First Marriage
Although Charles first met Lady Diana Spencer in 1977—while visiting her home, Althorp, as the companion of her elder sister, Sarah—he did not consider her romantically until mid-1980. While sitting together on a bale of hay at a friend's barbecue in July he mentioned Mountbatten's death, to which Diana replied that Charles had looked forlorn and in need of care during his uncle's funeral. Soon, according to Charles's chosen biographer, Jonathan Dimbleby, "without any apparent surge in feeling, he began to think seriously of her as a potential bride" and she accompanied Charles on visits to Balmoral Castle and Sandringham House.
Charles's cousin Norton Knatchbull (Amanda's eldest brother) and his wife told Charles that Diana appeared awestruck by his position and that he did not seem to be in love with her. Meanwhile, the couple's continued courtship attracted intense press and paparazzi attention. When Prince Philip told him that the media speculation would injure Diana's reputation if Charles did not come to a decision about marrying her soon, and realising that she was a suitable royal bride (according to Mountbatten's criteria), Charles construed his father's advice as a warning to proceed without further delay.
Read more about this topic: Charles, Prince Of Wales
Famous quotes containing the word marriage:
“Our home has been nothing but a play-room. I’ve been your doll-wife here, just as at home I was Papa’s doll-child. And the children have been my dolls in their turn. I liked it when you came and played with me, just as they liked it when I came and played with them. That’s what our marriage has been, Torvald.”
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)
“Worst, when this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and affection of human nature, by teaching that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife’s thrift, and that woman’s life has no other aim.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)