‘I answered, ‘No.’’ She said: ‘I just wanted to know,’ and I thought, as far as she was concerned, that was her way of communicating,’ Diana recalls.
Another theory: Tears of rage
Royal biographer Tina Brown, in her book The Diana Chronicles, believes that the tears Diana shed at the airport were not from grief, but from anger. ‘Diana’s tears at the airport were not of grief but of rage,’ Brown writes. And rage is exactly what Diana felt. Her fiancé, the man she was about to marry, had given a deeply personal gift to another woman. In Diana’s eyes, it was a sign of things to come.
‘He found a virgin, a sacrificial lamb, and in a way he was obsessed with me, but it was hot and cold, hot and cold, hot and cold, you never knew what mood it would be in, up and down, up and down,’ Diana said, reflecting on the emotional rollercoaster that was her relationship with Charles.
Shortly before the wedding, Diana went out to lunch again – this time with her sisters.
‘I went upstairs, had lunch with my sisters who were there and said: ‘I can’t marry him. I can’t do this. It’s just unbelievable,‘’ Diana says in the audio recording in the documentary Diana: In Her Own Words.
Diana confided in her sisters, hoping for support, but they gave her the harsh reality check she needed. ‘Well, tough luck for you, Dusha. Your face is already on the tea towels, so you chickened out too late.’
The wedding took place despite the storm raging in Diana’s heart. By 1996, after years of infidelity and emotional turmoil, Charles and Diana divorced after receiving a letter from the Queen advising them to end their unstable marriage.
‘There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit tight,’ Diana later said.
When Diana confronted Camilla.
According to Charles’ authorised biography cited by Town & Country, Charles and Camilla’s affair began in 1986. At the time, Charles was still married to Princess Diana, and she found out about it.
In 1989, Diana told Camilla about her affair, advising her to back off.
‘I know what’s going on between you and Charles and I want you to know it,’ Camilla recalled Diana saying in a recording published by The Telegraph, quoted by Town & Country.
‘Diana said to me, ‘You have everything you’ve ever wanted. You’ve got all the men in the world falling in love with you, you’ve got two beautiful children, what more could you want?’
‘And I said: ‘I want my husband.’ And I said: ‘I’m sorry I’m in your way, and it must be hell for both of you. But I know what’s going on. Don’t treat me like an idiot,‘’ Camilla explained.
Princess Diana tragically died in a car accident on 31 August 1997.
At the time, no one knew how Diana felt, but looking at today’s photos from Heathrow, it’s clear they tell a very different story.
What appeared to be a sweet, emotional goodbye was actually much more complicated than that.
Looking back, it’s crazy how much more we now realise. How do you feel about that?