Royal Expert Reveals Princess Diana Really Didn't Want To Give Up On Her Marriage To Prince Charles

Prince Charles and Princess Diana first met in the late 70s. At the time, Charles was actually dating Diana's older sister, Sarah. However, during a trip to the Spencer's family home, Charles and Diana seemed to hit it off, and he ended up courting her, according to Vogue. Although they were able to keep things under wraps for a couple of years, things got more serious between them, and they went public in the early 80s. The two got engaged on February 3, 1981, and they married five months later. From there, the two would go on to have two children, Prince William, born in 1982, and Prince Harry in 1984.

Throughout their relationship, Charles was thought to be pining for another woman. He had previously met and dated Camilla Parker Bowles, but she ended up marrying another man while Charles was serving in the Navy, according to Brides. It seemed obvious that Diana knew that her then-husband was in love with another woman, as she once said, "well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded," according to Insider. Charles and Diana later divorced, but a royal expert told Us Weekly that Diana actually didn't want her marriage to end. Keep reading to find out more.

Royal expert Emma Cooper doesn't believe that Princess Diana ever wanted to give up on her marriage to Prince Charles. "I think that even after the separation in 1992, they still carried on doing engagements. I don't think Diana ever really wanted to truly give up," Cooper told Us Weekly. "Actually, it was the queen in the end [that] said, 'You're separated. You need to get divorced.' And I think she never, ever — did she really want to do that? Look, I don't know. It feels to me from the evidence of all the testimony that we had in her own words, that it was hard for her," Cooper explained. She went on to recall the day that Diana filled out her divorce papers, and mentioned that Diana was still wearing her wedding ring that day. "I don't think she ran out of that marriage," Cooper said.

A similar take was shared by Diana's former butler Paul Burrell back in December 2018. "The princess tried to make her marriage work, and she never actually wanted a divorce," he told Express. He went on to say that Diana wanted to stay married for the sake of her two children.

Princess Diana was acutely aware of her surroundings and everything around her at all times. Growing up with divorced parents, she wanted to be careful not to recreate the past when it came to her own marriage. Back in 1995, she expressed such in her BBC Panorama interview, according to the Mirror. "I think like any marriage, especially when you've had divorced parents like myself, you'd want to try even harder to make it work and you don't want to fall back into a pattern that you've seen happen in your own family," Diana said. Despite openly admitting that she knew of Charles' affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, Diana said that she "desperately wanted it to work." "I desperately loved my husband and I wanted to share everything together. And I thought that we were a very good team," she said during that interview.

Interestingly, it was actually Charles' mother, Queen Elizabeth, that pushed things along. According to The New York Times, Buckingham Palace released a statement in December 1995 confirming such. Two months later, Diana agreed to sign the papers. "It was an exceptionally difficult decision and one which the Princess of Wales has taken with immense sadness and regret," her lawyer said at the time.

In the years that followed their divorce, Princess Diana and Prince Charles were able to find some common ground, and it has been reported that the two actually became friends. In 1997, in the months before her death, Diana had a chat with then-editor of The New Yorker, Tina Brown, according to Elle. In 2008, Brown published a book in which she revealed parts of that conversation that she shared with the Princess of Wales. Brown explained that it was her understanding that Charles and Diana had put aside their differences, and even spent some quality time together. "Charles got into the habit of dropping in on her at Kensington Palace and they would have tea and a sort of rueful exchange. They even had some laughs together," Brown wrote. While Diana knew that Charles' heart belonged to another woman, she told Brown that she would "go back to Charles in a heartbeat if he wanted her."

Diana was tragically killed in a car crash in 1997, when Prince William was 15-years-old, and Prince Harry was 12-years-old. Years later, Charles would marry Camilla Parker Bowles, according to Town and Country.