Charles and Diana


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Lady Nimue said:
I find the dialog interesting. :flowers: How about placing another personage in the role? Would the same be said had Sarah (Andrew's wife) done the same? How about Catherine (William's wife)? Is there a double standard at work here?

Just wondering if there really was something 'off' regarding Diana taking the lead in this way, but because it's Diana she cannot be faulted. Had Catherine done something like this I have a hunch the roof would have fallen and mention of her 'commoner' background made much of. Am I wrong?
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Who exactly would have made a stir? The media, or the British people, or the RF? The media doesn't seem to like Kate for a variety of reasons mostly because she hasn't become Diana 2.0 and given them good stories. They love to bad mouth her family for daring to become rich.
Sarah was....excuse me for the bluntness....ugly and fat and no ones image of a Princess. If she did the dance now the British media would see it as her once again being disgraceful. If she did it in the 80s they would have mocked her body.
 
Sorry this is OT, but I think that is very unkind. Sarah wasn't beautfiul like Diana and she has weight problems,but in her early years of marraige, she was certianly not fat except by modern media standards. She had a nice figure and was curvy, with lovely hair.
 
Curryong said:
And vice-versa, Lee Z, except that Charles's wrongdoings get ignored and not discussed by many on any thread. After all he's Royal, a future king, and alive, so therefore is regarded as sacrosanct by many.
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Nobody did anyting wrong. There is nothing wrong with Diana doing a dance with another man for goodness sake and nothing wrong with Charles doing a skit with Diana. It was a "fun night" with as Tina B put it, Dancers singing and singers doing ballet. Wayne Sleep beleived that what DID miff C a bit was PERHAPS that he felt left out.. and that Di had perhaps "taken centre stage" a bit more than she had done previously. I dont think she consciously tried to upstage her husband in the early years, she just could not help it becauase she had that star quality. Charles was a bit hurt by it, but I can understand that. And later she DID use her star quality and media friendly charm to make him less important. As for "what woudl the media say if Kate had done this". I think that even if she wanted to, the girl has no real talent or charm or star quality (apart from presumably being good at sports) and problaby cuold not DO antying that would be a "Kate doing some special act".
But I'd imagine if she had done it, WIlliam woudl have been OK with it, becuase he isn't SO overshadowed by K as Charles was by Di, and the pres would have been fine iwth it if they got a few nice pics.
 
XeniaCasaraghi said:
Who exactly would have made a stir? The media, or the British people, or the RF? The media doesn't seem to like Kate for a variety of reasons mostly because she hasn't become Diana 2.0 and given them good stories. They love to bad mouth her family for daring to become rich.

Sarah was....excuse me for the bluntness....ugly and fat and no ones image of a Princess. If she did the dance now the British media would see it as her once again being disgraceful. If she did it in the 80s they would have mocked her body.
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That's not bluntness, that's rudeness.


Sent from my iPhone using The Royals Community mobile app
 
I do agree though that IF Sarah had attempted to dance on stage in the 1980's the press would have been on the attack due to her lack of grace. She wasn't the most graceful walker for example, rather a waddle at times. She was voluptuous, with lovely Titian hair, but the Press became tired of her very quickly, (remember the 'Duchess of Pork' headlines) so it's a good job really that Sarah didn't try out a fun stage act with Andrew. It's A Royal Knockout was bad enough. Journalists would have had a field day and I can just imagine the headlines!
 
Well I dont think she would do this. She was more sporty than arty.. And her popularity with the press did decline..
 
Denville said:
Sorry this is OT, but I think that is very unkind. Sarah wasn't beautfiul like Diana and she has weight problems,but in her early years of marraige, she was certianly not fat except by modern media standards. She had a nice figure and was curvy, with lovely hair.
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You may have thought that and good for you, I am talking about the media reaction and despite Fergie being refreshing she was always mocked for her looks, weight, behavior etc. I doubt a group of people who called her the Duchess of Pork share your sentiments about her. I stated I was going to be blunt and we are not talking about how her apologists on this board would react but the British media who love to tear down women especially and whose favorite victim is Sarah.
 
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It goes up and down. Di woudl be favoured one day and Sarah the next. But it was her silliness and vulgarity that really put the press and people off her and she did finally lose any affection from the public...
 
I think it was a lot of things. Johnny Bryan, her not doing very much work, and her spending.. She's not a bad person, poor old Fergie but she's foolish and selfish...and can't manage money.
But to return to C and Diana, i dont know if he was really miffed about her dancing or exaclty why. I'd be inclined to think that perhaps it was her "going out on her own" doing it with Wayne Sleep.. but possibly too, if he had returned ot his affair with Cam by then, he was bothered by the fact that the dance was seen as her trying to "woo him"...
 
Curryong said:
This n to change into costume and sing? Did he not understand that he was not an artiste not a singer, not an actor, but a Prince, the Prince of Wales? Or is it somehow different for him because he was born Royal and isn't Diana?
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oh Good heavens anyone would think that Charles and Di were massacring babies, when they made jokey speeches or danced or did a skit in public. Im sure you'd agree Curryong that NEITHER Of them was wrong to do any of these things.
 
Lee-Z said:
yes,

No matter how many voices of reason state that both have their good and bad points, it always turns into fingerpointing by both camps

:hamster:
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but surely that IS the point. Both of them had their faults and thier good points. Both of them made mistakes. But for some, Diana can do no wrong and for some, Charles can do no wrong and Diana - even when she did soemthing as harmless as a dance with a ballet dancer - is always in the wrong. So if I feel that one or the other is being criticised unfairly, I think it is only right to point to the fact that the other partner in the marriage ALSO did wrong things and very often the very Same wrong things..
 
Osipi, thanks for this. in all honesty I simply cannot understand why people are criticising Diana for this. If she had taken part in a sexy film, or done pole dancing, I could. Many royals have taken to the stage usually for charity or fun. After all a lot of their role is a form of acting.. and many of them pal around with actors, singers, comedians etc.
 
Denville said:
oh Good heavens anyone would think that Charles and Di were massacring babies, when they made jokey speeches or danced or did a skit in public. Im sure you'd agree Curryong that NEITHER Of them was wrong to do any of these things.
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I do agree that neither of them was wrong to appear on stage on that fun night. That post of mine you quoted was of my reply to Duc who criticised Diana as Princess of Wales in her dancing in precisely those words, which I quoted back to him with reference to Charles. After all, if the gander is to be criticised by Duc then I am entitled to question the goose's actions. He was talking about 'dignified Royal behaviour'!
 
Quite so. I can't see why it is wrong to say "if you are criticising X for doing so and so, then Y did something similar.. and therefore if X is to be blamed so should Y be."
It doesn't even have to be a gender propriety issue..if 2 men have both done soemthing stupid/wrong, i think one is entitled to say If say Charles is blamed for such and such, "well Prince X did something similar..."
 
I think Charles probably had returned to Cam by then. The exact date is always going to be argued about. I think that Diana (though not trying to woo Charles,) was trying to surprise him in a nice way, however.

Lee-Z has also remarked in her posts, as have Denville and others (including me) that there were faults on BOTH sides and BOTH marital partners made mistakes during this marriage from hell.
 
Curryong said:
I think Charles probably had returned to Cam by then. The exact date is always going to be argued about. I think that Diana (though not trying to woo Charles,) was trying to surprise him in a nice way, however.
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I do not think Diana was trying to woo Charles but deliberately trying to upset him.

She had a reputation as a flirt and if anyone had moved on it was Diana.

Diana and Mannakee were already in a relationship. (Confirmed during the inquest but Charles may not have been aware of it in December of 1985.)

IMO, Charles and Diana had a falling out in 1983 because of her flirting or her affair/s but she and Charles made up in 1984 but she starting flirting again and that is what upset Charles.
(Depending on who you want to believe. She is supposed to have had an affair in 1983 with the Earl of Pembroke or Hewitt or both.)

The 'Shy Di' is just a myth. Diana flirted with all the men. I think that after a while Charles had had enough.

The dancing with Sleep was probably the last straw.
 
This is a lot of talk about that one time Diana danced with a 5'2 openly gay man and how it must have upset her husband...
 
We all have our opinions, but the poor long suffering faultless Charles fable is no nearer the truth than the myth that Diana was a complete baby Saint who married a man who just wanted her as a brood mare.

I don't believe that Diana danced with Sleep in order to upset Charles. Why would it upset him? He knew him.

Diana being a flirt is neither here nor there. Perhaps she enjoyed flirting. A lot of people do. It doesn't make them rotten human beings.

The Mannakee-Diana relationship was introduced into the Inquest by Al Fayed lawyers but a physical relationship (apart from being confidantes) has never been confirmed. Hewitt claimed at certain times that he and Diana were having an affair earlier than when Harry was a toddler but then reverted back to his original story that they had become lovers in 1986.
 
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well really Diana's dancing with a gay man or a heterosexual man, should harldy be a reason for jealousy or annoyance in any husband. And why on earth would she want to upset him?? I think that what bothered him was his feeling left out, and perhaps the fact that some watchers saw it as her trying to woo him, just as she used to say to her dressmakers, "will my husband like me in this dress?" She still had feelings for him, but he had lost his feelings for her and was now wit Camilla... and he was probably embarrassed and guilty..
 
To throw another log on the fire here, perhaps one aspect that we're overlooking here with Diana, flirting and Charles looking on is that perhaps as Charles observed his young wife acting and interacting with people in such a youngish, open manner, he realizes more and more just how much the age difference stood out and how different they both were. Charles, from all I've read about him, is more or less a poster child for being an introvert whereas Diana could be quite extroverted and the life of the party.

With this in mind, I do think it was very possible that some rumors of affairs (like with Mannakee) weren't affairs at all but Diana clicking with people and making them comfortable around her enough to form a friendship. With Diana's extroverted exuberance, she was much more demonstrative and perhaps was a person that hugs came easily to. We see that in Harry quite a bit. Harry hugs someone warmly and the Daily Fail has him going down the aisle with the huggee should she be single and female. William shows Charles' restraint and a tendency to keep people at arms length.

A lot of the differences that came to the surface, I think, in the early years were more or less personality clashes.
 
I think that Diana's flirting may have bothered C a bit in the early years, but as time went on, he didn't care any more. however, the story goes that he got annoyed about Manakee because either he thought it was an affair.. or he thought that Di was being too indiscreetly confiding in a policeman.. Possibly in the early years he did feel a bit left out if she flirted and had fun with younger men, and it made him feel his age..or feel that Diana didn't care as much for him as she did for her lively younger male friends. But still I don't believe it bothered him after a while..He didn't love her enough to be really jealous
 
There does come a time in a relationship that isn't on solid ground where the best clue that it has reached its sell by date and is truly over is that there are no feelings left about the relationship at all. Even with the fighting and hollering and exchanges of angry words, its still communication between two people.

As someone once told me "Show me a couple that never disagrees or has their tiffs and bouts of discordance and I'll show you a couple with a dead relationship". No one can really get along with another person 100% of the time in a very close relationship such as a marriage.
 
I think Charles was upset with Diana's flirting because it occurred while she was with him.

It was disrespectful to him as a man to see his wife flirt with other men and humiliating as the POW to watch her flirt while others also watched.

IMO, Charles might have been less upset if she had a private affair than the public flirting. An affair is only a private humiliation while the flirting was disrespectful and humiliating and in public.

I think most men, especially of his generation, would have seen flirting with another man while in his presence as disrespectful.

There is no evidence that Charles was with Camilla prior to 1988.

We do not have dates from Charles nor Camilla and their friends say 1988/after Diana had several affairs.
We do know that Mannakee was removed from service because he was 'too close to Diana'.
It was confirmed in the inquest that he had an intimate relationship. We also have her comments that she tried to backtrack on.
We know that Hewitt was her lover and it is his word that the relationship began in 1983.
We know that Charles and Diana had a rough patch in 1983.
We know that the marriage was over in 1986 except in name only, which coincides with Mannakee being dismissed.

I do not see how anyone can say Charles was with Camilla in 1985 or earlier and dismiss the evidence against Diana's affairs. Charles only said he was unfaithful only after his marriage had irretrievably broken down.
He gave no dates.
 
To me, it doesn't matter who cheated with whom and who went first or any of that kind of stuff. Affairs and intimate relationships outside of a marriage happen when the relationship within the marriage is lacking something. Both Charles and Diana were so very mismatched that it was impossible, as time passed, to breach the gulf and come to a happy compromise that would strengthen and enhance their relationship and cement a common bond. It happens worldwide to millions of people. Myself included. Sometimes I think its fitting to use a idiom that "marriage is a road paved with good intentions towards a divorce" in the case with a lot of people that believed they could make a marriage work only to find their differences so strong that they couldn't.
 
Queen Camilla you weaken your argument when you try to use the Hewitt rewrite of 1983 as fact.
 
One person's charm is another's flirt. One is a compliment while the other is a dig, IMO.

I always believed Diana had charm for days.... Men and women alike referred to her ability to make you feel like you were the only person in the room. A skill not shared by her former husband in accounts I've read of him in social situations. JMO.
 
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