Watch CBS News

Charles And Di: Doomed From Start?

Twenty-five years ago Saturday, Diana Spencer married Prince Charles in a spectacular ceremony seen 'round the world.

It was the wedding of the century, watched by over half-a-million people in Britain, and a global audience of a staggering 750 million.

But the couple wasn't destined to live happily ever after and, as CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston reports in looking back at the nuptials, some royals watchers had a feeling from the get-go that something was amiss.

The young bride, peering out with a smile from her glass coach, would become the most famous woman in the world and change the monarchy forever.

On July 29, 1981, joy filled the land.

"This was a moment in history," reflects British journalist Victoria Mather, "that Prince Charles was going to be king and she was going to be his queen. … Quite apart from the historical significance is that she was so young, and so beautiful; she had already got a stranglehold on the hearts and minds of the people."

It was, Pinkston says, the stuff of which fairy tales are made.

Mather, who was one of the wedding guests that fabled day, adds, "What I remember most is that it was very much like anybody else's wedding. The bride's mother wore a flowery hat; there was the naughty bride's handmaid; the bridegroom looked nervous; and the bride fluffed her lines. It was just so like anybody else's wedding, just (larger)."

Like the train of Diana's wedding gown which, Pinkston says, seemed to go on forever.

Elizabeth Emanuel, with her then-husband David, designed the dress.

Right after wedding, they received a phone call.

"It was Diana," Elizabeth recalls, "and we couldn't believe it. She had phoned us to thank us and said she felt so beautiful in it. We couldn't believe, here she had gone off on her honeymoon, and took the time to phone and thank us. That's how sweet she was."

Though the relationship appeared promising, says Pinkston, in retrospect, there were early warning signs of trouble.When they were married, she was 19, he was 32.

What was Mather's opinion of the age gap?

"Very dangerous," Mather replied, "Very dangerous, particularly from the interview at the time of the engagement, and he made that famous quote."

Mather was referring to Charles saying, during a British Broadcasting Corporation interview of the couple by David Frost.

"I'm amazed that she's been brave enough to take me on," Charles said.

"And," Frost asked, "I suppose, in love?"

"Of course!" Diana answered immediately.

"Whatever 'in love' means," Charles said.

"I thought it was a very strange thing to say, but I do not think that any of the participants went into this marriage dishonestly," Mather commented. "I think he genuinely wanted to love her, to cherish her."

But, she continued, "From the moment they walked down the aisle and appeared on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral, that was the road toward the end."

The end, Pinkston says, we know about, but the beautiful memories of that day, remain.

Fifteen years later, in August 1996, the two would divorce.

And a year after that, in august 1997, Diana died in a tragic car crash in Paris.

In April, 2005, Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.