Princess Diana: The Cruel Truth Behind Her Marriage to Charles

In February 1981, days after the engagement was announced, Diana Spencer's own uncle went to the British press and made a public statement about his nineteen-year-old niece's virginity. It ran without controversy. People read it over breakfast and turned the page. And it was true. When Fleet Street went looking for Diana's romantic history that spring, they found almost nothing. A young man who had gone travelling and come home too late. An army officer whose shirts she used to iron. An older writer who took her to the theatre until he was quietly asked to stop. That was all of it. Nineteen years old, living in a flat in Earls Court with three friends, and a past you could write on the back of an envelope. For forty-five years people have assumed that was shyness. It wasn't. Her empty past was the reason she was selected. Every other candidate had lived a normal adult life, and a normal adult life could not survive the newspapers in 1981. Diana passed because there was nothing to find. Which leaves a question nobody thought to ask at the time. If she had never loved anyone before Charles, then Charles was the first man she ever loved. She was nineteen and she believed it completely. And the woman he had actually loved for ten years was sitting in St Paul's Cathedral on the wedding day, in a pale grey hat, watching. This documentary follows the whole of it. The sister who refused Charles first and said so in a newspaper. The grandmother who testified against her own daughter in a custody court and stayed silent twelve years later when it mattered most. The thirteen meetings before the proposal. The lunch where Camilla asked Diana a question about hunting, and what she was really asking. The bracelet found at Buckingham Palace days before the wedding. Sources include Andrew Morton's taped interviews with Diana herself, the 1995 Panorama interview, and contemporary press reporting from 1977 to 1981. Where accounts are disputed or rest on Diana's own shifting recollection, we say so. 00:00 The statement in the newspaper 03:45 Park House 09:45 The sister who said no 15:45 Coleherne Court 21:45 Thirteen meetings 27:45 Whatever in love means 33:45 The breaking point 39:45 Aftermath If this is your first time here, the channel covers classic Hollywood and twentieth century public life with an emphasis on what the record actually supports. Subscribe if that's your kind of thing. #PrincessDiana #RoyalFamily #Documentary #Diana #PrinceCharles #BritishRoyalFamily #TrueStory #History