The wedding of Princess Diana and King Charles marked a turning point in the history of the royal family.
The tumultuous marriage and its tragic end led to a change in Firm’s centuries-old tradition, argued royal expert, Tom Quinn, author of Golden youth.
He said Express.co.uk that in a way “Charles and Diana’s wedding was the last breath of a tradition that stretched back some 500 years”.
He explained: ‘Indeed the elders of the Royal Family and people like Lord Mountbatten got together with the Queen Mother and Lady Fermoy, who was Diana’s grandmother, and said, ‘Listen, we have to settle something for Charles, but we need it to be someone who definitely hasn’t had a boyfriend, who is extremely aristocratic and a bit naive.
Quinn claimed that the royal family “wanted someone for Charles who wouldn’t dominate him, who would do as the royal wives had always done, who would accept that if he needed to have a mistress, it was GOOD.”
However, while Diana “seemed perfect” for the role, she “wasn’t the mouse they thought she was. And the result, as we know, was ultimately a divorce.
Quinn claimed that their failed union and the destructive war in Wales in the early 1990s forced the business to move from a centuries-old tradition of arranging marriages or finding partners only among aristocrats to allow members of the royal family to marry for love.
Charles and Diana were married in July 1981 at St Paul’s Cathedral, however, their troubled relationship soon became apparent. Due to their disputes and public bickering, the company and its reputation were plunged into crisis.
In 1992, the late Princess of Wales secretly collaborated with author Andrew Morton to tell her stories, revealing her mental health issues and unhappiness and talking about the relationship between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.
After the public feud, the firm decided to change its approach to marriages.
“I think it was seen throughout the royal family that if you arranged a marriage for dynastic reasons, as they did in the case of Charles and Diana, the outcome was going to be disastrous,” Quinn explained.
“And that’s why they’ve moved to the modern view where it’s much better to let the young royals choose their partners. And so it’s almost like the old experiment failed and they’re trying the new experiment.
He surmised: “I think that’s absolutely the case that they felt [with] arranged marriages, you burn your fingers badly. I mean, the royal family has almost, you might say, come to an end, the whole divorce and then the TV interviews and so on have been so destructive. So they just try to avoid that.