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

[Music] 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 [Music] [Music] 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 [Music] [Music] [Music] 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 two hundred years before another Princess of Wales Caroline of Brunswick had fallen out with her husband later to become George the fourth there were all those outrageous Hanoverians who I mean sin was on the menu every day for them I think is everything they were in debt there was even the suggestion of incest amongst two children of Georgia third that is Queen Victoria's grandfather and they had illegitimate children by the Dozen one of them the future will in the fourth that she had tended 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 Bertus fall when as a very young man of 19 in the Cara and so are serving the army had found the camp prior in his bed placed there by his fellow officers and nature took its course the parents learnt of it and there was a hell of a to do about it it was called Bertus for 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 Alexander the most attracted Queen Victoria and also Albert he was alive when the marriage was arranged was it she was just utterly beautiful and they thought if the woman was beautiful he wouldn't stray but the marriage of with Alexandra whom he had met he declared himself in love but that could have been just politic yeah for him to do what's definitely arranged to stop him from straying and pretty well as soon as he got our home and pregnant which he did very quickly he was off and he had so many mistresses in the end right to the time he died that I think Daisy the Countess of Warwick was one of Edwards particular favorites for many years the actress Lillie 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 string she made friends with these mistresses and I mean Natalie on his deathbed she was the one who called his last mistress mrs. Alice careful to see him for the last time which was a great magnanimity by a peculiar quirk of fate Alice Kapil'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 seventies when Camilla the great-granddaughter of Alice Keppel favorite mistress of his great-great-grandfather Edward the seventh said to 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 the seventh wife Alexander belonged to a generation which sort of put up and shut up over the affairs of their husbands and after all the war diana has had to put up with is one long long-standing affair in fact he's been very faithful in his infidelity has Charles hasn't he whereas Alexandra had 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's um there's intellectual interest that would never have occurred to erect the seventh when Edward the seventh 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 was he been rammed 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 his German ancestry Lady Diana Spencer brought with her a pure English bloodline the Spencer's of ORAC 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 the 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 Polly air 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 the eighth after his abdication it was left to his brother Albert to pick up the pieces George the fifth and Queen Mary were far from ideal parents and David's austere upbringing probably contributed to his desertion of duty you never had a mother who really was really what he wanted the 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 if 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 came he was born a year after the future Edward the eighth 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 princess and she neglected him for the sake of her elder brother he's elder brother whom she preferred she didn't feed him properly I just didn't look after him properly and he had ulcers and they 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 they shy very reserved and quite unable to talk about what was in her heart you cannot imagine a royal child climbing on her lap and giving her a great big hug it just wasn't on psychologists would now recognize 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 with most terrible tension there's no cheerful family banter and I mean George v if he was talking to children he would bark a series of challenging questions at them and these bulletins Schiller was so frightened you know they would cry but they could never answer and then he would get into a terrible rage and then there was the other brother the Duke of Gloucester known in the family as glossy pops affectionately where he was so frightened of King George the fifth 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 you know so frightened was he 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 the eighth when Prince of Wales and he was a very good Prince of Wales for very long time was it he had a penchant for married women and he had two mistresses mrs. freedom war Dudley Ward and Thelma lady furnace and it was mostly because of his attachment to Freda Dudley Ward who came first when he was about eighteen that she sort of kept him unmarried it was difficult to prise her him away from her you know long enough for him to sort of even pay attention to anyone else David on the Left had very different tastes in women - his shy brother Bertie on the right there was some talk that he was gonna marry Elizabeth bowes-lyon and you know who she came to be I mean they were horrified when this thing came out and both Stroeve did tonight very very vigorously particularly him it isn't that she wasn't beautiful was utterly beautiful but she was just not his time and nor was he hers and actually the Duke of York or other Prince Albert says he really was was rather in the background because he was shy and awkward and you know he is stammered Indy 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 realized what a lovely person he was it is the greatest pleasure that the king and queen announced the betrothal of their beloved son the Duke of York to the lady Elizabeth bowes-lyon daughter of the Earl and Countess of speckler 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 stri so nervous so in a way unresolved this made his temper very short he's 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 one is Simpson she fascinated him for one thing being an American she wasn't really in awe of the King as much to say as a British woman who would have been she spoke her mind she was a woman of very confident woman of the world she spoke him as an equal she was as deferential as most people were certainly all those the implicit he made here with terrified of him didn't ever like young unmarried girls that grab all his mistresses were women with husband's that was he like a confident woman a bossy woman a woman who knew her way around in the world and the duchess of windsor wonder since there 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 a Z in 1936 David became King Edward the eighth 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 shocked Britain hated to they thought that she had you know she had sowed in the king she had made him lose his crown they all thought she was terrible adventurous they all forces simply after the position and what they all thought was at once she had got him one she had married him and wasn't the queen that she would ditch him as she ditched two other husbands they assumed she was simply an adventurous who's after the throne and why she didn't get it that she would care off if that fact didn't happen but that is why they thought you just really a goodtime 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 the sixth in 1937 he'd had no training and was totally unprepared for the role it's very nervous very difficult very insecure Khan in there with no public presence whatsoever and suddenly overnight - 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 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 set in the early days really untold the war broke out which in a way consolidated his position because he was admired greatly in the Queen for staying in England and for everything they did but yes we very well because his brother had this wonderful kind of crowd-pleasing ability he could infuse the crowds with extremely popular very good with people very good with small talk all the things which the new king in Georgia six simply had no talent for it no talent for that kind of public life whatsoever so rarely he did mind the fact that that does very popular brother had gone leaving this rather diffident this rather colorless man in his place he 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 you didn't come back was because of tax he went to live in France because there was a range of the Arab I didn't pay taxes he didn't think he might have in the States at one stage but you have to pay tax there they wouldn't have there but no the main reason didn't come back to this country is it because Georgia 16 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 worthy of it he thought this 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 was to make her royal highness and this is what he spent rarely his whole life battling for this is the one supreme battle of his life more important than anything was to make her Royal Highness the better of course which he never won [Music] following the end of the war King George the sixth 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 [Music] Queen Mother she is today had come herself from a very warm loving family from the 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 Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth but Elizabeth had had to grow up in the knowledge that she would eventually succeed her father as monarch a.21 she made the most important statement of her life it was in South Africa in 1947 the the the only tour she made with her father and mother and her sister that she dedicated to her entire life on her 21st birthday to serving the Commonwealth and this country the United Kingdom 8307 and to the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong God helps me to make good my vow on her return from South Africa it was with delight that the country learned of her engagement to leftenant 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 [Music] she met him when she was 13 years old he was in the he was a young man of he must have been only about 18 very good-looking like all the Mountbatten's and she fell for him they became friendly in the Henan of the brotherly way I used to write to her no 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 that 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 Phillip would make an admirable consort but few guests 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 when the last four kings of England killed by smoking he was one of them but he was a likely candidate for an early death then there was a shock of the application which he greeted him floods of tears because he'd never been prepared for it never expected it him wasn't suited to it and then came the war which was a tremendous strain and if you talk at a picture of King George the sixth in 1939 even in his early forties he was young his handsome top standing at all his hair and all that and at the end he was at forty nine he was drawn he was tired it was obviously completely played out it ruined him I think actually the Second World War did for him form the abdication did his daughter was crowned Elizabeth the second 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 very fine royal lineage 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 mat and it came about through their per own personal choice in public terms I think Prince Philip's been an excellent consort of the Queen you could almost compare him with Denis 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 an 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 Philips attention has strayed and he sought other women's company I think what is extraordinary is the way that all the rumors 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 his house 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 or dicamba 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 press attention she was the Royal everyone wanted to see in the way she was a kind of star she really in her day had the sort of star quality which Donna has now she I'm used to dress very well she looked lovely in her day for instance Margaret and she was that kind of princess who could could could really bring something art in the crowds in the way the Diana can is 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 was Mars was a Don 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 margarett 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 center 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 fairytale princess in every sense of the world in those wonderful Hartnell 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 equity 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 Civil List 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 recognize 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 a 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 extra malice extramarital interests so in a way it was a very difficult situation I think it was inevitable that she should 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 [Music] 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 custom herself to how a princess fits into modern life it seems to have been impossible for market 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 his saying goodbye to his private life he is really as much a prisoner as his wife is and so it could be that we may see in 30 years time the dialer living in exactly the same position that Princess Margaret's him today another princess destined to have a royal marriage without a happy ending was Queen Elizabeth's only daughter and her wedding in 1973 was greeted with optimism a world-class horse woman and had chosen a fellow enthusiast captain Mark Phillips with a great deal in common their future together looked full of hope they fell in lava wants to get married they were both interested in horses which is a great interest they're both extremely good at horsemanship but yeah I don't 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 enormous ly 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 but there who's got comparable status to theirs she is rather full of herself she is very like her father Prince Philip but and she has not endeared herself to the nation she's done some very good works 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 around and a wonderful wardrobe of clothes she lives in a fabulous house and has got and although she's got a tiny flat in dolphin's squares you know 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 charges marital problems and divorced and swiftly remarried her lover commander Tim Lawrence a royal aquarii the wedding ceremony was modest and discreet at Crotty 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 an had got her own way with very little press criticism the divorce of princess and 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 between you was absolute rubbish because they were they knew mark and and 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 in it and it be 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 is quite extraordinary in that he comes from a background which couldn't be further removed from Princess Anne's I mean if he tried he comes from a working-class background strangely enough since he's been in the royal family has become even more royal than the Royals and indistinguishable from any of them he looks like them he dresses like them even talks like them and as somebody unkindly said to me a few days ago back in Palace he has taken on this heir of assumed aristocracy an 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 lucky a second time around queen elizabeth ii 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 favorite son had finally met his match in the spirited redhead the press have nicknamed Fergie this was one girl who could keep her playboy son in check the reigning monarch never looked happier dianna to 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 a real matched pair let me now some people that simply should not marry each other she was a hot potato I think Andrew wanted somebody more like Dustin Gloucester quiet not a great personality nice woman not a sort of tornado like Sarah Ferguson I be was I didn't know what he was getting himself into she because she added had a broken romance herself was probably a below ed and perhaps looks a bit more vulnerable 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 uneducated 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 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 and he's now commanding his own ship HMS Coty's more leads one to believe that he does possess a rare amount of intelligence from the start Sara didn't see much of her husband and this caused problems I believe that if Andrew hadn't gone away to a Navy College in just days after they married leaving Fergie alone and rather depressed its buckingham palace in the early days of their marriage they may have work 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 war Ferg you 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 adviser 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 two separates 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 cannon who has now been declared bankrupt in Germany he could blow a very large hole in the royal family's traditional armor 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 bond Fergie and John Bryan have entered into some kind of devils contract which neither and can get out of but if it continues in the way that is has been going on 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 is gone he's a bully he's a uncomfortable figure to be around but basically knows where the bodies are buried despite his wife's behavior 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 Wales's who were definitely there was a war of the Wales's 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 Wales's 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 to nicob Lee and they will both 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 royal family Princess Margaret's marriage ended in divorce Princess Anne's ended in divorce Duke and Duchess of your principal notice 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 dianna 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 generation said with the seventh 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 rumors around the nation about the Kings or the Prince of Wales's behavior but it wasn't in the newspapers every day Edward the eighth who became Duke of Windsor was briefly Edward the eighth after being Prince of Wales talks and his memoirs is 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 thirties equivalent I have 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 robbed the monarchy is robbed of its reason for being there if family marriage problems weren't enough 1992 saw the Windsors ancestral home burst into flames it seemed the 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 most 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 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 successfully done that everything was going fine until the mid 80s this balcony appearance emphasized that strong women are still at the helm of the royal family Queen Mother and the Queen and Princess Margaret represented the wartime generation never fair enough but I think it 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'd been rather bless the world behave really I think I wanted back to the time during the war and even after when the royal family were great admired when their greatly esteemed by the public and this in a way was a little image and it's a 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 Sun Viscount lynly 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 [Music] 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 [Music] Dianna'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 4 million pounds in the event a settlement of 15 million pounds was agreed yielding an annual income of about 100,000 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 user 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 way 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 [Music] always ready with a smile Diana continued with her most treasured charity work for the underprivileged those less fortunate to have nots their warmth and understanding kept her going and even the bleakest moments [Music] 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 [Music] [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 346,789

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, the crown, the crown season 3, the crown trailer, the crown princess, the crown season 3 trailer, princess diana, royal wedding, meghan markle, british royal family, prince harry, royal family, prince charles, queen elizabeth, royal family documentary

Id: BtiZgod1wsM

Length: 49min 25sec (2965 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 15 2019