it was a love match I could stomach it but this didn't seem to be. It would be me contacting the 30 year old man's family and arranging it.

Why do you have to stomach anything? She never regretted her marriage. And she told a friend shortly before her death, that if she could, she'd still be married. Also she was friends with Charles before they died.

Considering they are born to be above us , their family dynamics aren't something to aspire too.

Nor are a high percentage of those I see on MN. I think most people feel quite sorry for them, their lives are like being on display in a zoo.

I would be horrified at the thought of marrying my DD off

Even in the 1980s you didn’t ‘marry people off’ which implies some sort of arranged marriage. Diana genuinely thought she was getting married to someone who loved her.

I'm a few years younger than Diana. I'm married to a man born the same year, we married at 22yrs old, after Uni. Didn't live together (family would have been upset).

He's the only man the same age as me that I dated. The others were all about 10 years older than me. 17 and 27, 18 and 26 etc.

She was 6 months older than me - it WAS unusual.
I remember being appalled that she was marrying someone who wasn't just so much older than her, but acted even older than he actually was.
He was essentially a middle aged man.....

Diana was a megastar though (it’s hard to describe to people who weren’t around then just how big she was as there is nothing remotely close to her now

This is so true. I was trying to explain this to my 19 and 23 year olds, who of course, have only a vague knowledge of who she was. And also of course, they’re republicans so think the whole thing is ludicrous.

diana was a part of the ruling establishment,, was happy that her son would be king and would have been okay as a queen if she had had someone to help her. instead she, a needy person, was married to a man who has never had to think about anything or anyone other than himself. it probably didn't occur to him to be decent to his own wife.

Marrying that loon Charles

I don’t view Charles as a loon, although he obviously lives a life far removed from what most of us are used to. He and Diana were just incredibly unsuited. They had v different interests. He liked painting water colours, nature, quiet pursuits whilst Diana was young, enjoyed pop music, dancing and wanted to have fun.

I read a day in the life of Charles a few years ago and he works incredibly hard and has been actually ahead of his time on certain issues - the environment, encouraging religious pluralism and those of no faith to work together. I say all this as someone who is a republican but I think Charles gets an unfair rap at times.

I left school in 87 and I was one of nine out of around 150 in my year to go to university. 70% left school at 16. This was completely normal in non-selective state schools in those days. The massive expansion of higher education happened in the 90s.