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Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
23,814 posts, read 34,684,299 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by in_newengland
The British do not have the corner on the market when it comes to keeping up appearances. Everyone in any polite society will try to make things look good and not air dirty laundry in public. You can easily look back into American upper class behavior and you get--Jackie Kennedy who was paid millions by JFKs father to stay married to him despite all his lovers, Eleanor Roosevelt putting up with FDRs mistress, and so it goes, many many more examples.
It's not just a British tradition. And it's nothing to be proud of. It probably shouldn't be that way. But marriages are made for various reasons and if the only purpose of a marriage is to produce an heir or to keep the royal blood in the family, to keep the money in the family, or to provide a proper spouse for social occasions, so be it--as long as both partners know the truth and are prepared to live that way.
I don't think Diana realized it would be that way. I do agree that she was silly and foolish but she was also in love and she trusted him. Jackie never thought it would be that way either. And even Princess Grace.
Maybe it's just that the nature of women is to marry for love. We don't think of it as a business arrangement. Women who marry for money are looked down upon and called "gold diggers."
Seeing as this marrying and then continuing to live as though you are single causes so much pain and even scandal, maybe we should be thinking of some way to end this archaic behavior. (If it CAN be ended because there will always be snobby families who want to marry the "right" person but then continue on as if they never got married.)
Honestly, I saw her being interviewed on American TV, several times. I don't remember ever hearing her say she loved her husband or her kids, but she always gushed that she wanted to be queen.
I do remember that Diana was the Queen Mum's bright idea. Have you seen the BBC show on PBS that centers on the Queen Mum & Wallace Simpson?
Did you ever hear Katie Curic tell about her conversation with Diana at a charity event, when Diana whined that she'd be going home to a lonely apartment at Kensington Palace?
It was a shame that Charles was almost forced into a marriage with Diana, just because she seemed suitable for him at the time, and she was able to produce heirs to the throne.
She obviously knew about his past with Camilla. But surely she shouldn’t have expected him to be carrying on with Camilla from the start of their marriage.
If the marriage was some sort of agreed ‘transaction’, then why was Diana so upset by Charles’ philandering ways? She was so emotionally unbalanced that it added to her having an eating disorder, and throwing herself down the stairs. If she had agreed from the start, just to be a royal ‘baby-maker’, then she wouldn’t have cared what Charles was up to.
But the truth was that Diana actually did love Charles, at the beginning of their relationship. But he was too weak, and went along with the wedding - even though he was still in love with Camilla, and wanted to carry on a relationship with her.
It was Charles who first started producing the so called “dirty laundry” - which Diana subsequently aired on tv. (I’m not saying that she was right for doing this, by the way. And I’m not condoning any relationship she may or may not have had).
Charles should have grown some balls from the start, and should have said “No” to this fiasco of a marriage. It would have saved everyone from a lot of hurt in the long run.
Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
23,814 posts, read 34,684,299 times
Reputation: 10256
Quote:
Originally Posted by Star10101
It was a shame that Charles was almost forced into a marriage with Diana, just because she seemed suitable for him at the time, and she was able to produce heirs to the throne.
She obviously knew about his past with Camilla. But surely she shouldn’t have expected him to be carrying on with Camilla from the start of their marriage.
If the marriage was some sort of agreed ‘transaction’, then why was Diana so upset by Charles’ philandering ways? She was so emotionally unbalanced that it added to her having an eating disorder, and throwing herself down the stairs. If she had agreed from the start, just to be a royal ‘baby-maker’, then she wouldn’t have cared what Charles was up to.
But the truth was that Diana actually did love Charles, at the beginning of their relationship. But he was too weak, and went along with the wedding - even though he was still in love with Camilla, and wanted to carry on a relationship with her.
It was Charles who first started producing the so called “dirty laundry” - which Diana subsequently aired on tv. (I’m not saying that she was right for doing this, by the way. And I’m not condoning any relationship she may or may not have had).
Charles should have grown some balls from the start, and should have said “No” to this fiasco of a marriage. It would have saved everyone from a lot of hurt in the long run.
You don't seem to understand that there was plenty of blame to go around, up to & including the Queen Mum, Earl Spencer, etc., etc.
I never got the impression that Diana loved Charles, but she made it abundantly clear that she loved that she would one day be Queen, & she loved the attention from the press, until she turned them against her.
Well, Diana was very young and also mentally unbalanced. That's probably why she was suckered into the marriage and why it hurt her so much when things didn't work out. I was never a particular fan of hers because I didn't like the manipulative behavior when things didn't go her way, but I did admire the way she raised the boys.
I can remember that she said that she genuinely thought she could help Charles, who back then, was still recovering from the loss of his favorite uncle. It was naive of her and childish, but it seems that she possessed certain nurturing skills that she used in her work with young children as well as at home with her siblings who had been hurt by divorce.
VERY naive to think that with her help, Charles would be fine and that was enough to base a marriage on. One of her sisters (or both?) had already had a chance with Charles but turned it down because they knew what the responsibilities would entail. Diana just didn't get it. Maybe she was just too young.
I think by the time she was giving interviews, she was well out of control and didn't really know what she was going anymore. Bad judgement. Bad judgement to have all the affairs and to be so needy. Bad judgement to fall for Dodi, who probably didn't really care about her either but was set up by his father who wanted to get in good with the royals. She was unstable to begin with and all the things that happened only made her worse.
There is plenty of blame to go around for the farce that was the marriage of Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer. However a large part of the blame lies with HM/the RF and the Spencer family.
Diana Spencer was not some alien foreign princess from some far off royal court; she grew up right in UK and pretty much alongside the RF. Her father was a peer of the realm for goodness sakes. Her mother, step-mother and father all new what a hot mess the Windsor family was *and* about Charles being the exclusive property of CPB.
Everyone also knew the main reasons why Diana was chosen; youth, background and (presumed) fertility. That and she loved babies (having worked at a nursery and all). On paper that was and has been more than enough qualifications for generations of princess consorts. However no one bothered to consider they were dealing with an emotionally fragile, (slightly) mentally unstable young woman who was deeply affected by her father's treatment of the mother and later even step-mother.
Not long before the wedding Diana got full confirmation of status between CPB and the PofW; she wanted to back out of the wedding but her family told her "your initials are on the tea towels now..."; meaning for appearances sake (along with a healthy dose of family avarice), the marriage had to take place.
Men of lesser means can and have told their daughters to sod the expense and scandal, if they were not happy or were unsure; bolt and let people say what they want. Not Earl Spencer....
In fact even during the darkest days of her marriage when Diana desperately needed a bolt hole, her brother (now himself Earl Spencer) refused to allow her to return to Althorp.
Diana was dropped right into it, and no one seemed to have a plan B for when or if she didn't go along with the English Marriage scheme.
Largely left to her own devices it isn't surprising this emotionally needy woman lashed out upon being betrayed in the same way her father had done to the mother, and she wasn't having any of it.
Long story short upon being made a widow there was an issue of what to call Queen Elizabeth since she shared same name as her daughter the now monarch. There were concerns people would get the two confused (not far off the mark as they have created a "Princess Diana" when no such person legally existed).
Since Queen Mary was still living Queen Elizabeth couldn't use dowager, nor did she wish to as the thing conjured up images of some relict going about draped in heavy mourning scaring people. So the "Grey Men" got to work found and resurrected "Queen Mother", which became shortened in some circles to Queen Mum.
As to why this was all necessary; in GB queen consorts retain their title and styles upon widowhood. Unlike peeresses who switch to "dowager" or Christian Name followed by former title (Diana, Princess of Wales for example).
I hope Princes William and Harry take their marriage vows more seriously than their parents did.
No worries on that score I can assure you; you've only to look at their faces during wedding and really ever since when they look at their wives. Both are deeply in love and PW has proven this by his three children. Given how the Duchess of Cambridge has such a difficult time of it one would think after the heir and certainly spare she'd shut down things.
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