Queen Elizabeth Should’ve “Worked Harder” as a Matchmaker to Find King Charles a “Suitable Wife,” as Princess Diana Was “So Young”

Much has been writ­ten about Princess Dianaand King Charles’s doomed union. Now, Princess Mar­garet’s trust­ed lady-in-wait­ing, Lady Glen­con­ner, is reflect­ing on the cou­ple’s mar­riage, includ­ing what Queen Eliz­a­beth II could have done dif­fer­ent­ly

Lady Glen­con­ner’s new book, Man­ners and Mis­chief: An A–Z of Roy­al Tales and Sur­pris­ing Wis­dom from Princess Mar­garet’s Lady in Wait­ing, is due for release in Novem­ber. In an extract from the book pub­lished by the Dai­ly Mail, Glen­con­ner wrote, “I do slight­ly feel that the late Queen Eliz­a­beth could have worked hard­er to try to find Prince Charles a suit­able wife.

Glen­con­ner con­tin­ued, “The queens of Greece and Spain used to enter­tain roy­al princess­es from oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries in order to find a wife for their sons, but I think because The Queen had fall­en in love and had such a suc­cess­ful mar­riage to Prince Philip, she was­n’t real­ly focused on [King] Charles in the same way.

How­ev­er, Queen Eliz­a­beth and Prince Philip report­ed­ly weren’t the only peo­ple urg­ing Charles to mar­ry Princess Diana. “The Queen Moth­er and Lady Fer­moy [Diana’s mater­nal grand­moth­er] were keen that the mar­riage to Diana should hap­pen,” the for­mer lady-in-wait­ing wrote.

Accord­ing to Glen­con­ner, the Queen Moth­er went so far as to express “her delight at the pro­posed mar­riage” in writ­ten cor­re­spon­dence. “Prince Philip was also very much in favor of the union,” she explained.

Lady Glen­con­ner also reflect­ed on how Charles and Diana met “at a par­ty in 1980…following the death of Lord Mount­bat­ten.” The for­mer lady-in-wait­ing not­ed that Diana was alleged­ly “ter­ri­bly sym­pa­thet­ic” to Charles, who had “a girl­friend at the time.” Still, Diana “clear­ly made an impres­sion on him.”

Writ­ing in her new book, Glen­con­ner said of Princess Diana, “She was so young when they mar­ried and had very lit­tle life expe­ri­ence. And I think when she became so incred­i­bly pop­u­lar with the pub­lic, it was very hard for Prince Charles.”