Chapter 15 Four, their own sky

As a young and beautiful princess and the mother of two lovely princes, Diana has always been the focus of the world's attention.After having two children, Diana paid more attention to her appearance, presenting herself as a fashionable woman with good taste.As a result, she found a highly appreciated thing that she was capable of doing --- being a beautiful woman that everyone envied. Diana gradually relaxed herself, forgetting the outdated etiquette norms instilled by Charles and the royal advisers, discarding the hypocrisy, returning to nature day by day, looking for the repressed self.

The shy Cinderella in the past is now the princess of England, a mature woman.Diana's lost years bloom again, and it's not good for their marriage or her husband.The gap between Diana and Charles deepened.The princess insisted on living this fresh and happy life now. In the past, it was often Charles who left Diana at home alone, hunting, playing polo, and participating in activities by himself.At this time, it was Charles' turn at home, but Diana went out to dinner with her friends. After Prince Henry was born, Charles used to take a lot of official time off, publicly to be with his children.But the real reason is the development of the relationship with Camilla.He often goes hunting, although hunting is not the main purpose.

For the royal family, the biggest duty of the Princess of Wales is to give birth to an heir to the throne.Now that there is an heir to the throne and a back-up heir to the throne, there is little reason for Charles and Diana to be together. With two heirs to the throne, Diana felt her obligations to the royal family were enough.She can do what she wants.Diana was no longer the submissive, shy girl she had been to Charles when she first married.There was nothing Charles could do about this change, his own interests had long since shifted. In June 1985, when the royal family was looking for a spouse for Prince Andrew, Diana inadvertently introduced her friend Sarah Norley Ferguson to Prince Andrew.The two are said to have fallen in love at first sight, with Prince Andrew's romance developing smoothly.Eventually, Sarah became the Duchess of York.Her arrival caused quite a shock in Princess Diana's life.

Diana's love for ballet began when she was a girl, but she didn't become a dancing star because of her height.She also worked as a dance teacher in order to combine her interest in children with her love of ballet.Although she became a princess rather than a children's dance teacher, ballet was still her favorite activity. For her beloved ballet, she prepared to improvise on the same stage with the famous ballet dancer Wayne Sleep, regardless of the discussions of the upper class.Using the living room of Kensington Palace as a rehearsal space, the pair secretly choreographed a dance routine to Billy Joel's "Girl Far Away From Town".One day, Prince Charles and his wife watched a special performance at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden Square.With two programs left before the finale, Diana couldn't hold back, and before following the signal they agreed in advance to see Wayne gesturing to her on the stage, she left the royal box and changed into a long silver silk dress.

When they appeared on the stage, there was a sound of astonishment and admiration from the auditorium. The audience was flattered and gave endless applause to their graceful, soft and light dancing posture.The enthusiasm of the people made them thank the curtain eight times, and Diana curtseyed to the royal box where Charles was staying. Charles, who was sitting in the box, was stunned. He had hardly noticed it before.Facing the audience, the crown prince admitted that he was "totally captivated" by Diana's outstanding performance, but in private he strongly objected to the princess' behavior, accusing her of losing her dignity, being too frivolous and too delicate.This attitude of not only discouraging, but completely denying, hit Diana again.As long as she tried to express herself, even a little bit, she would be ruthlessly satirized by Charles.

The situation slowly eroded the self-confidence and sense of accomplishment that Diana had worked so hard to build. Another thing chilled Diana even more.It was during preparations for the wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, when the royal couple flew to Vancouver for the opening of the grand export fair.Before the trip, some tabloids had already made a fuss about the princess's health, saying that she was "skinny", and there were rumors that she had a nose job, otherwise it would not be possible to change so much.In fact, 4 years of eating disorders are enough to change Diana's figure including appearance.

A few days before attending the opening ceremony, she couldn't eat well for several days. She only ate a bar of chocolate on the plane from London to Canada's Pacific coast.On the day of the opening ceremony, she and Prince Charles were always pale and weak as they visited the various booths.As they approached the California booth, she suddenly felt dizzy and collapsed limply to the floor. Her maid hurriedly helped her back to rest.After a while, she felt better and returned to her husband's side regardless of others' persuasion.Unexpectedly, instead of showing any concern or sympathy, Charles scolded her angrily: knowing that he was going to faint, why did he have to collapse in public.

What could make Diana sadder than this? Charles' words, like a cold and hard sword, pierced deeply into Diana's heart when she was weakest and most in need of help.Back in their suite on the top floor of the Pan Pacific Hotel overlooking Vancouver Bay, she threw herself on the bed, shaking with a low, heart-rending whimper. At the evening party, although someone suggested to Charles that the princess should stay in the room to recuperate, Charles insisted that Diana attend and sit at the guest table.Because if the princess does not appear, it will inevitably cause a series of unnecessary guesses and troubles.

Diana realizes that she needs help, but her identity determines that she cannot express her suffering like an ordinary person.So she asked the accompanying doctor to prescribe some medicine so that she could last until the end of the banquet.When passing through Japan after the visit, her face was still very bad.Distraught and visibly out of shape, her mood remained the same until she returned to Kensington Palace. At the same time, the personal guard who had been by her side to comfort her and encourage her was transferred away again. He was the only one who could make Diana dare to speak her mind.This made Diana even more depressed and lonely.

They continued to quarrel, and sometimes their sense of humor led them to quarrel too.In Charles' eyes, Diana's humor was tasteless and shallow, while Diana found Charles dull and unfunny. Once I had dinner at a friend's house, and a friend asked: "What smells worse than tuna?" , Diana and Sarah laughed to and fro, but Charles turned pale with anger. He thought it was an extremely vulgar and unstandard joke, so he left the table angrily. The two began to compete with each other.Diana expressed her defiance by refusing to accompany the crown prince to public appearances, and when they attended together, Charles seemed to ignore Diana's existence and feelings.

There were so many quarrels that almost as soon as I opened my mouth, it ended in a quarrel, even if it was a small matter such as where to go this weekend. In 1988, Charles began to communicate with Diana in the form of writing notes, and the attendant passed the notes, and usually got a reply.No more quarrels, and the estrangement has deepened. After 1985, some of Diana's new friends caused her to be constantly criticized by the media, and also made members of the royal family such as Charles silently and forbearingly alienate her.She is an outlier in the royal family. In 1986, Charles asked Sarah to find two unmarried men to go on vacation together.They are Sarah's childhood friends Philip Dean and Waterhouse.The former worked in a commercial bank and was considered to look like "Superman" in the movie, while the latter was the captain of the Royal Cavaliers at the time. Charles entrusted them with the task of accompanying his wife and other less skilled guests.Philip Dean and David Waterhouse accompanied Catherine Thomme, the ex-wife of Conservative MP Nicholas Thames, and Diana at the Glide on slopes that are not too steep.They had a great time. Diana found David to be charming with a great sense of humor, while Dean was just "likeable". Unexpectedly, just as the crown prince's marriage rift widened, the news media caught Philip Dean making a fuss about Diana's marriage.Dean's mother invited Diana and a dozen other friends who were skiing to their house for the weekend.However, in a lace reporter's article, it was written that only Dean and Diana lived in his parents' house, while a dozen other friends were ignored with ulterior motives. Philip's handsome appearance made reporters repeatedly dig news selling points around him.The newspapers made out of nothing that he accompanied Diana to a David Bowie concert at Wembley Stadium.In fact, the man in the picture talking to Diana is not Philip Dean, but David Waterhouse.Mr. Viscount Linley was sitting next to them both.The photo Diana saw in the newspaper on Monday, with Mr Viscount Linley vilely cropped out. She was so angry that she shed tears of grievance.The media attention to her friends of the opposite sex really made her angry and embarrassed.Another time, she was caught off guard by a flashing light as she walked out of a West End cinema with Julia Samuel and David Waterhouse.Although David Waterhouse's eyesight "foot" quickly jumped over the railing on the sidewalk and disappeared into the night, it still didn't help. Depressed and resentful, Diana's inadvertent relationship with a single man would be noticed and made headlines in the media.And Charles, who deliberately avoided Diana and Camilla to enjoy himself together, rarely became the focus of newspaper attention. Charles and Diana's evasiveness and mutual estrangement have been evident since their vacation in Mezzaca, Spain in 1986. After attending the wedding of Prince Andrew and his wife in 1986, Diana and Charles embarked on a short trip to Mecca.This time they received an invitation from King Juan Carlos of Spain to visit the King's Marivent Palace as VIPs. However, the vacation did little to heal the emotional rift between the prince and his wife, whose marital discord has become a household rumor.They barely spoke to each other, and both tried to stay as far away from each other as possible. One day, they took King Carlos's luxury yacht worth 3 million pounds and a speed of 80 knots to the nearby small island of Mezaka, and their companions followed behind in another boat keeping a certain distance.Charles and Diana's marriage came to their watershed here. As one of their courtiers recalled: "When Charles came out of his air-conditioned room to go surfing, Diana turned and walked in the opposite direction; Look in other directions. Every time they meet, they don't pay attention to each other, and they don't even hear a word of hello to each other." They read books, sunbathed, and chatted with other people on the yacht, but they never exchanged a look or said a word. "The enviable fairy-tale marriage will exist in name only after 5 years." The death knell for this marriage rang with a trip to Spain.Charles resolutely decided to shorten their vacation by two days, in order to return to Camilla's arms as soon as possible.Camilla was visiting Balmoral at the time and was a special guest of the Queen.After learning of this, Charles went straight to Balmoral without stopping, and threw himself into Camilla's arms. And Diana enjoyed the sunshine and sea breeze with the two little princes William and Henry, and had fun for several days. "Frozen three feet, not a day's cold", Diana and Charles' emotional breakdown is also accumulated over the years of marriage. At a ball in London in the spring of 1986, Diana invited Charles to dance, but Charles refused.Embarrassed by her husband's refusal, she immediately turned around and invited another man in revenge.For two hours she danced constantly, with different partners, and snubbed Charles in order to embarrass him too. Also in early 1986, the crown prince and his wife separated.Diana lived in Kensington Palace, while Charles happily stayed at Highgrove Villa. Charles and Diana are no longer a pair of lovers in the eyes of everyone, but a pair of resentful couple who are reluctantly bound together by various factors.In private, the two of them don't care about each other. In public, they still maintain their relationship as working partners when performing missions abroad and royal duties.However, journalists can easily capture the scene where the two princes seem to be at odds, and use headlines in the newspapers to render the discord between the two. In February 1987, during an 8-day skiing holiday, Diana left Charles and his friends and returned to London early; In March, Charles went skiing in Switzerland, and Diana stayed at home; In April, Charles lived with William and Henry at Balmoral Palace, while Diana lived alone at Kensington Palace. At the end of April, Charles went to the Italian art exhibition, the real purpose was to meet his old lover Camilla. In May, Charles traveled alone to the Hebrides and worked with farmers there for three days. In the autumn of 1987, Charles, who was depressed, avoided the crowd and lived in Balmoral Palace.There, he was even more reticent and rarely even communicated with the royal family.He stayed there for 5 weeks, just hunting and fishing every day.Diana and the children lived a social life alone in London. Once, Charles flew back to London to visit his sons William and Henry. It happened that Diana went out to celebrate Sarah's 28th birthday and returned to Kensington Palace late at night.Angrily, the prince flew back to Balmoral Palace early the next morning. The marriage crisis of the Prince of Wales and his wife has not only become the headline news that tabloid reporters like to talk about, but serious news magazines, radio stations, TV stations and relevant international media have also commented on it.This time the royal family is no longer silent on the deluge of what the press has done. Jimmy Savile offered to act as their mediator. In October 1987, when speculation about the crisis in their marriage was raging, he suggested that the Crown Prince and his wife visit the newly flooded Darffield area in southern Wales.This move may quell some gossip. As it turned out, that brief visit didn't have the desired effect.As Diana headed to join her husband at RAF Northall, onlookers noticed the apparent hostility and estrangement between the two. A distraught Diana was unprepared for the crown prince's indifference.She tried to explain how the news media followed her every move and how much distress it caused her, but the prince was completely unmoved. "Oh, man, here we go again," he said commandingly, refusing to listen to any of Diana's difficulties.For most of the voyage, Charles went about his business and ignored her.Diana said afterwards: "I couldn't bear it, and I almost wanted to cry and beg him." After the visit, the two returned to two distant places according to their own different routes.The distance between the two is getting farther and farther. Diana was almost never with Charles, she went out at night with anyone but Charles. Diana also eschewed dinner parties at home when both were at home, never presiding over them as hostess.At first, Charles often persuaded her to attend. Since 1987, Charles has never made such unnecessary attempts. The crown prince's marriage crisis is bound to affect the succession to the throne.The Queen intervened. In November 1987, the queen called the two to the palace and had an informal conversation, telling them that the consequences of going on like this would be serious.In any case, she points out, divorce is never allowed. The queen criticized Charles mercilessly. He was older than Diana, knew more about royal affairs, and should be mainly responsible for this bad marriage.Charles seems to accept this criticism, saying that he will try to understand and encourage Diana. But that didn't make the couple's relationship much better.After working hard, people around found that the two were still strangers.Perhaps in early 1987, Diana slowly gave up and gave up.Then we have to start with Highgrove, the prince's country house.