King Charles cried the night before he married Princess Diana because he was still in love with Camilla, his ex-girlfriend. But he wasn’t the only one who cried. Royal expert Ian Pelham Turner told Fox News Digital that both Charles and Diana were in tears before the wedding.
Turner said Diana didn’t really want to marry Charles, but her sister told her it was too late to stop the wedding because their faces were already on souvenirs being sold to the public. Charles was sad too. He wore cufflinks with Camilla’s initials on his wedding day, which made him emotional.
This story came out as People magazine looked back at the royal wedding on July 29, 1981. A book called Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life says Charles felt pressured to marry Diana, even though he was still in love with Camilla. The night before the wedding, he cried.
Royal expert Hilary Fordwich said she asked the author of that book, Sally Bedell Smith, about it. Smith confirmed that Charles did cry the night before the wedding.
Although the problems in Charles and Diana’s marriage are well known, Fordwich said today’s younger royals are lucky they don’t have to go through the same pain. She called the love triangle between Charles, Diana, and Camilla a sad example of choosing royal duty over personal happiness.
Fordwich also said Charles’s father, Prince Philip, pushed him to marry Diana not because of love, but because it was the proper royal thing to do. At that time, Charles was expected to marry a young and proper woman who could be queen one day. Camilla didn’t fit that image because she had past relationships and was already married.
Charles’s godmother, Patricia Mountbatten, said he felt he had gone too far with Diana to cancel the wedding. Still, she knew he was in love with Camilla. Charles and Camilla met in 1970 and quickly fell for each other. But in 1973, while Charles was in the Navy, Camilla married someone else, Andrew Parker Bowles. Charles was heartbroken but stayed close friends with her.
