Prince Charles believed he could learn to love Diana after they were married

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Some days, when I really think about it, I do hope that Princess Diana’s ghost haunts Prince Charles and Camilla for the rest of their lives. While I think Charles and Camilla are happy and relatively un-haunted, it does piss me off that Diana’s life is being rewritten to fit a certain Charles-centric narrative. Maybe that was always going to happen after her death. But it feels like now that we’re coming up on 20 years since her death, fewer people are questioning the Charles narrative. As we discussed over the weekend, there’s a new biography out called Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life by Sally Bedell Smith. The excerpts are very “Charles did his best to protect and help Diana,” and yet the subtext is always “Charles saw Diana as a mentally ill broodmare and he was still madly in love with Camilla.” So here’s an additional excerpt/interview with the author:

How Charles felt after Diana accepted his proposal: “He was obviously anguished, and he said she was someone I could learn to love,” Bedell Smith tells PEOPLE. “He looked to his grandparents, which wasn’t a love match at the outset and thought if they can do it and build a good marriage then I can do it too.”

Diana barely knew Charles: “I was stunned when I combed over the chronology they had only been together 12 times [before their engagement],” Bedell Smith says. “After they got engaged, he went away for six weeks. He was dutifully plunging ahead with his schedule and she wanted him to be around and available and support her. There she was in Buckingham Palace, which is more like a big office building than anything and forbidding for a 19-year-old.”

Charles wasn’t cynical about love: “I don’t see him as a cynical person, he thought he could learn to love Diana as his grandmother and grandfather learned to love each other and had a great marriage. But because of their fundamental incompatibility and the age gap and her emotional turmoil, it was doomed before they walked down the aisle of St Paul’s Cathedral.”

Duchess Kate was better prepared: “If she had had Kate’s confidence and solid upbringing and nurturing family and academic success – all the things that have helped Kate integrate so seamlessly,” Bedell Smith says.

[From People]

I don’t think Charles was cynical about love either, but that’s the only part I really agree with here. He was neither cynical nor romantic. He was used to Lord Mountbatten setting him up with eligible girls and reportedly, Charles had proposed – and been turned down – by several women before he even met Diana. He wasn’t looking for true love, he was looking for someone who would just be willing to take the job. As for Kate and all of that… like, I don’t believe that Kate has managed the transition to royal life, because William is too busy transitioning to Middle-Class Middleton Life.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Getty.

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