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.

In your circle maybe, but I was 10 years older than you and that's not the case in mine.

No one knew he wasn't in love. That's been played up since their divorce but at the time, everyone just thought it was the type of thing he'd say. No one knew he had a mistress when they got married. And in fact, it seems agreed by both Charles and Diana that there was nothing physical going on between them. It was a few years before that rumour started.

No one hoped for the best for her. 🙄 People treated them exactly as any other newly weds.

The amount of revisionism overcsomethingbthat happened 40 years ago is amazing.

Yes! This annoys me to. There were tens of millions of people living in the UK and we didn't all think and act the same.

For what it's worth, I was very close in age to Diana. I went to a very academic school where most girls stayed on for A levels and the vast majority of us went on to university, polytechnic or some form of professional training. This was very, very unusual at the time (it was decades before I fully grasped how incredibly lucky we'd been), and certainly didn't apply to the boarding school Diana was sent to.

I then went to university and met a mature student six years older than me. We got married while I was still a student, the year after Diana and Charles got married. (Still married now.) Two female students from my course got married that same summer. I'm not in touch with them now, so no idea whether those marriages lasted. One of them already had a child, which was very unusual at the time. A factor in these early marriages was parental disapproval of couples living together (it certainly was for us, my parents were aghast). However, my husband and I didn't have children for many years after we married as we were both working in professional jobs and concentrating on getting our own house.

Lots and lots of my colleagues (accountants) got married in their 20s, but not many had children immediately. By about 1990 when we were in our late 20s most of the girls from my year at school were married with children. These first marriages didn't always last. (We had a reunion a few years ago, very interesting.) The vast majority of them continued with their careers in some form or other. This is where us plebs had the advantage over Diana. We had education and we had work.

If Charles had found someone like Catherine M, she would be Queen now. Diana was not psychologically suitable for the role her family and his had assigned her. It's a great shame that nobody saw this.

yup I remember my mum saying things in a slightly huffy tone that they'd married him off to a child because 'purity' / 'not having a past' was so important.

I can't remember anyone really questioning why she would want to marry him.

It was 1980's, not the dark ages!

She was 20 when she got married.

i got married at 20, 2 years later. I was the first of my friends to get married up it certainly wasn’t unusual.

This is so true. She was a megastar. I mentally try to bundle celebrities up to equal her stardom but even that's hard.

Oh, and I’d graduated from uni, as I left school a year early.

' Diana was not psychologically suitable for the role her family and his had assigned her. It's a great shame that nobody saw this. '

This was true in the beginning, but she grew through the years and made the role her own & in that she was fantastically successful.

@RLScott
Marrying that loon Charles...

Why do you call him a loon?

I wasn't much younger than Diana and I remember being quite at the age gap. But it seemed very clear that Diana herself and her family were very keen for her to marry into the royals

It was very unusual. In wide circle of friends and family and generally ‘in the village’ I can’t think of any other teenage marriages in the 80’s. Bar possibly 2 pregnant brides (possible because I’m not sure whether they were early 20s)

I think it could potentially happen today. My DM said afterwards she was a brood mare.

The Royal Family wanted a young virgin woman from a titled family who was also biddable and Diana fitted the bill. I’m sure I was shocked at his “whatever love is” comment when he was interviewed after the engagement.

I got my long dirty blonde hair cut into a stylish Lady Di bob the same year by my aunt who was a hairdresser, my first adult haircut! It was the first Royal engagement and wedding for years and we all slavishly followed her blouses, clothes and blue eyeliner.

I was 13 when they got married and I remember there was a lot of at the age gap and that whatever love means’ comment from my mum and her friends - and there was certainly media coverage of the latter. There was also gossip about his relationship with Camilla - but remember this was well before SM so it was v low key compared to nowadays.

Diana was a megastar - she inspired a whole fashion look including the Diana hairstyle that everyone seemed to sport. She was an icon of her time, definitely.

Oh come on now, he’s not the full shilling.

Who doesn’t flinch when the target of an assassination attempt? Pretty much anyone with any awareness of their surroundings would have been startled/moved/jumped at least a bit. Charles didn’t move an inch while security men around him were flying everywhere while the onwatching Aussie public gasped.

In fairness to him though he had a supremely weird upbringing (as they all have) with every want catered for, so normal human reactions wouldn’t be as easy to come by.

Diana had no chance of sanity being married to him.

Btw I think he’s decent fella, but just not fully with us. I think William is much more grounded in reality (well, as best you can hope for being brought up in that environment).

@GonnaGetGoingReturns I've seen an increase of Camilla hair dos in older woman around here. 😉

I remember reading that she was checked over to ensure she was 'intact' before the marriage!

Perhaps my circle were particularly cynical! I can clearly remember the engagement interview and my family all discussing the ‘in love’ comment Charles made. It was common knowledge that it was an arrangement and that Charles wasn’t marrying his first choice… he had wanted to marry Camilla. I remember talk of it on the wedding day. No revisionism.

I disagree that no one knew he wasn’t in love. It was clear that he wasn’t in love from the moment of the ‘in love’ comment! People were just in love with the idea of the royal wedding and the beautiful young princess bride.

Absolutely as I remember it!

Well said @MarshaMelrose hindsight is a great thing. It was definitely treated as a fairy tale at the time.
There was absolutely no talk of Camilla until years later.

i recall thinking it was love. Prince Charles was known to have girlfriends then and was seen as a playboy so it was seen that he was finally settling down with pressure from his family.

Yes, very normal in working class circles. My parents, aunts, uncles, parents' friends, many early twenties marriages.

That’s just not true - there were rumours of Camilla at the time

That he,was composed when faced with serious threat is surely to be admired. Same with Princess,Anne an the Queen. It doesn't make him a loon, surely.

I watched a programme about him shortly after the queen died. I've always thought he an OK guy but I guess familiarity beds contempt in a way. I didn't think he'd achieved much. But it's unbelievable how much he's done. And how hard he works. He's been ahead of his time on a number of issues. I've gone from thinking meh to being impressed. If you wanted to learn why he's not a loon, watch that programme when it comes on again.

She wasn’t a teenager.

she was 20

Previous posters who have said the wife of the heir should be there to ‘boost the image of the Prince but not outshine them’ have got it spot on.

Diana eventually outshone Prince Charles, was popular with the public and had her own specific interests which stole media attention (HIV, landmines). The RF have learned from this giving Catherine causes that are never going to steal William’s limelight (early years support is never going to steal attention on the world stage).

Being the wife to an heir means toeing the line and losing your own voice. Diana and Catherine were both perfect for the role because nothing they had accomplished prior to engagement was ever going to be in the spotlight. Compare that with Meghan as an actor and activist with her own power outside of her marriage and there is an enormous difference.

‘Put up and shut up’ is required to survive the Royal Family. Not many people these days would accept that.