When Princess Diana Recalled Queen Camilla Telling Her 'To Not Push' King Charles Into Doing Things

Princess Diana famously referred to her broken marriage with Prince Charles as 'crowded', "There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded," she said subtly shading Camilla Parker Bowles during her infamous 1995 BBC interview. Diana and Camilla became friends initially when the young would-be princess was introduced into Prince Charles's close circle. Camilla was married to an army officer Andrew Parker Bowles back then and they shared two children Tom and Laura. Diana recalled their friendship in recordings for Andrew Morton's 1992 book, Diana: In Her Own Words. "I met [Camilla] very early on," she said. "I was introduced to the circle, but I was a threat. I was a very young girl, but I was a threat."

Royal biographer Penny Juror asserted that Camilla herself approved of Diana calling her "sweet and funny," and "great with her kids." As per Oprah Daily, the Princess of Wales realized that Camilla shared a deep bond with Charles when she started visiting the Bowles' household, "By that time, I’d realized there was somebody else around," Diana shared while recording. "I’d been staying at Bolehyde with the Parker Bowles' an awful lot, and I couldn’t understand why she kept saying to me, "Don’t push him into doing this, don’t do that." She knew so much about what he was doing privately and about what we were doing privately." She added, "Eventually, I worked it all out and found the proof of the pudding, and people were willing to talk to me." 

Diana's suspicion grew when she discovered that Charles had a bracelet made for Camilla with the initials "G" and "F" for their nicknames "Gladys" and "Fred" just weeks before their royal wedding. "We always had discussions about Camilla," Diana confessed in the tapes. "I once heard him on the telephone in his bath on his hand-held set saying, 'Whatever happens, I will always love you.' I told him afterward that I had listened at the door and we had a filthy row." The then Princess of Wales was infuriated when she saw Camilla attend the wedding, "I knew she was in there, of course. I looked for her," she recalled. "So walking down the aisle, I spotted Camilla, pale gray, veiled pillbox hat, saw it all, her son Tom standing on a chair. To this day you know, vivid memory."

According to Good Housekeeping, Charles had failed to address his relationship with Camilla transparently, royal biographer Juror wrote in her book The Duchess: Camilla Parker Bowles and the Love Affair That Rocked the Crown. "Instead of explaining to Diana at the outset that Camilla was an old girlfriend, he had presented her as nothing more than a friend," Juror wrote. "It didn't occur to him that she needed to know before someone else told her. He came clean after the engagement, admitting that Camilla had been one of his most intimate friends, but reassured Diana that from now on there would be no other women." 

"Charles glanced over at Camilla he walked down the aisle with a 'slightly plaintive, sad look' on his face," Juror noted in her book. "Their wonderful affair was over and this was reality kicking in." Afterward, the Prince of Wales acknowledged that he had resumed his romantic relationship with Camilla after his first marriage had "irretrievably broken down" in 1986. Ten years later, he divorced Diana.