Charles and Diana (and Camila)

Adéla Hlaváčová

The oldest son of Queen Elizabeth II. and Prince Philip: Charles III. was born on 14 November 1948 and ever since he was a little boy, he was preparing for the role he was once going to take. That also included the duty to find the most suitable future queen. In the 70's he was dating Camilla Parker Bowles who stayed entangled in his future relationship to the very end. When Prince Charles was deployed to the Royal Navy a few years later, the couple broke up and Camilla got engaged. After his return, he was introduced to Lady Diana Spencer in 1977 via her sister, whom he was dating at the time. Three years later, the prince and Diana began dating and after just a few months of romance, Prince Charles proposed and even though it wasn't technically an arranged marriage, he felt a lot of pressure on this settlement. Princess Diana wed Prince Charles on July 29, 1981, in the most beautiful royal wedding of the century. Even though the young couple seemed to look very joyful on their wedding day, Lady Diana later revealed that she knew it wasn't right. "I felt I was a lamb to the slaughter. And I knew it."

Diana was trapped in this "golden cage" and she knew it'd be very hard to escape it, since divorce is not really acceptable among the Royals. She was a young girl who was in love, but her love was unrequited, because her husband was still in love with Camilla.

As Diana later revealed in many interviews, the only thing that kept her going through this all were her children. Diana and Charles had two sons, William (1982) and Harry (1984). Lady Diana was extremely popular among the people, because she was loving, graceful, sensitive, feminine and also very giving, and people saw that in here because in a way, she was "normal", or at least as much as the protocol allowed her (even though she was known to be quite the rule breaker). The couple played their role, but they were both unhappy. Charles wanted to be with Camilla and even though Diana tried to focus on other matters, she suffered from bulimia and her mental health was also marked.

In the early 90's many scandals referring to Charles having an affair with Camilla came out in the media and not shortly after, Diana and Charles separated, but still kept on carrying out their royal duties apart from each other. Just to clear out the years: the couple broke up in 1993, in 1994 Charles finally admitted to his cheating and Camilla also divorced her husband. They were dating unofficially. In 1995, the interview with Lady Diana came out in which she famously said: "Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded." A year later the couple officially filed for divorce.

Then the tragedy came. In the early hours of August 31, 1997, Princess Diana and her boyfriend at that time Dodi Fayed were involved in a car crash that killed them both and driver Henri Paul in Paris, France. Following her death, Prince Charles traveled to Paris to bring her body back to England. He also reportedly halted plans to formally announce Camilla as his partner. There was an immense grief worldwide for "the queen of people's hearts" and to this day, many believe that the whole thing was not an accident but that it was all planned by the Royal family in order to "remove" Diana. In the spring of 2005 Prince Charles and Camilla officially got married after years of courtship.