That's not exactly how The Crown depicts things. That relationship didn't last long, mainly because Sarah gave a magazine interview in which she said she didn't love Charles and wouldn't marry him 'whether he were the dustman or the King of England.” But it was also Sarah who introduced Diana to Charles, leading her to declare herself 'Cupid' after the couple's engagement years later. Their first meeting as adults came in 1977, when Charles was dating Diana's older sister Sarah Spencer. The Spencer family had long-standing ties to the royals-both of Diana's grandmothers served as ladies-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother-and Diana reportedly played with Charles' younger brothers, Edward and Andrew, in her early years. Technically, the two probably met when Diana was a child. So how close to the truth is The Crown's depiction of Charles and Diana's first meeting? Read on for a primer.ĭes Willie How did Charles and Diana meet? Their meeting is unconventional for many reasons-for one, Charles was dating Diana's older sister, Sarah, at the time-but sets the stage for a tempestuous romance that's already raising flags by the end of the episode. In the opening moments of season 4, episode 1, Charles has already encountered the teenage Diana Spencer, who was 12 years his junior at the time. For that, we can look to the previous season, back when the royal couple, now played by Elizabeth Debicki and Dominic West, were portrayed by Emma Corrin and Josh O'Connor. As their marriage unravels onscreen, viewers might want to recall how the whole romance started in the first place. Season 5, now streaming on Netflix, promises to follow the royal family into the 1990s, delving deeper into Princess Diana and Prince Charles' relationship and public divorce. What is certain is that King Charles III remains, in his eighth decade, an heir apparent dedicated to duty, and as the Queen toasted in 2018, “in every respect a duchy original”.The moment royal fans have been waiting for has finally arrived: The Crown is back.

More recently, his opinions on the nature and future of modern monarchy caused waves, particularly following the release in 2015 of the so-called ‘ Black Spider memos’ (named for Charles’s ‘spidery’ handwriting), correspondence between the prince and government ministers. In 1994, Charles expressed a wish to become 'Defender of Faith' rather than 'Defender of the Faith' on his ascension to the throne, a statement that attracted criticism from the Archbishop of Canterbury. 1996), an influential mentor, mystic and spiritual advisor to the prince, still sits in the garden at Highgrove. He is known for his unconventional (at least in royal terms) stance on religious freedom that could be at odds with his future role as the supreme governor of the Church of England and the bust of Sir Laurens van der Post (d. Some of Charles’s less traditional views have not gone without comment. The Queen Mother, with whom Charles had a very close relationship, worried that her grandson “would be terribly cut off and lonely up in the far north”. Its students took cold showers, slept on hard beds and went on morning runs, whatever the weather. Charles was a sensitive and shy boy “easily cowed by the forceful personality of his father”, noted a 1994 authorised biography of the Prince of Wales written by Jonathan Dimbleby, and the school – which championed physical and mental fortitude – was intended to toughen Charles up.

After early education at Hill House School and Cheam, Prince Philip wished Charles to be sent to Gordonstoun school in Scotland, hoping to make his son in his own image. (Photo by Hulton-Deutsch/Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images)īoth Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip agreed that their children should not be hampered, as they saw it, by the social and educational constraints of home-schooling, which had previously been the norm for royals. Charles with Princess Margaret (right) and his grandmother, Elizabeth the Queen Mother, at the 1953 coronation of his mother.

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