Prince Charles, Princess Diana’s Marriage Was Doomed To Fail After Engagement Announcement

Following the announcement of their engagement, Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s impending marriage gave people in the UK something to look forward to. However, one royal correspondent predicted the couple’s love story was never meant to have a happy ending.

Charles and Diana announced their engagement in 1981 and later married at St Paul’s Cathedral that same year. Unfortunately, what was thought to be the perfect marriage was riddled with scandal and heartbreak.

Journalist Richard Cohen, who was “against” the marriage of Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles, knew things would end badly for the couple. Just days after their engagement announcement, he voiced his opinion in an article published by Washington Post on Feb. 26, 1981.

“There is nothing amusing or silly when the conventions of royalty conspire to have a 32-year-old man marry a 19-year-old girl. If Charles were not a prince, he would be a dirty old man. Lady Diana is nothing more than a kid,” he wrote.

The correspondent noted that life as a member of the royal family was nothing like the stories told in fairytales. “What may look like a palace on the outside, can amount to a jail on the inside. Where Lady Diana is about to go, there is no exit,” the writer added.

Cohen explained that Diana’s marriage to Prince Charles will bring her childhood to an abrupt end and thrust her into an environment where she would feel lost.

“Take away the title of Lady and what you have is a teenager who is about to marry a man 13 years her senior. She knows little of the world. But a woman so young, so inexperienced, so unworldly is not prepared to decide if she should be, for now and evermore, the Queen of England.”

Cohen feared Diana would be trapped in her marriage with Charles because “for royalty, marriage is forever, irrevocable — a sentence rather than a continuing option.”

However, the Princess of Wales was actually able to separate from her husband in 1992 following his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles. Diana and Charles finalized their divorce in 1996.