Princess Diana Was Forbidden From Addressing Prince Charles By First Name Until They Were Engaged

Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer announced their engagement on February 24, 1981, following a brief period of courtship. Charles proposed to Diana on February 3, 1981, just six months into their romance, while she was still 19 years old. However, she was not allowed to address the future king by his first name all through their dating period. According to Business Insider, there was a rather formal manner in which she had to address him. In her biography, Diana: Her True Story, Andrew Morton wrote. "It was not until Lady Diana was formally engaged to His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales that she was permitted to call him 'Charles.' Until then she had demurely addressed him as 'Sir.'" 

However, Charles used Diana's first name, and even though she had an official title, she was known as Lady Diana until she was married. "He called her Diana," Morton added. "In Prince Charles' circle, this was considered the norm." This somewhat seemed to align with what Diana had said about her relationship with Charles over the years.

According to ABC News, Diana once recalled their romance in her own words. “We met 13 times and we got married,” she said on the tapes, which were later aired in 2017 in a documentary titled Diana: In Her Own Words. “I was brought up in sense that when you got engaged to someone you loved them,” she added. 

Harper's Bazaar reported, that Princess Diana connected on an emotional level with Prince Charles when they first met, "He'd just broken up with his girlfriend, and his friend Mountbatten [Prince Philip's Uncle Dickie] had just been killed. I said it would be nice to see him," she shared in her famous tapes recorded for a voice coach, Peter Settelen, in 1992. "The next minute he leapt on me, practically," she continued. "It was strange. I thought, 'This isn't very cool' ... but I had nothing to go by because I'd never had a boyfriend." 

Royal writer Morton detailed their conversation during their first meeting in his book. "Diana was seated next to Charles on a bale of hay and, after the usual pleasantries, the conversation moved on to Earl Mountbatten's death and his funeral at Westminster Abbey," Morton wrote. "In a conversation which she later recalled to friends, Diana told him: 'You looked so sad when you walked up the aisle at Lord Mountbatten's funeral. It was the most tragic thing I've ever seen. My heart bled for you when I watched." 

Royal expert Robert Jobson wrote in his book King Charles: The Man, the Monarch, and the Future of Britain that Prince Charles felt pressurized to propose, and apparently, he confessed the same to a close friend: "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." Princess Diana and Prince Charles were married at St. Paul's Cathedral in London, five months after becoming engaged. 

This article was originally published on 07.20.24.