What Is It Like To Marry Into The British Royal Family? | Fourteen Weddings And A Divorce | Timeline

July 1981, the fairy tale wedding of the century as a 20 year old girl sets out to marry her Prince Charming at St. Paul's Cathedral. 700 million people watched her transformation from commoner to royal princess and expected her to live happily ever after. 12 years later Diana Princess of Wales made a public announcement that finally shattered the fairy tale. When I started my public life 12 years ago I understood the media might be interested in what I did. I realized then their attention would inevitably focus on both our private and public lives. But I was not aware of how overwhelming that attention would become nor the extent to which it would affect both my public duties and my personal life in a manner that's been hard to bear. Obviously I attach great importance to my charity work and I intend to focus on a smaller range of areas in the future. Over the next few months I will be seeking a more suitable way of combining a meaningful public role with hopefully a more private life. My first priority will continue to be our children William and Harry who deserve as much love and care and attention as I am able to give as well as an appreciation of the tradition into which they were born. 200 years before another Princess of Wales Caroline of Brunswick had fallen out with her husband later to become George IV. There were all those outrageous Hanoverians who I mean sin was on the menu every day for them. They did everything. They were in debt. There was even a suggestion of incest amongst two children of George III. That is King Victoria's grandfather. And they had illegitimate children by the dozen. One of them, the future William IV, actually had ten illegitimate children before he married the legal wife who became his Queen. Queen Victoria succeeded William and in 1840 she married Prince Albert. Their eldest son Edward was soon to acquire a taste for sexual adventure in Ireland. Edward who had, it was called Bertie by the way, had had a fall. It was called Bertie's fall when as a very young man of 19 in the carrer, so while serving the army, had found the camp prow in his bed placed there by his fellow officers and made sure to take its course. The parents learned of it and there was a hell of a to do about it. It was called Bertie's fall and he was never allowed to forget it. His marriage to the Royal Princess Alexandra of Denmark was meant to keep him out of trouble. She seemed the perfect choice. The fact about Alexandra that most attracted Queen Victoria and also Albert, who was alive when the marriage was arranged, was that she was just utterly beautiful. And they thought if the woman was beautiful he wouldn't stray. But the marriage with Alexandra, whom he had met, he declared himself in love. But that could have been just politic for him to do. It was definitely arranged to stop him from straying. And pretty well as soon as he got her home and pregnant, which he did very quickly, he was off. He had so many mistresses in the end, right to the time he died, that I think he lost count of them. Daisy the Countess of Warwick was one of Edward's particular favourites for many years. The actress Lily Langtry another. In those days a Princess of Wales was expected just to put up with her husband's philandering. By today's standards Alexandra showed remarkable tolerance. She was friends with a lot of them. She was not a particularly bright woman, but she was extremely gracious and forbearing and I think she loved him for all his straying. She made friends with these mistresses and, I mean, on his deathbed, she was the one who called his last mistress Mrs Alice Kettle to see him for the last time, which was a great magnanimity. By a peculiar quirk of fate, Alice Kettle's great-granddaughter is Camilla Parker Bowles, Prince Charles's mistress. History can repeat itself and Camilla is known to have played upon this fact. There was the famous moment when they first met back in the 70s when Camilla, the great-granddaughter of Alice Kettle, favourite mistress of his great-great-grandfather Edward VII, reminded Prince Charles of this fact and said, so how about it then? And that was how their relationship began and that's one of the aspects of Camilla that rather appeals to the man in the street who otherwise can't understand why on earth this man left Diana for this not so obviously attractive woman. Diana was everyone's idea of what a princess should be, but she was not prepared to hide the true state of her marriage, unlike Edward VII's wife. Alexandra belonged to a generation which sort of put up and shut up over the affairs of their husbands and after all, all Diana has had to put up with is one long-standing affair. In fact, he's been very faithful in his infidelity as Charles, hasn't he? Whereas Alexandra had to share her husband with a parade of women. Charles is a very different man from his great-great-grandfather. He likes painting and solitary pursuits. Charles is a serious man. He has intellectual interests that would never have occurred to Edward VII. Edward VII was a man who hardly ever read a book. He was a great king in the social sense and he was politically very astute, but he had no intellectual pretensions. In fact, after his education, he ran down his throat and out of his ears. He ran away from that sort of thing. I would say Charles is his own man. In contrast to Charles's German ancestry, Lady Diana Spencer brought with her a pure English bloodline. The Spencers of Orthrup have been wealthy landowners since the 16th century, with a history of faithful royal service going back generations. Rich and powerful, they've always been one of England's great noble families. I think the Spencer family, which of course is a much more British and much older and more traditionally British family than the Windsors, probably does carry in its genes the grit and determination and stubbornness that Diana has quite rightly shown in being the first princess of Wales in British history not to tolerate her husband having affairs. By standing up to the royal family, Diana earned respect from those who once wrote her off as just a pretty airhead. Once she stamped her foot on behalf of womankind, she became an icon praised by Camille Parlier and all feminists around the world. It's why she's become quite rightly an icon for feminism, whereas previously she was just some clothes peg famous because of who her husband was. But let's not forget she's the daughter of a hereditary earl. When Diana is accused of wanting to destroy the monarchy, it's total nonsense. She believes in the hereditary principle. She wants her son to be king. She doesn't necessarily want her husband to be king, but she wants her son to be king. One prince of Wales who was born to be king but never became one was David, the never crowned Edward VIII. After his abdication, it was left to his brother Albert to pick up the pieces. George V and Queen Mary were far from ideal parents, and David's austere upbringing probably contributed to his desertion of duty. He never had a mother who really was really what he wanted. Queen Mary was somewhat cold. She didn't like children, she didn't like childbirth, she didn't like pregnancy, and she didn't like what went before either. She did it all out of duty and it reflected in her relationships with her children. Her second son Albert, Duke of York, was a sickly child, always under the shadow of his more confident brother. His health never been good. When he was a child, he was born a year after the future Edward VIII, so they were in the nursery together, and their nurse was actually psychotic. It's a measure of the lack of care Queen Mary took that such a person ever got to be in charge of the two princes, and she neglected him for the his elder brother, whom she preferred. She didn't feed him properly, and she just didn't look after him properly, and he had ulcers and developed a stammer. That was probably because he was bullied by his father. He had every nervous sort of manifestation you can imagine. Queen Mary was a very forbidding figure. You just look at photographs of her, very shy, very reserved, and quite unable to talk about what was in her heart. You could not imagine a royal child climbing on her lap and giving her a great big hug. It just wasn't on. Psychologists would now recognise them as a dysfunctional family. They were terrified of their parents. I mean, they were emotionally repressed. I mean, they were frightened of their mothers, they were frightened of their fathers, and conversation was absolutely painful. It was terrible tension. There was no cheerful family banter. I mean, George V, if he was talking to his children, he would bark a series of challenging questions at them, and these poor little children were so frightened. They would cry, but they could never answer, and then he would get into terrible rage. Then there was the other brother, the Duke of Gloucester, known in the family as Glossy Pops, affectionately. He was so frightened of King George V that one morning he was a minute late for breakfast, but rather than face the wrath of his father, he fainted at his feet, and he was so frightened, and this was typical of all of them. Despite his unhappy childhood, David as Prince of Wales showed a self-confidence that made him immensely popular, but his private life was already unorthodox. The trouble with Edward VIII when Prince of Wales, and he was a very good Prince of Wales for a very long time, was that he had a penchant for unmarried women, and he had two mistresses, Mrs. Freda Dudley-Ward and Thelma Lady Furness, and it was mostly because of his attachment to Freda Dudley-Ward, who came first, when he was about 18, that she sort of kept him unmarried. It was difficult to prise him away from her in order to get it long enough for him to sort of even pay attention to anyone else. David on the had very different tastes in women to his shy brother Bertie on the right. There was some talk that he was going to marry Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, and you know who she came to be. I mean, they were horrified when this thing came out, and both strove to deny it very, very vigorously, particularly him. It isn't that she wasn't beautiful, or wasn't utterly beautiful, but she was just not his type, and nor was he hers, and actually the Duke of York, or rather Prince Albert, as he really was, was rather in the background, because he was shy and awkward, and you know, he stammered, and he didn't think he was good enough for her, and there's no reason to think that she thought the same way. There were all these other glamorous lads who got in the way. Eventually, because he was so persistent, he got to her, and she realised what a lovely person he was. It is with the greatest pleasure that the King and Queen announce the betrothal of their beloved son, the Duke of York, to the Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, daughter of the Earl and Countess of Strathmore. He had a terrible temper, inherited from his father, made worse by the fact that he had the stammer, by the fact that he was so shy, so nervous, so in a way unresolved. This made his temper very short. He had a terrible temper, really kind of shouting temper. When the pressures of being the Duke of York upset him, Elizabeth could always calm him. If something went slightly wrong, he would get absolutely furious, and she would just take his wrist and say, now Bertie, quietly, tick, tick, tick, and just sort of as if taking his pulse would calm him, and it used to work miraculously. Meanwhile, the Prince of Wales had fallen deeply in love with the twice-married Wallis Simpson. She fascinated him. One thing, being an American, she wasn't really in awe of the King as much as a British woman would have been. She spoke her mind. She was a woman, a very confident woman of the world. She spoke to him as an equal. She wasn't as deferential as most people were, certainly all those Debs that he met here were terrified of him. He didn't ever like young, unmarried girls. All his mistresses were women with husbands. That's what he liked, a confident woman, a bossy woman, a woman who knew her way around in the world, and the Duchess of Windsor. Wallis Simpson was a supreme bossy woman all their life. She simply bossed him. She's a woman who had two husbands living and very self-confident, and this, I think, is what appealed to him more than anything. In 1936, David became King Edward VIII and ascended the throne briefly before abdicating in order to marry the now-divorced Wallis Simpson. The wedding had to take place in France, away from a shop to Britain. They all hated her. They thought that she had, you know, she had stolen the king. She had made him lose his crown. They all thought she was a terrible adventurist. They all thought she was simply after the position, and what they all thought was that once she had got him, once she had married him and wasn't the queen, that she would ditch him as she had ditched two other husbands. They assumed she was simply an adventurist who was after the throne, and once she didn't get it, that she would clear off. In fact, that didn't happen, but that is why they thought she was just a good-time girl, is what they thought she was. David's abdication was a terrible blow to his stammering, uncertain brother. Next in line of succession, Bertie had no choice but to be crowned King George VI in 1937. He'd had no training and was totally unprepared for the role. This very nervous, very diffident, very insecure kind of man with no public presence whatsoever, and suddenly overnight, and literally overnight, he had to become the King of England, and he really was very, very shaken by this. He burst into tears. He sat on the sofa with Queen Mary in floods of tears because he simply couldn't face the prospect, and he simply had to do it. There was no way out of it. Somehow, he had to make the best of it and restore Britain's faith in its monarchy. He made a very shaky start, and to begin with, things looked bleak. Certainly in the early days, really, until the war broke out, which in a way consolidated his position, because he was admired greatly here in the Queen for staying in England and for everything they did. But he had to be very worried because his brother had this wonderful kind of crowd-pleasing ability. He could enthuse the crowds. He was extremely popular, very good with people, very good with small talk. All the things which the new King, King George VI, simply had no talent for that kind of public life whatsoever. So really, he didn't mind the fact that his very popular brother had gone, leaving this rather diffident, this rather colorless man in his place. He felt that very much. David and Wallace, now the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, were never welcomed back to Britain. They lived in exile in Paris. One reason he didn't come back was because of tax. He went to live in France because there was a range of the area whereby he didn't pay tax. He did think he might live in the States at one stage, but he'd have to pay tax there, so he wouldn't live there. But no, the main reason he didn't come back to this country is because George VI and Queen Elizabeth didn't want him here. They didn't want him to come back and live here as a kind of rival to the King and Queen, so they never really ever wanted him to come and live here. They were quite happy if he lived anywhere except in Britain. They also refused to grant Wallace the title Her Royal Highness. He thought that she was absolutely worthier, but he thought that this was the least he could do. If he couldn't make her Queen, and he was determined at one stage that she would be Queen, and she was determined to be Queen, the least that he could do for her was to make her a Royal Highness, and this is what he spent really his whole life battling for. This is the one supreme battle of his life. More important than anything was to make her a Royal Highness in a battle, of course, which he never won. Following the end of the war, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth set sail with their two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret, for an official visit to South Africa in 1947. This was their first time away from the pressures of wartime Britain, and the world was able to see just how relaxed and united they were as a family. Queen Mother, as she is today, had come herself from a very warm, loving family, from the Bowes-Lyon family, and so she created a very happy atmosphere for her children, Princess Elizabeth, Princess Margaret. She also knew that her beloved Bertie had had such an unhappy childhood. She was determined to create the right kind of atmosphere, and even when he became King after the abdication, and they moved to the palace, she tried very hard there to create a good, warm atmosphere, and would run down to the palace kitchens and make scones for Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth. But Elizabeth had had to grow up in the knowledge that she would eventually succeed her father as monarch. At 21, she made the most important statement of her life. It was in South Africa in 1947, the only tour she made with her father and mother and her sister, that she dedicated her entire life on her 21st birthday to serving the Commonwealth and this country, the United Kingdom. I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and to the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong. God help me to make good my vow, and God bless all of you who are willing to share in it. On her return from South Africa, it was with delight that the country learned of her engagement to Lieutenant Mountbatten. As heir is presumptive to the throne, her choice of a husband was obviously a matter of intimate concern to every one of her father's subjects. With quick perception, the public realized that she had made a worthy choice. She met him when she was 13 years old. He was a young man of, let's see, he must have been about 18, very good looking like all the Mountbattens, and she fell for him. They became quite friendly and he, in an elder-brotherly way, used to write to her. Now it's not every sort of 18, 19-year-old young man in the navy who writes to 13, 14-year-old girls, so there was obviously a liking there from the start. They definitely chose each other back. It was definitely a love match. Elizabeth and Philip were married in November 1947. After the dark days of the war, it was an event that lifted the nation and huge crowds wished their future queen well. At the glittering wedding ceremony in Westminster Abbey, everyone had great hopes for this fortuitous love match between the House of Windsor and the Greek royal family. As a royal prince, there was every confidence that Philip would make an admirable consort. But few guessed how soon his new wife would have to take on the duties of a monarch. The pressures of having to lead Britain during the long war years had taken their toll on her father. By 1952, he was too ill to travel and Elizabeth had to leave for an official tour on his behalf. She said farewell to him for the last time. Within a few days, he was dead at only 56 years old and the nation mourned. I mean, the last four kings of England were killed by striking, and he was one of them. But he was a likely candidate for an early death. Then there was the shock of the abdication, which he greeted in floods of tears because he'd never been prepared for it, never expected it, and wasn't suited to it. And then came the war, which was a tremendous strain. And if you look at a picture of King George VI in 1939, even in his early 40s, he was young, he was handsome, he was outstanding, he had all his hair and all that. And at the end, he was 49, he was drawn, he was tired, he was obviously completely played out. It ruined him. I think actually the Second World War did for him far more than the abdication did. His daughter was crowned Elizabeth II in June 1953, the first coronation to be televised. Millions of people all over the world witnessed the start of what was hailed as the new Elizabethan age. There was a feeling of great hope and expectation. At only 27, it was a huge responsibility for the new queen to take on. But in Philip, she had a strong, supportive consort. I don't think she could have chosen better, apart from the fact that he had a very fine role in his own right. He was exactly the sort of character that she needed behind her as queen. Strong, he was manly, he was strict when he needed to be. I think it was a very, very suitable match, and it came about through their own personal choice. In public terms, I think Prince Philip's been an excellent consort to the queen. You could almost compare him with Dennis Thatcher and Margaret. It's very difficult for a forthright man of strong views to surrender his identity to his wife, to walk one pace behind her and so on. He's had constant difficulties with that, but he may have put the odd foot wrong, made the odd inappropriate remark. But beyond that, he's done extremely well. But royal life can be boring for those on the sidelines, and without a job of his own, Philip's attention has strayed, and he sought other women's company. I think what is extraordinary is the way that all the rumours about his private life that one hears if one moves in these circles have never become public. Kitty Kelly is famously writing a book about him at the moment that may alter all that. But one of the questions I'm constantly asked is, how has Philip got away from it, with it all these years? And until a few years ago, to attack Philip would have been to attack the queen, so he was order combat. He was beyond the pale. I think that may be coming to an end now, and I suspect the next few years may hold some difficulties for Philip, in which he might choose, quite rightly, to reach for his lawyers. In the early days of Elizabeth's reign, it was her sister Margaret who was getting all the attention. She was the royal everyone wanted to see. In a way, she was a kind of star. She really, in her day, had the sort of star quality which Diana has now. She used to dress very well, she looked lovely in her day, Princess Margaret, and she was that kind of princess who could really bring something out in the crowds in the way that Diana can. It's a kind of quality, a kind of personal magnetism which some of them have got, that some of them acquire, and in a way, yes, Princess Margaret was the Diana of her day, and was very much the star of the royal family in the 1950s especially. Always a great supporter of the arts, perhaps in a different life, Margaret might have become an actress herself. As a royal princess, she often stole the limelight from famous film stars, and the press were fascinated by how she naturally took centre stage. Princess Margaret's problem in the 50s was that she was so stunningly beautiful. She was regarded as the royal family's equivalent of Elizabeth Taylor, and she was so beautiful. She was a fairy tale princess in every sense of the world, in those wonderful heart and all gowns she wore. But her glamorous public appearances hid a private tragedy. In her early 20s, she'd fallen deeply in love with her father's unhappily married equerry, Captain Peter Townsend. She lost the man she loved, and it ruined her, because she was afterwards unable to make a relationship with anybody else. It's difficult to know, actually, who would satisfy Princess Margaret. Someone much stronger than herself, and that would have been a real, real beefy man, because she's a very strong, outward-going character, very talented. People expected her to live happily ever after, a fantasy life. That's not the way it is in the real world. She was seen with what was regarded as unsuitable men, created a lot of scandal, caused a lot of discussion in the House of Commons. People thought she should be stripped of all her privileges and her civilist allowance. Everybody's forgotten about that now, and I think that it's just as well they have, because she sacrificed a great deal to stay in the royal family and do her duty, and it's about time we all recognised that. In 1960, she married a commoner, the well-connected society photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, but it was a marriage destined to end in divorce. I think she's probably not an easy woman to live with. She was used to, she's a princess, king's daughter, very imperious, used to getting her own way. Armstrong-Jones wasn't prepared to do this, I don't think. He wanted his own career, quite rightly. Margaret was a difficult person. One hears there were various extramarital interests. So, in a way, it was a very difficult situation. I think it was inevitable that she would break up, really. 35 years later, Margaret has never remarried. She's a woman alone. The year these pictures were taken, her first love, Peter Townsend, died in France. Back in the 50s, his divorce status was an insurmountable barrier to his marrying a Queen's sister. Today, the love match would no doubt have been allowed. Tragically, Margaret was young at the wrong time. Unable to find someone to take Townsend's place, she casts a lonely shadow over the royal family. She never really seems at ease in her position in the world. I think she's never really accustomed herself to how a princess fits into modern life. It seems to have been impossible for Margaret ever to find happiness again, because any man who takes on marrying a royal princess is taking on a hell of a lot. He's giving up. He's saying goodbye to his private life. He's really as much a prisoner as his wife is. And so it could be that we may see, in 30 years' time, Diana living in exactly the same position that Princess Margaret's in today. Another princess destined to have a royal marriage without a happy ending was Queen Elizabeth's only daughter, Anne. Her wedding in 1973 was greeted with optimism. A world-class horsewoman, Anne had chosen a fellow enthusiast, Captain Mark Phillips. With a great deal in common, their future together looked full of hope. They fell in love and wanted to get married. They were both interested in horses, which is a great interest. They're both extremely good at horsemanship. But I just simply don't think he was up to it. It's not easy for a man to be married to a woman whose family is much more important than his own, whose income is much bigger than his own, whose profile is enormously higher than his own. This is the problem for current royals. Because of the demise of so many other royal families, or the lack of respectability that some of them have suffered, it's very difficult for them to find anyone suitable to marry who's got a comparable status to theirs. She is rather full of herself. She is very like her father, Prince Philip. And she has not endeared herself to the nation. She's done some very good work, so there is no doubt of that. But that's her job, basically. She gets paid for it, and she gets a very nice car to drive her around, and a wonderful wardrobe of clothes. She lives in a fabulous house, and although she's got a tiny flat in Dolphin Square, she never goes there. She lives the life of Riley, and we would expect her to do the things that she does. While press attention was on her brother Charles's marital problems, Anne divorced and swiftly remarried her lover, Commander Tim Lawrence, a royal equerry. The wedding ceremony was modest and discreet at Crathie Church on the Balmoral Estate in Scotland. Members of the royal family, including the Queen, were on hand to give this new liaison their blessing. Again, Anne had got her own way with very little press criticism. The divorce of Princess Anne, Princess Royal, from Mark Phillips barely caused a ripple in the royal scene, and didn't dent her image one little bit. She just carried on as if nothing had happened. The palace went out of its way to say, when there was a separation, a, that there were no plans for divorce, which we knew was absolute rubbish, because they were, they knew, Mark and Anne both knew, when they got separated, that they were going to be divorced within two years, and when they were divorced, they, the palace then said there was no third party involved, and we all knew that at that time she had a friendship with Tim Lawrence, because letters written by him to her and her to him had been, had been stolen by somebody, presumably in the palace, and had been made public. Tim Lawrence is not known for his horsemanship, and on the face of it, has very little in common with his wife. Tim Lawrence is quite extraordinary in that he comes from a background which couldn't be further removed from Princess Anne's. I mean, if you try, he comes from a working-class background. Strangely enough, since he's been in the royal family, he's become even more royal than the royals, and indistinguishable from any of them. He looks like them, he dresses like them, and he even talks like them, and as somebody unkindly said to me a few days ago back in the palace, he's taken on this air of assumed aristocracy. Anne is a matrimonial pioneer, the first member of the royal family to ever divorce and remarry. As Tim Lawrence appears to be fitting seamlessly into his new position as royal husband, the signs are good she'll be luckier a second time around. Queen Elizabeth's second son, Andrew, married another commoner, Sarah Ferguson, in 1986. This wedding day had an exuberant atmosphere new to royal occasions. Guests and family seemed unusually lively to match the character of the new bride, and the overall mood was relaxed and informal, despite the inevitable pomp and ceremony. Even the queen entered into the spirit of things, obviously happy that her favourite son had finally met his match in the spirited redhead the press had nicknamed Fergie. This was one girl who could keep her playboy son in check. The reigning monarch never looked happier. Diana too appeared to be enjoying the acceptance of someone her own age into the royal family. Here finally was an ally to help loosen up the stuffy traditions of the Windsors. But would Sarah last the course, and were she and Andrew really suited? With hindsight they were a disaster in the making. I think the very ill-matched pair. I mean there are some people that you simply should not marry each other. She was a hot potato. I think Andrew wanted somebody more like Dusty Gloucester, quiet, not a great personality, nice woman, not a sort of tornado like Sarah Ferguson. I think he was, I don't think he knew what he was getting himself into. She had, because she had a broken romance herself, was probably at a low ebb and perhaps looked a bit more vulnerable than she later turned out to be. But Andrew is not an easy person himself. Spoiled and naturally arrogant like his father, he can be unpredictable with sudden changes of mood. He's been described as as boorish and educated and other people say that he's remarkably sensitive. I know people who have worked with him and for him and they said he can be a bit like his father, give you a real dressing down for no apparent reason, and the next moment he can be so thoughtful, so completely and absolutely thoughtful. He's not, I understand, a very cerebral man. He's not one of the deep thinkers of this world. But the very fact that he's qualified as a helicopter pilot, he's now commanding his own ship, HMS Cottesmore, leads one to believe that he does possess a rare amount of intelligence. From the start, Sarah didn't see much of her husband and this caused problems. I believe that if Andrew hadn't gone away to a Navy college just days after they married, leaving Fergie alone and rather depressed at Buckingham Palace in the early days of their marriage, they may have worked something out. But the combination of living in that great mausoleum that we call Buckingham Palace, this constant spotlight, constant publicity, the endless criticism, not just from courtiers but also from the media, wore Fergie down to such an extent that when she wanted the man in her life to be by her side, he was either away at sea or on a Navy course. Sarah turned to other men for company and support. This was soon picked up by the press and made banner headlines. I think she has always needed the presence of a powerful male figure in her life. For a long time that was her father and it has been replaced by a string of men who tended to be older and manipulative. The final straw was when photographs of Sarah with her financial advisor Johnny Bryan exposed the real intimate nature of their relationship. It made worldwide front page news, as although Buckingham Palace had announced that Andrew and Sarah were to separate six months before, no plans for divorce had been mentioned and they were still officially married. Her blatant disregard for her marriage vows shook the very foundations of respect that supports the monarchy. Sarah was at Balmoral when the photographs hit the nation's breakfast tables. It was left to Johnny, a Texan businessman based in London, to face the press. At this point he was keeping his story to himself, but his insider knowledge would fetch a high price if he ever decided to do a kiss and tell expose. A dangerously loose canon who has now been declared bankrupt in Germany, he could blow a very large hole in the royal family's traditional armour of privacy and discretion. The difficulty with John Bryan is that he is American, he is not tied into our royal family or the way that we perceive our royal family and sooner or later if the relationship fails we can see him in America selling his story and it's not just the story about him and the Duchess of York, he knows about the relationship with between the Prince of Wales and the Princess of Wales, he knows about the Queen, he knows about Prince Philip, he knows everything and if he decided to tell his story that is the most extraordinary time bomb. Fergie and John Bryan have entered into some kind of devil's contract which neither of them can get out of, but if it continues in the way that it has been going on it could ultimately bring down the House of Windsor because sooner or later Fergie will have to distance herself from John Bryan, his business activities do not bear close scrutiny and he has created enemies wherever he's gone, he's a bully, he's an uncomfortable figure to be around, but basically he knows where the bodies are buried. Despite his wife's behaviour the Duke of York didn't want a divorce, for four years he attempted a reconciliation. Prince Andrew did not want to let his wife go and he tried to woo her back again and they maintained a very friendly relationship because they are good friends as well as for the sake of their children, now this was not the case with the Waleses who were definitely, there was a war of the Waleses and there was a lot of sniping at each other from their deeply entrenched positions. The exposure in 1992 of the true breakdown in the Waleses' marriage came as no great surprise but its constitutional importance required the Prime Minister John Major to address Parliament. It is announced from Buckingham Palace that with regret the Prince and Princess of Wales have decided to separate, their Royal Highnesses have no plans to divorce and their constitutional positions are unaffected. This decision has been reached amicably and they will boast to continue to participate fully in the upbringing of their children. The carefully built image of monarchy as an example of family values and stability has been severely dented. There is not one significant marriage which has survived the Princess Margaret's marriage ended in divorce, Princess Anne's ended in divorce, Duke and Duchess of York, Prince and Princess of Wales, so there's something about the Royal family and the way that they behave towards outsiders which is very questionable at the same time it's very difficult for an outsider to cope with life in the goldfish bowl of Buckingham Palace. Diana may have been divorced from Charles but she was never able to escape being hounded by the press, they were always on the hunt for any sign that she'd found another man, it was a constant pressure. One of the main problems for the younger generation of Royals now moving towards middle age is that they're the first ones to conduct life the way they want to in the age of the mass media, the inquiring media, photo lenses coming through windows and so on. If you look back to previous generations Edward VII who is now well known to have had a string of mistresses, Mrs Keppel, Lily Langtry etc and a wife who looked the other way. There may have been rumours around the nation about the King's or the Prince of Wales's behaviour but it wasn't in the newspapers every day. Edward VIII who became Duke of Windsor and was briefly Edward VIII after being Prince of Wales talks in his memoirs he's the only King of England ever to have written his memoirs about artists with sketch pads jumping out from behind trees as he's walking through the park and complains about this. What he would say about the paparazzi, I suppose that was the 30s equivalent, I've no idea but that obviously is the problem that the monarchy has moulded itself into the first family of the land, a paragon of Christian virtue, a paragon of family life and when that has self-evidently collapsed as it has over the last five years, three out of three of the Queen's children's marriages have collapsed, the fourth as yet has not got married, then the monarchy is robbed of its reason for being there. If family marriage problems weren't enough 1992 saw the Windsor's ancestral home burst into flames. It seemed a fitting symbol for an afflicted monarchy apparently self-destructing in its scandals and marriage breakdowns. Was this a sign that an ancient dynasty was coming to an end? The Queen broke the habit of a lifetime by openly sharing her feelings with her subjects. 1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents it has turned out to be an annus horribilis. But within three years the monarchy seemed to be projecting a more confident image. For the 50th anniversary of VE Day the focus was on family continuity with the Queen in forthright red. She's devoted her entire life to repairing the damage done by the abdication in 1936 and her father tried to do the same but because his reign was so short it was left to his daughter to really do the major work and she's successfully done that. Everything was going fine until the mid 80s. This balcony appearance emphasised that strong women are still at the helm of the royal family. Queen Mother and the Queen and Princess Margaret represented the wartime generation that was fair enough but I think there was only more in it. I think they didn't want to clutter up that balcony with all the other members of the family who've been rather less than well behaved. I think they wanted back to the time during the war and even after when the royal family were greatly admired and they were greatly esteemed by the public and this in a way was a little image, a little public image of the royal family in happier days. They want to leave the public with this impression. A new royal wedding this time between Princess Margaret's son Viscount Linley and Serena Stanhope. As the royal family gathered at Westminster Abbey there was hope yet again that this time the marriage of a royal to a commoner might work. Even as an estranged divorced wife Diana wasn't banished from royal occasions. Diana's life was like a melodrama. She was the girl who seemed to have everything except the one thing that would make it perfect. Someone to share it with. Diana's brief romance with Dodi Fayed was cut short with her tragic death in the summer of 1997. Prior to that relationship there were many men who were willing to take her under their arm but Diana was always aware that any man she would fall in love with could eventually become stepfather to a future king. Diana's divorce settlement had to reflect the nation's love and esteem for her. Prince Charles's lawyers pleaded poverty and let it be known that he would offer a sum in the region of four million pounds. In the event a settlement of fifteen million pounds was agreed yielding an annual income of about one hundred thousand pounds. Not a huge sum bearing in mind her lost royal status. Following her divorce and loss of the title her royal highness Diana withdrew from mainstream public duties and resigned as patron of more than a hundred charities. Her interest and loving care was a loss to the nation. Right up until her death Diana remained in touch with her good causes and continued as patron of five of her principal charities including the Royal Marsden and the Great Ormond Street Hospitals, the Leprosy Mission and the National AIDS Trust. Although partially in exile as she waited for her financial settlement and divorce arrangements to be finalized the public's adoration made up for much of the sadness and loneliness in her personal life. During her marriage Diana was starved of love, romance and affection to such a degree that many of her friends felt that after her separation she would fall for the first hussar who swept her off her feet. On royal occasions she handled her unique situation as the ex-wife of the heir to the throne with dignity. The royal family particularly the queen was pleased with the she handled her difficult role. There were one or two mistakes which were not always Diana's fault but she always behaved with great maturity and handled the shared custody of her two children well especially at Christmas and Easter when the queen wished them to be seen with the royal family. Above all for Diana the happiness of her children was paramount in all she did. Her search for a suitable partner filled thousands of column inches in newspapers and magazines around the world. Mr Wonderful had to fit the dream of most women. He had to be Mr Right, Sir Right and Lord Right with the background and the financial support to keep Diana in the style to which she and her adoring public were accustomed. Always ready with a smile Diana continued with her most treasured charity work for the underprivileged, those less fortunate, the have-nots. Their warmth and understanding kept her going at even the bleakest moments. Your kindness and affection has carried me through some of the most difficult periods and always your love and care has eased that journey and for that I thank you from the bottom of my heart.