This One Room Hinted At Charles And Diana Marriage Troubles Even From The Start

The marriage of Princess Diana and Prince Charles was notoriously miserable and rife with conflict. The aftermath of a supposed “battle royal” right after their honeymoon proved that they were unhappy with each other from the start.

In a special issue of their Weekend magazine, the Daily Mail published an oral history of the late princess’s life from those who knew her well. One of them, the late former Conservative MP Winston Churchill, once talked about how the room that Diana and Charles stayed in on their return from their honeymoon was trashed after a “battle royal.”

Diana and Churchill, a grandson of Sir Winston Churchill, were both members of the aristocratic Spencer family. According to the late politician, within a month of the royals’ wedding, Diana’s father, Johnnie Spencer, invited him to come and have lunch at Althorp, the Spencer family home. Spencer reportedly wanted him to see the estate’s private apartments.

Churchill said that after they had lunch, Diana’s father wanted to show him the guest room that he had fixed up for Charles and Diana to stay in. He recounted that the room had new green silk wallpaper and a four-poster bed that had been completely redone. Spencer reportedly opened the door and told Churchill that the room was “a bit of a shambles.”

“And clearly there had been a battle royal: there were water stains on the green silk wallpaper; there was a Chippendale chair that was broken; there was a mirror cracked,” he said.

According to Churchill, he and his wife didn’t think much of it, deciding that it was no more than a lover’s tiff. But years later, he said that he realized that it was a sign that the “marital discord” between Diana and Charles had begun right from the beginning. He said that he suspected that the trouble began before they were even married.

“This seemed to drive her ballistic, and from that moment everything went downhill rapidly,” Churchill said.

In the documentary “Diana: In Her Own Words,” Diana talked about how throughout their honeymoon Charles had worn a gift that Camilla had given him. According to Reader’s Digest, the late princess said it was cufflinks that had two interlocking Cs, and she knew exactly what they stood for.