Princess Diana revealed that her marriage to King Charles was troubled from its earliest days, with her fears over Camilla Parker Bowles casting a shadow over their 12-day Mediterranean honeymoon.
The late Princess later described how her suspicions and emotional turmoil became so overwhelming that she could not escape thoughts of the woman she believed was at the centre of their relationship.
Diana told biographer Andrew Morton for his 1992 book that the honeymoon, which was expected to mark the beginning of a fairytale marriage, instead became a period of deep anxiety and insecurity.
“At night, I dreamt of Camilla the whole time,” she said. “I was obsessed by Camilla totally.”
That obsession, Diana suggested, was fuelled by a series of painful discoveries. Before the wedding, she learned Charles planned to give Camilla a farewell bracelet.
Then, while they were on honeymoon, Diana claimed two photographs of Camilla fell from Charles’ diary as the couple looked through their schedules.
The cufflinks that gave Camilla away
Royal biographer Catherine Mayer has also pointed to another incident Diana found impossible to ignore.
According to Mayer, Camilla had given Charles a personalised pair of cufflinks before the wedding, and Diana knew exactly where they had come from.
She recalled Charles becoming anxious after misplacing one of them before a Buckingham Palace pre-wedding event.
When the cufflinks later appeared on Charles’ wrists during their honeymoon, Diana said she confronted him immediately.
“Cufflinks arrive on his wrists – two ‘C’s entwined like the Chanel ‘C’s,” she recalled to Morton. “Camilla gave you those, didn’t she?”
Charles reportedly replied they were simply “a present from a friend,” sparking what Diana described as a fierce argument.
A ‘fairtyale’ honeymoon unravelling behind closed doors
While Diana wrestled with feelings of jealousy and insecurity, Charles painted a very different picture of their honeymoon in letters home.
Although he described married life as “very jolly”, he also revealed the couple often spent time apart, writing that Diana enjoyed socialising with crew members while he preferred reading alone on deck.
The emotional distance continued after the cruise when the couple travelled to Balmoral. Publicly, Diana smiled through questions about married life, telling reporters she would “highly recommend” marriage despite the turmoil she later said she was experiencing privately.
Behind closed doors, Diana told Morton she felt isolated and deeply unhappy. She also revealed she struggled with bulimia during the honeymoon, saying the eating disorder became intertwined with the breakdown of her marriage.
Speaking candidly during her landmark 1995 BBC Panorama interview, Diana described bulimia as “a secret disease” and said it reflected the emotional strain she was living under.
“It was a symptom of what was going on in my marriage,” she explained. “I was crying out for help but giving the wrong signals.”
Charles and Diana separated in 1992 before divorcing four years later. Both acknowledged relationships outside the marriage, with Charles eventually resuming his romance with Camilla.
The pair married in 2005, and Camilla became Queen following Charles’ accession in 2022 and his coronation in 2023.
Diana was killed in a Paris car crash in August 1997.
In reflection, Mayer believes the honeymoon exposed fundamental problems that neither Charles nor Diana truly understood before marrying.
“The thing that is so striking about Charles and Diana is they got married understanding almost nothing of each other – or what they were doing to themselves,” she said.
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