While Mountbatten’s assassination greatly shocked, angered and saddened both the Queen and Prince Philip, it was their eldest son, Prince Charles, who felt the loss most keenly. Over the years, Charles had established a certain rapport with the elder statesman, who became something of a mentor to his great-nephew. Writing in his diary after the murder, Charles noted: ‘Life will never be the same now he has gone. In some extraordinary way he combined grandfather, great-uncle, father, brother and friend.’ Of all the guidance offered by his great-uncle over the years, it was perhaps Mountbatten’s advice on affairs of the heart which seemed to have made a lasting impression on Elizabeth’s heir. While encouraging Charles to sow his wild oats as a young man, Mountbatten had also insisted that, when it came to settling down, a sweet-natured wife was essential for marital harmony.
Prince Charles (1974), photograph by Allan Warren
This particular pearl of Mountbatten wisdom may have played an important part in Charles’ decision, in February 1981, to propose to society beauty, Lady Diana Spencer. Bashful, doe-eyed, seemingly compliant and exuding a virginal innocence, Diana would have undoubtedly received the Mountbatten seal of approval had he been alive to witness the engagement. For her part, the Queen also approved of Charles’ choice of wife – at least initially. Given that Diana hailed from an old aristocratic family, the Queen believed she would be well-prepared for the demands of a royal marriage. And, in her eagerness to see Charles wedded, she was happy to gloss over the Spencer clan’s somewhat turbulent history.
Even before the wedding, which took place on 29 July that same year, the Queen, being an astute judge of character, began to recognize some worrying personality traits in her future daughter-in-law. Indeed, in the early months of the marriage, Diana’s increasingly unpredictable behaviour and emotional neediness only served to heighten Elizabeth’s anxieties. With hindsight, it is evident that the relationship between Elizabeth and Diana was doomed from the outset. Despite the fact that, in the beginning at least, both parties tried their best to get along, their greatly differing personalities made it almost impossible to foster any real closeness.
Prince Charles and Princess Diana (1985) (Presidenza della Repubblica)
It seemed Elizabeth was once again at odds with the mood of her people – while the British public had apparently caught Diana fever en masse, behind the scenes the Queen was already well on her way to falling out of love with the country’s new fairytale princess. Even Elizabeth, for all her shrewdness, could not have foreseen the chaos this newest member of the Royal Family would one day wreck on the once-unassailable House of Windsor.