The royal photographer and Princess Diana's former press secretary opened up about many intimate details about the couple they had noticed while working for them.
Princess Diana and Prince Charles' divorce is a storied one. There are many experts who have claimed that they knew the moment when the royal couples' relationship was on the rocks but who can be better equipped than a royal photographer. The royal photographer had access to the royal couple whenever they had a public engagement and would be there to observe from up close. The photographer would have captured the moments that Diana and Charles wanted to show to the public and would have seen the moments when they turned away from the lense and the crowd.
One royal photographer Ken Lennox, who was in Australia in 1983 when Princess Diana and Prince Charles were on tour, has opened up about an incident he witnessed. He also has photographic proof of what he saw that day. Lennox who was the first to photograph Lady Diana and Prince Charles together, went on to capture the princess for the rest of her life, as per the Independent.
Speaking to ITV for a four-part documentary titled Inside The Crown: Secrets of the Royals, he said that he saw Princess Diana cry while sitting beside the prince when they were touring Australia and New Zealand in 1983. Also on the tour was a baby Prince William, who was less than a year old at the time.
One of the engagements during that visit included visiting the Sydney Opera House, where the couple were greeted by thousands. Lennox was also present there and sat inside a car ready to photograph them. It was there that he first saw that something in their relationship was just not right.
Princess Diana, sitting beside Prince Charles, had burst into tears when the crowds couldn't see her. Meanwhile, the future king had turned away from her. Lennox captured the moment in a photo, which is being claimed as the "first" one to show that their marriage was on the rocks.
"I'm about four feet from the Princess, and I'm trying to get a bit of the opera house in the background and some of the crowd, and Diana burst into tears and wept for a couple of minutes," he said during ITV documentary. "After it was over, I went to see the press officer for Prince and Princess, and I said, 'What happened?' He said, 'Ken, mozzies and jet lag and heat.' So I just accepted that," he added.
"Charles, I don't think, has noticed at that stage, you know. If he has, typical of Prince Charles to look the other way! But it was the first sign that something was wrong. And then we began to see other things were happening later on," he was reported as saying by 9honey. He added that the prince was overshadowed by Diana's presence as more and more people would ask her out on engagements.
After the prince ignored Diana during her emotional moment, she apparently developed the habit of using a "fake laugh", which "annoyed" Prince Charles. Her former press secretary Patrick Jephson saw her intentionally "laughing a lot” during joint engagements in public, not “because she was having fun, but to annoy her husband," as per the SUN UK.
"As professional royal performers they were unbeatable, but behind the scenes it was quite different. They didn't talk to each other, there was minimal eye contact, they were short-tempered with each other. Diana enjoyed upstaging her husband and if she was laughing and smiling more it wasn't that she was having more fun but that she knew it got on his nerves," said Jephson.
Their marriage gradually combusted and quite publicly too. Their last engagement together was the 1992 South Korea tour after which they couldn't pretend anymore that things were fine. "It was blatantly obvious how miserable they were, they couldn't stand each other and I think the press office threw up their hands and said let's make the split as easy as possible," Victoria Arbiter, 9Honey's royal columnist, said.
Prince Charles admitted on TV in June 1994 that he had an affair with Camilla Bowles Parker, who he is now married to, and the next year Princess Diana acknowledged during her infamous BBC interview that three was a crowd in her marriage. The couple divorced in 1996 and the princess died in a car crash in 1997.
References:
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/royal-family/princess-diana-prince-charles-royal-itv-inside-the-crown-marriage-harry-meghan-a9297136.html
https://honey.nine.com.au/latest/charles-and-diana-photo-shows-marriage-on-the-rocks/b5299347-defa-45f9-b44b-e92a75140281
https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/10810811/unhappy-princess-diana-fake-laugh-annoy-prince-charles-royal-documentary/
