Not Charles, The Queen Once Thought Diana Was Better Suited For Another Senior Royal

Prince Andrew was widely believed to be Queen Elizabeth II's favorite son, Richard Kay, a royal correspondent and former confidant of Princess Diana told Town & Country Magazine that the second royal son held a special place in the late queen's heart. "People around the royal family who have worked for them tell me Andrew still occupies this special place in the queen’s heart,” Kay said. Hence it was no surprise when Ingrid Seward, the royal author, revealed in her 2023 book My Mother and I that Her Majesty privately "thought Princess Diana was a better match for Prince Andrew." 

According to the Daily Mail excerpt, Lady Diana Spencer was first introduced to the late Queen Elizabeth II when she paid a visit to her sister Jane, who was married to her then-private secretary Robert Fellowes, at their home on the Balmoral estate in 1980. She had received an invitation to stay for four days at the castle to attend one of the many royal house parties following the second visit. According to a staff member, Diana was anxious to leave her mark while she was there. "Most of the ladies do not get up until after the guns have gone out, but Diana was always up early. If you looked out of your window at a quarter to eight, you would see her walking in the garden, and she made a great point of being there to see them off," Seward wrote in the book. 

"It was then that she played her sharpest card. She would go around telling everybody how much she loved Balmoral and that it was such a magical place and how she loved it beyond imagination." As per the book, Prince Charles began asking Diana to go fishing with him and take long walks with him around the estate, which she claimed to be quite interested in. All these actions led to the royal family being enamoured by her 'charm'. However, the queen found it strange, the book states she had two reservations. She questioned if someone so young could tell the difference between a prince and a man. It also occurred to her that her younger son, Andrew, would be much more compatible since Charles was 13 years older than Diana. 

As per Oprah Daily, Tina Brown's book The Diana Chronicles revealed that Andrew and Diana were childhood friends. Anecdotally, the book describes how Charles, who was seventeen at the time, once interrupted Diana's "tea party" with Andrew when she was five years old. During their time at Sandringham, Queen Elizabeth II and her family interacted with the Spencers.

However, Charles and Diana were married on July 29, 1981, which was a peak in the royal family's popularity. A total of 750 million people in 74 countries watched it on television. The couple had a doomed marriage from the start and finally divorced in 1996.