Prince Charles Said Diana Would Keep Him Young, Called Her 'Exquisitely Pretty But a Child'

Lady Diana Spencer was only 16, when she met then-Prince Charles, 30, for the first time at her ancestral home, Althorp, in 1977, during a grouse hunt. Before getting engaged, they supposedly only had thirteen in-person meetings. "I remember thinking what a very jolly, amusing, and attractive 16-year-old she was. I mean, great fun, bouncy, and full of life and everything," Charles remarked during their engagement interview in 1981. The royal couple had a 13-year gap. Prince Charles was born on November 14, 1948, while Diana was born on July 1, 1961. 

“I think that Diana will keep me young, apart from anything else,” the Prince of Wales continued during the interview, as per The Harper's Bazaar. “I think I shall be exhausted," he added. "I haven’t somehow thought about it. I mean, it’s only 12 years, and lots of people have got married with that sort of age difference. I just feel you are as old as you think you are.”

At the time, Princess Diana also brushed off their big age gap. She stated, “I have never thought about it.” As per Oprah Daily, royal biographer Sarah Bradford revealed during the 2022 PBS documentary Di: The Truth Behind Their Wedding, alleged that Charles told his friends, “She is exquisitely pretty, a perfect poppy. But she is a child.” He reportedly added, “She does not look old enough to be out of school, much less married.” 

Royal writer James Whitaker, in his book Diana vs. Charles, claimed that the Princess of Wales had already experienced an elderly impression of Charles at the time of their marriage. Whitaker wrote that Charles, at 17, had run into Diana at her tea party with Prince Andrew when he reportedly 'behaved as if he were much older.' He argued that this was a habit, Charles "never succeeded in discarding and which would come to infuriate Diana in the years ahead." For Diana, the 'memory of him, so much older when she was a tiny child, never quite went away.'

Right before their opulent wedding in 1981, Charles told The New York Times, "She will be 20 soon," when asked how Princess Diana would cope with the royal duties. “I was about that age when I started. It's obviously difficult to start with, but you just have to plunge in.'' According to Town and Country Magazine, remarkably, the Princess of Wales's parents, Frances Shand Kydd and Eark John Spencer had a similar age gap.

Diana's father was born in 1924, and her mother, in 1936. Coincidentally, their marriage also ended in divorce. Princess Diana was remarkably still quite young, just over 30, when she and Prince Charles parted in 1992. They were married for fifteen years before their divorce was finalized in 1996. Diana died a year later on August 31, at the age of just 36.