New Book: Diana's Fairy-Tale Hopes, AIDS Moment and Last-Minute Wedding Doubts

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Royals (2 / 1) 18.06.2026 23:07 / Günter

Raised on romance, shaped by loss

Mayer traces Diana’s longing for ideal love to her childhood: the collapse of her parents’ marriage, her father Johnny Spencer’s remarriage to Raine, and a mother who published romantic fiction. Diana devoured Barbara Cartland novels and kept drawers of them, which Mayer says helped form an expectation of a courtly, transformative love.

Wedding doubts and a symbolic cufflink

By July 29, 1981, those fantasies clashed with reality. Mayer reports Diana told her sisters she wanted to call off the wedding, but was told it was too late. Friends noticed Charles’ petulance — including an episode over a missing cufflink that later revealed emotional ties to Camilla — underscoring two people bringing their own wounds into a very public union.