The Royal Family scandal of the infamous love triangle between Princess Diana, Prince Charles (now King), and then-Camilla Shand (now Queen Camilla) is one that no person doesn’t know about, with the then-Prince of Wales at the center of it all. It was a long raging one that ultimately ended with Charles and Camilla reuniting and finally finding their respective places on the thrones.
However, amidst all the pain and agony that the late Diana suffered because of this extramarital affair at the end of the now-king, there was a time when she quite literally confronted the now-queen about it all. And while she did admit how terrified she was of Shand while confronting her, all of it also helped ease the late Princess of Wales’ pain in ways more than one.
The Time Princess Diana Confronted Queen Camilla About The Royal Love Triangle
Everyone loved Princess Diana for the way she took on her problems head-on and wasn’t afraid to say what she wanted to. This was exactly how she confronted the now-Queen Camilla when then-Prince Charles restarted his affair with her in 1986, as shared in a full episode by National Geographic on YouTube.
In her authorized biography Diana: Her True Story by Andrew Morton, she got candid about the same and stood up to then-Camilla Shand for having an affair with her husband. She shared how, one day, she was upstairs and chatting away when she suddenly realized that neither the now-King Charles nor Shand was present upstairs.
Inevitably finding it disturbing, the then-Princess of Wales made her way downstairs for him, knowing well enough “what I’m going to confront myself with.” Even when people tried to stop her saying, “Diana, don’t go down there,” she had only one response: “I have to go find my husband.” Thus, she went downstairs, ready to take head-on whatever lay in front of her.
Describing it as “a very happy little threesome going on downstairs” which included “Camilla, Charles, and some other man I don’t really know, chatting away,” Diana recalled telling herself, “This is your moment” and then going ahead to join their company “as though we were best friends.” Soon enough, she decided to confront Shand.
She told the now-queen she’d “love to have a word with you, if possible,” and the latter “got really uncomfortable and put her head down and said, ‘Oh, yes, fine.'” This was followed by the remaining two people shooting “upstairs like chickens with no heads,” with the late Princess of Wales describing the situation upstairs as “all hell breaking loose.”
Downstairs, both the women took a seat, with Diana conveying her confrontation as:
“I was terrified of her. And I said, ‘Camilla, I’d just like you to know that I know exactly what’s going on.’ And she said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ And I said, ‘I know what’s going on between you and Charles, I just want you to know that.'”
Although the then-Camilla Shand decided to keep mum on the matter before, she eventually got around as soon as the then-Princess of Wales made this statement. In a response that the late Princess described as “very interesting,” Shand answered her as:
“You’ve got everything you’ve ever wanted. All the men in the world fall in love with you. You’ve got two beautiful children. What more do you want?”
But Diana wasn’t one to give up so easily either. Recalling her own response and the conversation that followed, she said:
“I said, ‘I want my husband.’ And she said, ‘Well.’ And she looked down the whole time. I said to Camilla, ‘I’m sorry I’m in the way. I obviously am in the way and it must be hell for both of you. But I do know what is going on, don’t treat me like an idiot.'”
While this confrontation was indeed brutally straightforward for both women, Princess Diana was still glad she did it as it instilled a tremendous shift inside her.
Princess Diana’s Thoughts Following Confrontation of Queen Camilla
As the pair headed back home, the then-Prince of Wales was inevitably anxious about what the two of them talked about and was over his wife “like a bad rash.” But Princess Diana’s reaction was truly heartbreaking, as she described it as:
“I cried like I’ve never cried before. It was anger, it was seven years of pent-up anger coming out. I cried and cried and cried. I didn’t sleep that night.”
However, at the same time, all of this ended up helping her get considerably over those feelings of “jealousy and anger” that she had long locked into her heart. As she continued to share:
“The next morning, I woke up differently. A shift, a tremendous shift. I’d done something, said what I felt. Still the old jealousy and the anger swirling around, but it wasn’t so deathly as it had been before.”
If anything, this confrontation further helped her ease in front of the now-King Charles as she even told him at the weekend three days after this incident: “Oh, darling, I’m sure you’ll want to know what I said to Camilla. There’s no secret, you may ask her. I just said I loved you, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
You can stream the full episode of the late Princess of Wales’ story Diana: In Her Own Words by National Geographic on YouTube.
