You have certainly seen a lot of pictures of Princess Diana and Prince Charles on the internet. But did you notice that in all the official photos Lady Di is always shorter than Charles, even if they were actually the same height? The portrait photos with the prince and the princess capture the difference in height between the two. But a simple Google search found that both Charles and Diana were actually as tall, measuring 1.78 m.
They were the same height pic.twitter.com/I9YVAcU4hn
— Philip N Cohen (@familyunequal) March 18, 2017
Here were the unadulterated pictures in which they were both the same height.
The connection between Prince Charles and Princess Diana is a tragic one. Diana died a year after the divorce papers were signed, after a tumultuous marriage and a tumultuous divorce. Throughout it all, practically every dramatic aspect was reported in the international press. Some of it was revealed in tabloids, and some of it was revealed through self-interviews: In 1995, Diana famously told the BBC, “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” She was talking to Camilla Parker Bowles.
Despite the fact that it has been more than two decades since their breakup, The Crown’s fourth season has brought the unhappy couple back into the spotlight. There’s their courting, which takes place in the English countryside and flourishes. Then there’s their 1981 London wedding, where the fractures start to show—weeks before the ceremony, Diana discovers a bracelet Charles was planning to give Camilla. It eventually recounts their tumultuous disintegration.
At the end of the day, the show is a dramatization of real-life events. Do you want to know what is fact and what is fiction? A timeline of their relationship’s inception, middle, and end can be seen here.
November 1977: At Althorp House, Lady Diana’s 1,500-acre family home in Northamptonshire, England, Prince Charles sees her for the first time. He was dating her elder sister Sarah at the time and had traveled up for a shooting weekend with her. In a subsequent interview, he’d reminisce about “how much fun she was” during their first encounter.
Charles and Sarah go to Klosters, Switzerland, for a ski weekend in February 1978. (where they are captured by a photographer). It is rumored that she meets a journalist here and tells her that she would not marry Charles “whether he were the dustman or the King of England.” Charles is alleged to have broken their relationship shortly after she told the press about her affair. Both sisters, on the other hand, remain close to him, even attending his 30th birthday party at Buckingham Palace in November.
July 1980: Both Charles and Diana are asked to spend the weekend at the family home of their mutual acquaintance Philip de Pass in Sussex. There, Diana speaks passionately to Charles about his beloved great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, who died recently. According to the documentary Diana: In Her Own Words, she recalled, “The next minute, he leaped on me, practically.” “But then it just kind of grew from there.”
Diana is photographed in Balmoral, the royal family’s private home in the Scottish Highlands, in September 1980. The secret of their relationship is now officially revealed.
Prince Charles proposes to Diana at Windsor Castle in February 1981. Yes, she says. The pair had only gone out a dozen or so times at the time, according to reports. Following that, the media’s focus on the 19-year-old reaches a fever pitch. The New York Times writes that she once burst into tears behind the wheel of her automobile, despite the fact that she handles much of it with grace. “I realize it’s just a job,” she remarked of the photographers, “but there are times when I wish they wouldn’t.” She relocates to Clarence House from a cramped flat.
On February 24, the couple formally announces their engagement to the world. When asked if they are in love, Charles famously responds, “whatever ‘in love’ means.”
Charles takes a five-week trip to Australia and New Zealand in March 1981, leaving his recently betrothed behind. She was seen crying at Heathrow Airport after he left—not because she was heartbroken, but because he had taken a phone call with Camilla Parker Bowles before he went. According to Diana, she subsequently recalled, “It simply crushed my heart.” “In Her Own Words” is a collection of her own words.
The royal wedding takes place in July 1981. Before heading down the aisle, Diana is believed to have had reservations, especially after discovering a bracelet Charles had fashioned for Parker Bowles. But her sisters tell her that it’s too late to back out, so she goes ahead and does it. On July 29, an estimated 750 million people tuned in to watch Diana’s Westminster Abbey wedding, where she wore a dress designed by Elizabeth and David Emanuel.
The couple has their first child, Prince William, in June 1982. Diana suffers from postpartum depression afterward. She told the BBC in 1995, “You’d wake up in the morning feeling like you didn’t want to get out of bed, you felt misunderstood, and just very, very low in yourself.”
Prince Harry is born in September 1984, the couple’s second child.
1986: Both Charles and Diana had adulterous affairs due to their dissatisfaction with their marriage. In 1994, Charles told Jonathan Dimbleby, his official biographer, that he resumed his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles in this year. Meanwhile, Diana’s affair with army captain James Hewitt is said to have begun around the same period.
“How horrific incompatibility is, and how dreadfully devastating it may be for the characters in this wonderful drama,” Charles says in a letter to an unidentified writer. It’s got all the makings of a Greek tragedy… “I never imagined it would come to this.”
1987–1992: Charles and Diana are dogged by allegations of marital strife for the following few years. Diana does not accompany Charles on the family’s traditional summer trip to Balmoral in 1987, prompting news reports of a “royal break.” They appear distant and sad during multiple public appearances. Reporter Georgina Howell discovered this in a 1988 Vanity Fair story: “She was the love object of everyone in the world except her husband…. In her mid-twenties, she was confronted with something terrifying to consider: a fairy-tale marriage that had cooled into an arrangement.”
May 1992: Andrew Morton releases Diana: Her True Story, a frank account of the Waleses’ marriage breakdown, Charles’ affair with Parker Bowles, and Diana’s personal mental health issues. The princess had secretly helped the book by supplying audio recordings to Morton.
In November 1992, Prince Charles and Princess Diana travel to South Korea on an official visit. They are dubbed “The Glums” by the British press because they appear to be miserable.
December 1992: John Major, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, informs the House of Commons that the Prince and Princess of Wales are divorcing. He reads from a Buckingham Palace statement, “This decision was taken amicably, and they will both continue to participate completely in the rearing of their children.” Both Charles and Diana remain silent. Instead, Charles attends a business luncheon, while Diana travels to a northeast England clinic.
Despite tabloid rumors and Morton’s book, the palace tells reporters that no third party was involved in the decision.
The drama has thrown the monarchy into disarray. The New York Times commented on the announcement, saying, “The news of the separation comes at a time when the monarchy’s reputation is at a modern low-point as a result of persistent allegations alluding to the royal family’s marital scandals and opulent lifestyle.”
Diana expressed her “deep, deep, tremendous anguish” about their decision in a 1995 interview with the BBC. “We’d tried our hardest to keep it going, but we’d both run out of steam.”
August 1996: Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s divorce is formalized in August after reaching an agreement in July. Diana wins a substantial monetary settlement, but her rank as Her Royal Highness is revoked. Her new, liberated post-royal existence is tragically cut short a year later when she is killed in a vehicle accident in Paris.