A royal author has claimed that the Queen Mother wanted Princess Diana to accommodate Camilla in her marriage. She suggested that her grandson, Prince Charles, could keep Camilla as his mistress while staying married to Princess Diana.
According to the Daily Mail, royal writer Tom Quinn claimed on the Channel 5 documentary, The Queen Mother: Grandmother to the Nation, that the Queen Mother wondered why Diana wouldn’t warm up to the idea of her husband, the Prince of Wales, keeping Camilla as his mistress, while staying married to him.
The Queen Mother wanted Diana and Charles to stay together
The Queen Mother reportedly did not want Diana and Prince Charles to get divorced. It’s claimed that instead she wanted the couple to accept an arrangement that would allow them to stay married while Charles kept Camilla as his mistress.
Quinn said the Queen Mother was fond of Charles because he “reminded her of her husband Bertie (George VI), unsure, lacking in confidence, needed to be built up.”
She also reportedly thought that Charles was a gentle and kind husband and therefore “couldn’t understand what [Diana’s] complaint was about,” Quinn added.
However, the Queen Mother’s alleged suggestion that Charles could stay married to Diana with Camilla as Charles’s mistress is said to have been unacceptable to the young couple.
Royal commentator Jennie Bond said that Diana and the Queen Mother started on the right foot, but claimed they fell out later. According to Bond, Diana admitted that she found the Queen Mother “frightening and certainly intimidating.”
Some royals disapproved of the Queen Mother’s ‘meddling’
Although the Queen Mother was reportedly convinced that Diana and Charles would save their marriage if they could find a way to accommodate Camilla, other members of the Royal Family are said to have disapproved and accused the Queen Mother of “meddling.”
“There were certainly elements with the royal family who thought the Queen Mother was meddling and interfering in things she didn’t understand,” Quinn said.
The Queen Mother and Diana’s grandmother played a role in bringing the couple together
Despite the disapproval of some members of the Royal Family, it’s claimed the Queen Mother might have thought it was appropriate for her to “meddle” because she played a role, alongside Diana’s maternal grandmother Ruth Roche, the Baronness Bermoy, in bringing Diana and Charles together.
Roche was a confidante of the Queen Mother and her daughter, the Queen. She was one of the Queen Mother’s ladies-in-waiting.
“Diana’s grandmother was a great friend of the Queen Mother and they cooked up the marriage between them,” Quinn said. “She discussed the whole Camilla business and didn’t understand why she couldn’t find accommodation with his wife that meant they didn’t have to get divorced.”