The Queen thought Diana was a better fit for Prince Andrew, seen here in 1988.credit: International Syndicate
“That's when she played her sharpest cards. She went around telling everyone how much she loved Balmoral and that it was a magical place and how she loved it beyond belief.
Likewise, on a visit to Sandringham, a close associate of the royal family was quoted as saying: “She was everywhere, picking up birds, very kind and absolutely exuding her charm.
“And she looked amazing, so comfortable and so excited about herself.”
However, it didn't take long for the shine to disappear.
Just a month before her wedding, Diana was furious when Charles showed no interest in dancing with her at Prince Andrew's 21st birthday party at Windsor Castle.
At 5.30 the next morning, she drove to Althorp, her father's home in Northamptonshire, and decided to cancel the wedding.
However, her father, Earl Spencer, was appalled by this suggestion and told her that breaking off her engagement so soon before the wedding would be a “crude act”.
After being talked down to, the princess found herself having to get used to some of the royal family's many quirks.
In a section of the book serialized in Mail on Sunday“For example,” Seward wrote, “they placed pudding spoons and forks at the top of the place setting, which she had always been told was too bourgeois; At Balmoral, they even used fish knives, which should have been the height of pretentious vulgarity.
“Then there was the Queen's trick of leaving her chocolates on the grand piano in the parlor at the front entrance to Sandringham, and then she would look out the window in the upper corridor to see who had dared steal one.
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“And Diana had to learn not to hold back when her future mother-in-law picked a tick off one of her favorite dogs and threw it into the fire, where it landed in the flames with a satisfying hiss.”
As the young princess increasingly struggled to cope, unable to understand the lack of affection shown to her by both her husband and the wider royal family, Prince Edward's butler, Mark Simpson, was identified as the perfect person to help her during her first days at the palace – although their closeness had… It raised eyebrows in some quarters.
The late princess poured her heart out to Simpson, telling him she thought she looked fat in her engagement photos, which he believes was the reason she developed bulimia.
“I hated Lady Susan Hussey, and I hated Princess Anne,” he said.
“I think Diana thought it was strange that the Queen wouldn't be there with her, sitting on the end of her bed and talking to her about her day. I think she really thought that would happen.”
“I felt like it was my job to explain to Diana that if she wanted to eat with the Queen or see the Queen, all she had to do was call the Queen’s page and find out.”
Later, when the marriage collapsed, the princess is said to have tearfully cried out to the Queen about Charles, as well as members of her family.
“The Queen was frightened by these meetings,” Seward writes. “She had never had to deal with such outbursts in her life, and it left her feeling drained, hopeless and confused.”
After the princess's death in a car accident in Paris in August 1997, there was a wave of public hostility towards Charles and his mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles.
But contrary to popular belief, the Queen secretly believed the couple should marry, Seward says.
“By then, she was also convinced that the marriage would prove Charles’s making – as a man, and ultimately as a king,” she wrote.
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“For a few years after Diana’s death, the Queen was wary of appearing at any event to which Camilla was also invited. But she never hated her.”
