“At night, I dreamt of Camilla the whole time.” In the midst of her honeymoon, Princess Diana discovered the gifts that her husband—the man who would become King Charles—and Camilla Parker Bowles had exchanged before their wedding. The young princess was devastated and couldn’t stop thinking about Camilla, never imagining that this woman would become the third protagonist in the most famous love triangle in the history of the British monarchy—a situation that would later lead her to utter the infamous phrase: “There were three of us in this marriage.”
The wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer remains one of the most lavish ever celebrated. The ceremony, which nearly 750 million television viewers watched worldwide, made history in more ways than one. The bride’s veil measured 39 feet, and her train became the longest ever worn at a British royal wedding. But not money, nor records, nor media attention brought happiness.
Very quickly, the fairytale turned into a nightmare. The newlyweds set sail for a 12-day honeymoon across the Mediterranean aboard the royal yacht Britannia. In the middle of their trip, the first arguments broke out. In recordings made for Andrew Morton’s 1992 biography, published by People, Lady Diana confided to Morton that she had discovered a “farewell” bracelet that Charles had intended to give to Camilla before the wedding.
Cuff Links Given by Camilla
Although this gift initially troubled Diana, it was actually the gift Camilla gave Charles that seriously worried her. After seeing two photos of Camilla fall out of her husband’s planner, Lady Di noticed the personalized cuff links he was wearing. “Cuff links appeared on his wrists: two intertwined ‘C’s, similar to those of Chanel. I understood immediately; I knew exactly what they were. ‘Camilla gave them to you, didn’t she?’ Diana asked. ‘Yes, so what? It’s a gift from a friend.’ And let me tell you, we had quite a fight after that,” she said.
The fairytale romance began to crack as the young princess realized the depth of her husband’s relationship with the woman he would eventually marry in 2005. The Princess of Wales found herself thinking about Camilla for the rest of her vacation. “At night, I dreamt of Camilla the whole time,” Diana confessed. “I was obsessed by Camilla, totally.”
The newlyweds saw the distance between them growing. In a letter Charles wrote from the yacht, he stated: “Diana dashes about chatting up all the sailors and the cooks in the galley etc. while I remain hermit-like on the veranda deck, sunk with pure joy into one of Laurens van der Post’s books.” Even on their honeymoon, the newlyweds were already spending their time apart—a situation that foreshadowed the rest of their marriage.
After 10 tumultuous years of marriage, Charles and Diana separated in 1992 and officially divorced four years later. Both admitted to having extramarital affairs, notably Charles’s rekindled affair with Camilla, whom he married in 2005, years after Diana’s death in a car accident in Paris in 1997.
