Prince Charles Asked a Friend This Heartbreaking Question Before He Married Princess Diana

Rachel BurchfieldTue, March 31, 2026 at 1:35 PM UTC

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Prince Charles and Princess Diana on their 1981 honeymoonCredit: GettyThe Gist -

Both Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer had “serious doubts” about marrying one another ahead of their royal wedding on July 29, 1981.

According to a new royal biography by royal historian Hugo Vickers, Charles asked a friend a heartbreaking question about a month before his wedding.

“Do you think you can fall in love after you’re married?” the future king wondered, implying that he wasn’t in love with Diana ahead of saying “I do.”

In the nearly 45 years since Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer’s royal wedding on July 29, 1981, numerous anecdotes have come out about how both parties wanted to call off the wedding before it happened.

Princess Diana and Prince Charles on their July 29, 1981 wedding dayCredit: Getty

According to a new royal biography by royal historian Hugo Vickers, Charles asked a rather strange question ahead of his wedding to Diana: Is it possible to “fall in love after you’re married?”

Per Marie Claire, in his new book Queen Elizabeth II, both Charles and Diana “were having serious doubts” ahead of their big day. When it comes to Diana, “The truth is, she hardly knew Charles,” Vickers wrote, adding that she “called him ‘Sir’ until the day of their engagement.”

Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles announcing their engagement on February 24, 1981Credit: Getty

During Royal Ascot, held annually in June, “Prince Charles looked over at Diana at dinner and asked his neighbor, ‘Do you think you can fall in love after you’re married?’” The implication, of course, is that weeks ahead of his wedding, he wasn’t in love with his bride-to-be.

Diana, for her part, had “put a note in his dinner jacket saying she loved him” before Charles headed off on a pre-wedding trip to New York. Charles, according to Vickers, approached his friend “with tears in his eyes” and said, “I am not sure that I can handle this.”

Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer on March 9, 1981Credit: Getty

The future king’s friend advised that “it was not too late to abandon the plan.” But Charles, one month out from his wedding day, felt backed into a corner. Vickers wrote that Charles told his confidant, “I am afraid it is.”

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In his biography of King Charles, fellow royal biographer Robert Jobson told friends ahead of marrying Diana that he “desperately wanted to get out of the wedding” after he “discovered just how awful the prospects were, having had no chance whatsoever to get to know Diana beforehand” (per Marie Claire).

Charles, Jobson wrote, told friends, “Things were very different in those days. The power and influence of the media driving matters towards an engagement and wedding were unstoppable. To have withdrawn, as you can no doubt imagine, would have been cataclysmic. Hence I was permanently between the devil and the deep blue sea.”

Lady Diana Spencer on July 26, 1981, three days before her wedding dayCredit: Getty

Charles wasn’t the only one with reservations. Diana almost called off the wedding, too, roughly a month before it happened, as royal biographer Ingrid Seward detailed in her book My Mother and I. Just over a month away from the wedding, Diana was miffed that Charles paid her little attention at a party at Windsor Castle celebrating the former Prince Andrew’s 21st birthday. Instead of dancing with her, Charles “spent the entire evening dutifully working the room and making sure he spoke with as many people as possible” (per The New York Post).

“Diana was in despair,” Seward wrote. Eventually, Diana ended up at her father’s house, feeling “distraught, flustered, angry, and had no intention of ever going back.” When she told her father her decision to call off the wedding, Earl Johnnie Spencer was “appalled,” Seward wrote.

“After calming her down, he pointed out it would be an act of gross discourtesy to break off her engagement to the future king so close to the wedding,” Seward continued. “And, anyway, wasn’t it what she’d always wanted? Didn’t she remember him telling her that she should only marry a man she loved—and her firm reply, ‘That is what I am doing’?”

Princess Diana and Prince Charles on July 29, 1981Credit: Getty

Yet still, “Diana wasn’t immediately convinced,” but eventually came around. “She couldn’t deny that she still wanted to be the Princess of Wales,” Seward wrote. “And, at 19, she was young enough to still believe in happy endings, despite what her instincts had told her on that terrible night.”

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