{"id":612363,"date":"2026-09-26T11:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T11:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/612363\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T11:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T11:36:11","slug":"diana-wanted-william-and-harry-to-know-charles-loved-me-expert-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/612363\/","title":{"rendered":"Diana wanted William and Harry to know Charles ‘loved me’, expert claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Princess Diana insisted that Princes William and Harry were under no illusions that their father, King Charles, loved her, a royal biographer has claimed.<\/p>\n

Ingrid Seward, friend of the late princess, claims the then-Prince Charles genuinely cared for his first wife, though the pair were fundamentally mismatched at that stage of their lives.<\/p>\n

“He was plagued by guilt because he knew he was the one who should have made it work,” Ms Seward told Hello magazine.<\/p>\n

“But her intense jealousy and many, many other things… they were just not suited at the time.”<\/p>\n

The expert’s remarks come as Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, published his own memoir about the late princess. <\/p>\n

Titled Swan Song: Diana my Sister, the book offers his personal account of her life, including her marriage to the then-Prince of Wales.<\/p>\n

Describing his latest work, Earl Spencer wrote on Instagram: “When I finished the recording, I thought: ‘That is exactly what I wanted and needed to say – and she would, I reckon, have approved of every word’.”<\/p>\n

Despite later doubling down, insisting his sister would be “cheering from the rafters” at its publication, he has been met with scepticism over his intentions for the memoir.<\/p>\n

\"Princess<\/p>\n

Princess Diana insisted that Princes William and Harry were under no illusions that her ex-husband, King Charles, loved her, a royal biographer has claimed<\/p>\n

| GETTY\"Earl<\/p>\n

Earl Spencer insisted his sister would be ‘cheering from the rafters’ at the memoir’s publication<\/p>\n

| GETTY<\/p>\n

The expert even added one damning detail: “She said, ‘It’s very important to me, Ingrid, that my boys know that their father loved me. It’s really, really important’.”<\/p>\n

The couple wed at St Paul’s Cathedral in 1981, when Diana was just 20, and the future King was 32 – an age gap of 12 years.<\/p>\n

They went on to have two sons, William and Harry, but their marriage was beset by well-documented difficulties throughout.<\/p>\n

Diana herself addressed the troubles in her now-famous 1995 BBC Panorama interview, declaring that “there were three of us in this marriage.”<\/p>\n

\"King<\/p>\n

Charles and Diana married in 1981 and divorced in 1996<\/p>\n

| PA<\/p>\n

The pair formally ended their marriage in 1996, finalising their divorce after years of public speculation and private anguish.<\/p>\n

Tragically, Diana died just a year later, leaving behind a legacy that continues to captivate the nation.<\/p>\n

King Charles subsequently married Camilla, now Queen Camilla, in 2005.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Princess Diana insisted that Princes William and Harry were under no illusions that their father, King Charles, loved…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[156,11018,111,139,69,18320,9855],"class_list":["post-612363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-king-charles","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-princess-diana","tag-royal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}