Heads up! Before you continue scrolling, there might be minor spoilers, so if you haven’t got to at least episode three of The Crown’s new season, you might want to back away slowly and come back when you do watch it. If you are curiosity’s victim or have already watched so far, scroll on ahead.
Right, here we go. By now, royal fans know the drill of royal engagements: the news is announcement in an official statement, the couple poses for some shots (with the ring), and then sit down for an interview where they gush juicy details. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle did it, Prince William and Kate Middleton did it, and yes, Princess Diana and Prince Charles did it, too. And if you’ve watched until that episode of Netflix’s ‘The Crown’ you’d remember the cringey vibes viewers experienced thanks to that comment.
In the episode, a journalist remarks: “You both look very much in love,” to which Diana shares, “Oh, yes. Absolutely.” Charles on the other hand threw a curveball we weren’t expecting: “Whatever ‘in love’ means.” Awkward silence…
In real-life, the Prince of Wales did say that comment, but it went down a little differently. Asked whether they were in love, Diana immediately said, “Of course,” with Charles following with “Whatever ‘in love’ means.” Diana laughed it off and the prince added that “in love” is open to “your own interpretation.”
However, despite giggling at the comment at the time, Lady Di later revealed in an interview that it actually “traumatized” her. “Charles turned around and said, ‘Whatever in love means,’ and that threw me completely,” she shares in a personal recording with her voice coach, included in the 2017 documentary, ‘Diana: In Her Own Words.’ “I thought, ‘What a strange question – uh, answer.’ God, absolutely traumatized me.”
“It was a totally in appropriate thing for him to say, but understandable given the way his mind worked and the kind of things he had said in prior years,” Bedell Smith, who wrote the royal biography ‘Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life,’ told People.
Smith did however note that the prince was philosophical at the time and often contemplated on things out loud. “You should look at those words in the context of the series of interviews he gave in the 1970s about what he wanted in a wife and what being in love was all about. He can over-think things and was thinking out loud. I don’t see it as a cynical, cruel statement,” she added.
Prince Charles and Lady Diana got married after a five-month engagement on 29th July 1981 at Westminster Abbey. They welcomed Prince William in June 1982 and Prince Harry in September 1984. Charles and Diana announced their separation in December 1992 and formally divorced in August 1996. She was killed in a car accident a year later.