Children

The Prince and Princess of Wales after the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of York in 1986

The couple made their homes at Kensington Palace and at Highgrove House, near Tetbury. On 5 November 1981,
the Princess's pregnancy was officially announced.[45] In January 1982twelve weeks into the pregnancyDiana fell
down a staircase at Sandringham, and the royal gynaecologist Sir George Pinker was summoned from London. He
found that although she had suffered severe bruising, the foetus was uninjured.[46] In the private Lindo Wing of St
Mary's Hospital in Paddington, London, on 21 June 1982, under the care of Pinker,[46] the Princess gave birth to the
couple's first son and heir, William Arthur Philip Louis.[47] Amidst some media criticism, she decided to take William,
still a baby, on her first major tours of Australia and New Zealand, but the decision was popularly applauded. By her
own admission, the Princess of Wales had not initially intended to take William until it was suggested by Malcolm
Fraser, the Australian prime minister.[48]
A second son, Henry Charles Albert David, was born on 15 September 1984.[49] The Princess asserted she and the
Prince were closest during her pregnancy with Harry (as the younger prince has always been known). She was
aware their second child was a boy, but did not share the knowledge with anyone else, including the Prince of
Wales.[50] Persistent suggestions that Harry's father is not Charles but James Hewitt, with whom Diana had an affair,
have been based on alleged physical similarity between Hewitt and Harry. However, Harry had already been born by
the time the affair between Hewitt and Diana began.[50][51][52]
Diana gave her sons wider experiences than was usual for royal children.[18][53][54] She rarely deferred to the Prince or to
the Royal Family, and was often intransigent when it came to the children. She chose their first given names,
dismissed a royal family nanny and engaged one of her own choosing, selected their schools and clothing, planned
their outings, and took them to school herself as often as her schedule permitted. She also organised her public
duties around their timetables.[55]

Problems and separation[edit]

Five years into the marriage, the couple's incompatibility and age difference of almost 13 years became visible and
damaging.[56] Diana's concern about Charles's relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles[57] also had a negative impact
on the marriage. During the early 1990s, the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales fell apart; the event was at
first suppressed, then sensationalised by the world media. The Princess and Prince both spoke to the press through
friends; each blamed the other for the marriage's demise.
Diana presents Guillermo Gracida, Jr. a trophy at Guards Polo Club in 1986

The couple's marital difficulties were publicly reported as early as 1985. [58] Prince Charles resumed his affair with
Camilla Parker Bowles. Diana later began an extra-marital relationship with Major James Hewitt. These affairs were
exposed in May 1992 with the publication of Andrew Morton's book, Diana: Her True Story. The book was serialised
before publication in The Sunday Times.[59][60] The book, which also revealed the Princess's allegedly suicidal
unhappiness, caused a media storm. During 1992 and 1993, leaked tapes of telephone conversations negatively
reflected on both the royal antagonists. Tape recordings of the Princess and James Gilbey were made available
by The Sun newspaper's hotline in August 1992[61] and transcripts of the intimate conversations were published by the
newspaper the same month.[18] The article's title, "Squidgygate", referenced Gilbey's affectionate nickname for Diana.
The next to surface, in November 1992, were the leaked "Camillagate" tapes, intimate exchanges between the Prince
of Wales and Camilla, published in the tabloids.[62][63] In December 1992, Prime Minister John Majorannounced the
couple's "amicable separation" to the House of Commons,[64] and the full Camillagate transcript was published a
month later in the newspapers, in January 1993.[18]
In 1993, the Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) published photographs of the Princess that were taken by gym owner
Bryce Taylor. The photos showed her exercising in the gym LA Fitness wearing "a leotard and cycling
shorts".[65][66] The Princess's lawyers immediately filed a criminal complaint that sought "a permanent ban on the sale
and publication of the photographs" around the world.[65][66] However, some newspapers outside the UK published the
pictures.[65] The courts granted an injunction against Taylor and MGN that prohibited "further publication of the
pictures".[65] MGN later issued an apology after facing much criticism from the public.[65] It is said that MGN gave the
Princess 1 million as a payment for her legal costs and donated 200,000 to her charities. [65] Taylor apologised as
well and paid Diana 300,000, although it was alleged that a member of the Royal Family had helped him
financially.[65]
Diana's aunt-in-law, Princess Margaret, burned "highly personal" letters that Diana wrote to the Queen Mother in
1993 because she considered them "so private". Biographer William Shawcross wrote: "No doubt Princess Margaret
felt that she was protecting her mother and other members of the family." He considered Princess Margaret's action
to be "understandable, although regrettable from a historical viewpoint". [67]
Diana blamed Camilla Parker Bowles for her marital troubles because of Camilla's previous relationship with the
Prince, and at some point she began to believe that he had other affairs. In October 1993, the Princess wrote to a
friend that she believed her husband was now in love with his personal assistant (and his sons' former nanny) Tiggy
Legge-Bourkeand wanted to marry her.[68] Legge-Bourke had been hired by the Prince as a young companion for his
sons while they were in his care, and the Princess was resentful of Legge-Bourke and her relationship with the young
princes.[69] On 3 December 1993, the Princess of Wales announced her withdrawal from public life. [70]
In the meantime, rumours had begun to surface about the Princess of Wales's relationship with Hewitt, who was the
family's former riding instructor. These rumours would be brought into the open by the publication in 1994 of a book
by Anna Pasternak titled Princess in Love, which was filmed under the same title in a movie directed by David
Greene in 1996.[71]The Princess of Wales was portrayed by Julie Cox and James Hewitt was portrayed by Christopher
Villiers.[71]
Prince Charles sought public understanding via a televised interview with Jonathan Dimbleby on 29 June 1994. In the
interview, he confirmed his own extramarital affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, saying that he had rekindled their
association in 1986 only after his marriage to the Princess had "irretrievably broken down". [72][73][74] Authors Tina
Brown, Sally Bedell Smith and Sarah Bradford are some of the many writers who fully supported Diana's own
admission in her 1995 BBC Panorama interview that she had suffered from depression, "rampant bulimia" and had
engaged numerous times in the act of self mutilation; the show's transcript records Diana confirming many of
her problems to interviewer Martin Bashir, including that she had "hurt (her) arms and legs".[75] The combination of
illnesses from which Diana herself said that she suffered resulted in some of her biographers opining that she
had borderline personality disorder.[76][77]