Charles Spencer's book Diana Swan Song etc etc . Thread the second.

[BasiliskStare]

There has been interest from some who engaged with the topic , so I'm starting a new thread as we are on page 10 . I honestly didn't think it would engender so much interest.

Let me be absolutely clear here. Threads meander , and sometimes go off topic and sometimes amusingly and interestingly so. My intention with this thread is to discuss the book , related matters eg contemporaneous accounts, reviews , interviews etc I'm also , frankly, interested to see how Piers Morgan's reaction to it goes.

As has been so often said anyone is allowed to post whatever they like on a public forum. I'm just explaining why I have started this thread. I have no intention of policing it .

Let's see how it goes 😎

Charles was her first boyfriend. She was an exceptionally naive 19 year old.
I am about her age, so don't come at me with things were different in those times. They were in that after Diana went to a Swiss finishing school, she lived in a flat with friends. Now a young woman as naive about the world as she was, would be living at home.
It was not normal back then to marry your first boyfriend at 19 who you barely knew. In fact teenage marriages were at the time largely seen as something very poor dysfunctional families did. Which is why I guess that although she was engaged at 19, they waited until as she was 20 for the marriage

Teenage marriages were not unusual at the time. Most people still left school at 16. At age 19 you were an adult. I don't think she was exceptionally naive, I think she knew what she wanted and went for it. I think she was a canny person. However, she also had other problems. I'm not saying what happened to her was at all acceptable, but to act as if she was some unknowing child with zero clue about her situation sn't a proper reflection of events.

Interestingly, the “very poor dysfunctional families” as you put it and the aristocracy have often behaved in the same way with regard to marriage in that it is often seen in a more transactional way. It is only since the rise of the middle classes that romantic marriages have been seen as the ideal. There was nothing unusual in Diana marrying that young and advantageously for a woman on her position. Her sisters were young and married much older men as we have already discussed. We may frown upon it now, but she was absolutely seen as an adult at the time

@Cathandkin The issue was the Charles age and the age difference. They did rush into marriage. William certainly learned not to do this. Coupled often met at uni at 18-19 and then married 1-2 years after graduating. They should have spent far more time thinking about how Diana could be assimilated into the RF. She was clearly unprepared for the role and her cheating husband who wasn’t fully committed to the marriage.

I don’t think many 19 year olds live in flats in London at 19 now. The rich have property there and dc might choose to live in it and work. Far more go to university than previously so delay London living. Most will work at something though even if it’s not building a fantastic career.

I left school at 16 about the same time and lived in a very poor area. I was not middle class. Teenage marriages were not normal. Those getting married as teenagers were pretty much looked down on.

Nobody is saying Diana was a child. She was naive though. I and most of my friends had boyfriends younger than Diana. And thought the idea of marrying as a virgin was incredibly old fashioned and strange. I remember jokes about how Charles had to marry young as otherwise he had no chance of finding a woman who was a virgin.

It may not suit your narrative, but compared to me and M6 friends she was very naive

Lots of things there. Most people didn't go to university at back then, they were working, they were often living away from home. Diana entered into an age gap marriage, just like her sister, mother and grandmother. No-one would have thought this was unusual in her family or aristocratic circles.
I'm not saying it was right, I'm just saying that the 2026 narrative of a "teenager" isn't quite what happened.

Diana went to swiss finishing school and then a flat shared with friends. That is what very rich and protected young women did back then. Now they go on gap years and backpack round Asia.

It may have been accepted amongst the aristocracy. I am from a poor background and thought the age gap was awful.

Oh right. I was talking about Diana and her family situation.

Yes but the age gap wasn’t unusual to Diana. You originally said that she was naive because of her age. But both her sisters married much older men, as had her mother. So for her it was not unusual as pp have said

I accept ordinary marriage was undertaken early and sometimes to older men. Diana Spencer wasn’t living in a bubble and not all 19 year olds got engaged to over 30 year old men in the aristocracy. Far from it.

Yes fewer went to uni but the brightest did. Even then! It was about 20% and many more did nursing, teaching, and other jobs which didn’t need a degree. HE offered lots of opportunities. Diana didn’t do it but probably was great at hospitality - big thing at Swiss finishing schools! Many of these girls are enjoying parties so are not wanting any job that’s too demanding. That’s how most found husbands!

Diana was not intelligent enough to go to uni but there’s ample evidence she was not sufficiently prepared for her role as POW or her role within the wider RF. Let alone her being able to cope with Charles and Camilla’s relationship. Most young married women had none of these pressures! She was in a unique position with woefully little prep.

Her sister Sarah married a man who is only 4 years older, I wouldn’t call that a big age gap.

Look at Jane, her Mum, her Grandma....

Apologies. One of her sisters married a much older man

Yes, Jane, to the late Queen's Private Secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes, 16 years her senior. She was 21.

It is interesting that pp refer to the idea of Diana not being “prepared” for her role in the RF. With hindsight, that would have been useful, but she, unlike Catherine, came from an aristocratic family that had close contact with the Royals, so I don’t think it would have been unreasonable to expect that she knew exactly what being Queen would entail. Her “suitability” from a personality point of view is a different matter 🤷‍♀️

Interesting!

Does that apply even if you couch it in terms of "so-and-so alleged in his interview of 06/10/2021 that politician A is a sex pest"? - in that instance, I suppose A can go after the person who made the original claim, but the party who merely repeated the claim surely is off the hook?

If that's not enough to avoid being pursued, would adding "we have not been able to verify those claims" cover you?

@smilesy There was a long wait to be Queen! She was 19. No one at 19 knows everything and she was living with friends in London. She needed several years of prep and help to adjust. Who had looked at her as a 16-18 year old? Most of us would not expect someone that age to be aware of the inner workings of RF and Charles behaviour! No one protected or advised her adequately.

It was only post-Diana that the RF realised that royal brides needed more preparation than Diana received for her role. in 1981 it was only 60 years since the RF had decided that their members could marry non-royals, after all; and as the QM had been from the same aristocratic background as Diana and made a conspicuous success of her role without much prep at all, they not unreasonably assumed Diana could do the same.

I don’t think it was the ‘being Queen’ that was her downfall.

I think it was marrying someone selfish and emotionally immature, who couldn’t deal with her.

Had she married someone nurturing, wealthy and lived in the country, I imagine she may have been happy. She just wasn’t cut out for the Royal life, she ‘enjoyed’ the attention to much and mistook it for the love she lacked in her marriage.

Compare that to Catherine who , despite meeting William
at a similar age, comes across as emotionally mature, stable and tolerant of the attention rather than basking in it. I imagine she is far more emotionally grounded than William who can appear petulant.

The Spencers did.

I think it was marrying someone selfish and emotionally immature, who couldn’t deal with her.

Years ago someone I saw a comment that giving a husband like Charles to someone as emotionally needy as Diana was like throwing a Ryvita to a starving woman.

He couldn't deal with her because as Prince of Wales he expected to be the most important one in the marriage and both he AND the RF were utterly wrongfooted by the adulation she attracted.

The Queen Mother did not marry the Prince of Wales! She never expected to be Queen! Just not the same at all and she married in 1923! She had 13 years before she became Queen. She had much more prep and had 2 DDs. She didn’t want the job either. She was complicit in the identification of Diana as suitable but she didn’t know Diana or care for her wellbeing.

I was talking to my daughters about this the other day re the age of getting married.
Back in the day (sounds so old!) when I was 18/19 (I'm 65 now) it was extremely common at the time for people to get married late teens, early twenties. I didn't get married until 23, which was considered quite "old" at the time. I'd been with my then boyfriend since 16.My daughters were shocked, different times.

Yes fewer went to uni but the brightest did. Even then! It was about 20% and many more did nursing, teaching, and other jobs which didn’t need a degree. HE offered lots of opportunities.

At the start of the 1980s, for most people reaching the age of 18 meant you had reached adulthood and had finished education.
Only 15% of the population went on to any form of higher education at that time. Just over 7% went to university.
BBC - 1980 15% higher education
Hansard - 1981 7.2% university
For the rest of the population that would have meant finding employment. For Diana, an aristocrat, that would have meant enjoying her life until she found a husband.
By the time Diana married she had left boarding school, gone to finishing school, left home to live in London and worked in a nursery.