This Wednesday marks 45 years since Charles, Prince of Wales, married Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. The wedding, held on July 29, 1981, was a media event without precedent, and it launched the public life of a young aristocrat who would become one of the most influential and photographed women of the 20th century. What looked like a fairy tale at the time gave way to a marriage strained by tension, ending in separation in 1992 and divorce in 1996.
Princess Diana remains one of the most prominent figures in British royalty to this day.
© Anwar HusseinShe Really Was Happy on Her Honeymoon
Diana memorably said that there were always three people in her marriage, with their marital problems starting almost immediately. But newly surfaced evidence shows she was genuinely happy in those first weeks with Charles, and that the honeymoon itself was wonderful, a striking contrast to the account she gave in 1992 in Andrew Morton's book, where she described the trip as one of the hardest stretches of her marriage.
For decades, the accepted version of how Charles and Diana's marriage began came from "Diana: Her True Story," Andrew Morton's book built on audio tapes Diana secretly recorded and passed along to him.
In that account, the honeymoon was one of the roughest patches of the marriage. Charles, she said, spent much of the trip reading, painting, and writing in his diary while she felt increasingly alone. It was also during the honeymoon that she confronted the presence of Camilla Parker Bowles in her husband's life, after spotting cufflinks he wore engraved with two interlocking letters that stood for their private nicknames for each other.
Seeing them, Diana recalled, was enough to shatter any illusions. By her telling, it was a period of real suffering.
© Tim Graham'It's Wonderful to Be Married'
That long-standing narrative got upended this year when a letter Diana wrote to a childhood friend from her school days went up for auction. In it, the newly minted Princess of Wales described her impressions of married life in warm terms. "We had a wonderful honeymoon, with brilliant sunshine and, thankfully, calm seas... We are now in Scotland until the end of October, which is a great pleasure for us. I love being outdoors all day and hate London!" she wrote, according to The Telegraph.
"It's wonderful to be married. I think I can safely say that after two months," she continued.
How she felt joining the Royal Family
© Tim GrahamThe letter also hints at how the new bride was adjusting to royal life. "It's like playing with grown-ups!" she wrote. Dated September 27, 1981, the letter lines up with the time the couple spent at Balmoral in Scotland following the wedding. Her comment about disliking London offers a different window into how she saw her life at that moment, since her later restlessness with country life and her preference for London's social scene would become one of the very things that drove her and Charles apart.
After the wedding, Charles and Diana boarded the Royal Yacht Britannia, Queen Elizabeth II's floating royal residence.
From London they traveled to Broadlands, Lord Mountbatten's estate in Hampshire, before setting off on an 11-day Mediterranean cruise with stops in Gibraltar, Algeria, Tunisia, Sicily, the Greek islands, and Egypt. Once the cruise ended, the newlyweds settled in at Balmoral Castle, the royal family's summer residence in Scotland, for several more weeks. All told, the honeymoon stretched to the end of October 1981, about three months in total.
Other Royal Honeymoons Aboard Britannia
© Getty ImagesMore than four decades later, in July 2023, King Charles returned to the Britannia, which has served as a museum in Leith since 1997. He spoke with former crew members and revived old naval traditions, including a round of rum.
Princess Anne and her first husband, Captain Mark Phillips, and Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson also spent the early days of their marriages aboard the Britannia.
