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Much has been written about Princess Diana and King Charles’s marriage, including the fact that both royals had extramarital affairs during the relationship. According to a royal expert who was friendly with the former Princess of Wales, Diana actually opened up about the person she held responsible for her failed marriage to Charles shortly before she died in 1997.
During an appearance on Hello!‘s “A Right Royal Podcast,” royal expert and author Ingrid Seward shared, “She said to me just before she died, it wasn’t Camilla.” According to Seward, Princess Diana told her, “It wasn’t Camilla that ruined our marriage, it was the people around Charles.”
The royal author continued, “And I could never unpick that comment and quite understand what it meant. But I also remember Diana’s father saying how tricky the royal household was.”
“It wasn’t Camilla that ruined our marriage.” | Credit: Getty Images
Both Charles and Diana publicly admitted to having affairs with other people while still married to one another. While Diana confirmed her affair with horseback riding instructor James Hewitt during her Panorama interview, King Charles discussed his extramarital relationship with Queen Camilla in his own TV interview.
Earlier this year, the Daily Mail‘s royal editor, Rebecca English, spoke with some of King Charles’s closest friends, who suggested the monarch regretted his past behavior. “Both of them [Charles and Diana] behaved badly in that first marriage and made decisions that none of us could ever condone,” one source said. “But we can seek to try to understand them.”
“Both of them behaved badly in that first marriage.” | Credit: Anwar Hussein/Getty Images
In the article, English wrote of The King, “Charles still deeply ‘regrets’ the pain and sadness caused.” Another of Charles’s friends discussed The King’s marriage to Diana, saying, “When you look back on it now, asking someone to sacrifice…happiness for the sake of their public persona seems really quite cruel.”