The marriage between Princess Diana and Prince Charles was incredibly complicated, even although they grinned even waved behind the scenes for the photographers in public things were very different.
To outsiders the relationship between Prince Charles and Princess Diana was perfect.
They had two beautiful children after their fairytale wedding and worked hard to raise awareness of their favourite charities while performing royal duties.
This was a somewhat different tale behind closed doors, though, and their friendship was experiencing irreparable harm owing to poor contact, personal disagreements and affairs.
Cracks began to show up in the lead up to their separation, but in a speech, years before people began to realize something was not quite right, Diana dropped a hint of her feelings.
As she took the stage at the 1990 Valentine’s Day Relate Family of the Year Awards, she spoke about how painful marriage could be.
She said: “Marriage offers stability, and maybe that’s why nearly 7,000 couples a week begin new family lives of their own.
“Sadly, for many of these marriages, reality fails to live up to expectations.”
She had provided a somewhat different perspective five years earlier in 1985, and portrayed the image of a successful family.
Speaking in an interview, she said: “I think my role is supporting my husband whenever I can. Always being behind him, and being encouraging.
“And most importantly being a mother and a wife.
“That’s what I try to achieve. Whether I do is another thing, but I do try.”
Diana wasn’t permitted to talk out during their turbulent friendship-ensuring her side of the story always went unheard.
She was not pleased with this however, and she put things into her own hands for Charles with catastrophic consequences.
In her own Words, her friend Debbie Frank said: “I think Diana was a purveyor of the truth and she felt that her marriage was a sham.
“She was living a lie and it was unbearable for her.”
The princess started sending hidden recordings to journalist Andrew Morton in 1992 expressing her most disturbing feelings, claiming that she had contemplated harming herself.
Quotes from the book Diana: Her True story, included: “My husband made me feel so inadequate in every possible way, that every time I came up for air he pushed me down again.”
Talking about the book, Diana’s former private secretary Patrick Jephson said: “The overwhelming feeling among people at the time was this is really bad stuff. Poor her.
“She ended the year on a moral highground.
“The underlining message was being married to Prince Charles wasn’t a lot of fun.”
Diana claimed that she had anything to do with the novel, though, and she did not even reveal the recordings to anyone nearest to her.
Mr Jephson said: “A lot of the time I was grateful for what you might call plausible deniability.
“When she told me she had never spoken to Andrew Morton, that was fine. That was my line.
“And of course it was true, she hadn’t spoken to him. She had spoken to his tape recorder.”
The pair divorced less than a year after the book reached the shelf, sending the royal popular into confusion.
