May 3, 2026

3. The Divorce

Show Notes
Transcript

After years of public warfare, Charles and Diana's divorce is finalized. Diana is stripped of her "Her Royal Highness" title—a humiliation that wounds her deeply. She receives a £17 million settlement but loses her formal place in the royal family. Charles feels relief mixed with guilt. Diana is free but also vulnerable, no longer protected by the institution. The worst is yet to come.

While no one truly knows what happens behind closed palace doors, this series uses news sources, on-the-record quotes, and some artistic license to craft this entertainment series. Some moments have been dramatized for storytelling effect. AI narration was used in creation of this series.

Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!

Subscribe now for exclusive shows like 'Palace Intrigue,' and get bonus content from Deep Crown (our exclusive Palace Insider!) Or get 'Daily Comedy News,' and '5 Good News Stories’ with no commercials! Plans start at $4.99 per month, or save 20% with a yearly plan at $49.99. Join today and help support the show!

We now have Merch! FREE SHIPPING! Check out all the products like T-shirts, mugs, bags, jackets and more with logos and slogans from your favorite shows! Did we mention there’s free shipping? Get 10% off with code NewMerch10 Go to Caloroga.com

Get more info from

WEBVTT

1
00:00:03.200 --> 00:00:13.400
Calarogu Shark Media.

2
00:00:13.560 --> 00:00:16.320
There is a moment in the life of any failing

3
00:00:16.399 --> 00:00:19.760
marriage when both people know, without saying it aloud, that

4
00:00:19.879 --> 00:00:24.160
it is over. For Charles and Diana, that moment had

5
00:00:24.280 --> 00:00:28.440
arguably come years before anyone outside the palace walls was

6
00:00:28.480 --> 00:00:32.039
willing to admit it. But knowing something is over and

7
00:00:32.200 --> 00:00:35.719
ending it are two very different things, particularly when the

8
00:00:35.759 --> 00:00:38.600
marriage in question is not just a private arrangement between

9
00:00:38.640 --> 00:00:43.399
two people, but a constitutional matter, a public institution, and

10
00:00:43.439 --> 00:00:46.560
a symbol watched by hundreds of millions of people around

11
00:00:46.600 --> 00:00:50.640
the world. By the time nineteen ninety six arrived, the

12
00:00:50.799 --> 00:00:54.000
ending was no longer a question. It was a negotiation.

13
00:00:55.439 --> 00:00:59.119
The divorce between the Prince and Princess of Wales was

14
00:00:59.159 --> 00:01:05.560
finalized on August twenty eighth, nineteen ninety six. It was

15
00:01:05.599 --> 00:01:11.280
handled through lawyers and palace advisers and government officials. Each

16
00:01:11.359 --> 00:01:16.319
side represented, each side fighting for terms. On its surface,

17
00:01:16.599 --> 00:01:20.319
it was a legal proceeding like any other. Beneath the surface,

18
00:01:20.599 --> 00:01:23.319
it was one of the most consequential separations in modern

19
00:01:23.359 --> 00:01:27.879
British history. The terms were significant. Diana would receive a

20
00:01:27.920 --> 00:01:31.280
lump sum settlement, reported at the time to be in

21
00:01:31.319 --> 00:01:35.120
the region of seventeen million pounds. She would retain her

22
00:01:35.159 --> 00:01:40.040
apartments at Kensington Palace. She would keep the title Princess

23
00:01:40.200 --> 00:01:43.000
of Wales because it was attached to the mother of

24
00:01:43.040 --> 00:01:46.079
the future king and could not simply be stripped away

25
00:01:46.159 --> 00:01:49.640
without consequence. But she would lose something that mattered to

26
00:01:49.719 --> 00:01:53.400
her deeply, something that went beyond money or property or

27
00:01:53.519 --> 00:01:57.319
legal arrangements. She would lose the title her Royal Highness.

28
00:01:58.439 --> 00:02:01.200
To understand why this mattered, you have to understand what

29
00:02:01.239 --> 00:02:05.200
that title meant in practical terms. As her Royal Highness,

30
00:02:05.799 --> 00:02:10.360
Diana had been entitled to formal deference. People curtsied and

31
00:02:10.400 --> 00:02:13.080
bowed to her. She entered rooms with a particular kind

32
00:02:13.120 --> 00:02:18.400
of authority, conferred not by personality but by rank. It

33
00:02:18.479 --> 00:02:22.280
was the institutional armor of the royal family, the thing

34
00:02:22.319 --> 00:02:25.960
that separated its members from everyone else, even from other

35
00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:29.520
members of the aristocracy. Without it, Diana would be a

36
00:02:29.560 --> 00:02:34.520
princess in name, but not in formal standing. Her own sons,

37
00:02:34.960 --> 00:02:39.120
William and Harry would outrank her at official functions. She

38
00:02:39.120 --> 00:02:41.599
would be expected to curtsey to members of the family

39
00:02:41.919 --> 00:02:46.599
she had spent fifteen years inside. It was widely perceived

40
00:02:46.680 --> 00:02:50.919
as a humiliation, whether or not all parties intended it

41
00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:55.719
that way. According to subsequent reporting, Diana told friends she

42
00:02:55.759 --> 00:02:59.400
felt the decision was designed to diminish her, to make

43
00:02:59.439 --> 00:03:02.719
her less, to remind her that whatever she had built

44
00:03:02.759 --> 00:03:05.360
for herself in the public eye, she had built it

45
00:03:05.439 --> 00:03:09.479
on borrowed authority, and now that authority was being reclaimed.

46
00:03:10.280 --> 00:03:13.080
She had given fifteen years of her life to the institution.

47
00:03:14.080 --> 00:03:17.919
She had produced the air and the spare. She had

48
00:03:17.960 --> 00:03:22.479
carried out thousands of public engagements, shaken millions of hands,

49
00:03:22.800 --> 00:03:25.879
sat with the dying and the desperate and the forgotten,

50
00:03:26.120 --> 00:03:28.960
in ways that had transformed the public image of the monarchy.

51
00:03:29.560 --> 00:03:32.439
And now, on her way out the door, she was

52
00:03:32.479 --> 00:03:35.199
losing a title that had come to define her place

53
00:03:35.520 --> 00:03:42.360
within the institution. This is Crown and Controversy. King Charles,

54
00:03:43.080 --> 00:04:04.479
Episode three, The Divorce. For Charles, by most accounts, the

55
00:04:04.479 --> 00:04:09.159
finalization of the divorce brought something closer to relief than celebration.

56
00:04:10.319 --> 00:04:12.520
He had not wanted the marriage to fail in the

57
00:04:12.560 --> 00:04:16.879
abstract sense. He understood what the failure cost the institution

58
00:04:17.040 --> 00:04:21.000
he had dedicated his life to serving. He understood what

59
00:04:21.120 --> 00:04:24.360
it had cost his sons. He was not, by any

60
00:04:24.360 --> 00:04:28.839
account indifferent to that damage. But the marriage had been

61
00:04:28.879 --> 00:04:31.680
a source of private misery for well over a decade,

62
00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:34.959
and its ending meant that a particular kind of sustained

63
00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:39.240
public agony was at least formally concluded. He could begin

64
00:04:39.920 --> 00:04:44.480
carefully and quietly the next chapter, a chapter that included

65
00:04:44.839 --> 00:04:48.319
Camilla Parker Bowles, not as a secret but as an

66
00:04:48.360 --> 00:04:53.319
acknowledged presence in his life. Camilla had weathered the years

67
00:04:53.319 --> 00:04:56.120
of public vilification with a composure that those around her

68
00:04:56.160 --> 00:05:00.720
found remarkable. She had been blamed loudly and repeatedly, and

69
00:05:00.759 --> 00:05:05.399
sometimes viciously, for the destruction of the fairy tale marriage.

70
00:05:05.480 --> 00:05:09.160
She had been photographed unfavorably, written about cruelly, and held

71
00:05:09.199 --> 00:05:12.120
responsible in the court of public opinion for everything that

72
00:05:12.160 --> 00:05:15.920
had gone wrong between Charles and Diana. She had borne

73
00:05:15.959 --> 00:05:19.199
much of it in silence, in part because public silence

74
00:05:19.279 --> 00:05:23.720
was one of the few viable options available to her. Now,

75
00:05:24.120 --> 00:05:27.720
with the divorce finalized, Charles began the slow process of

76
00:05:27.720 --> 00:05:31.279
bringing Camilla into the light. It would not happen overnight.

77
00:05:32.160 --> 00:05:35.800
The Palace was acutely aware that public sentiment toward Camilla

78
00:05:36.079 --> 00:05:41.360
remained deeply hostile. Diana was still alive, still adored, still

79
00:05:41.480 --> 00:05:45.920
very much the dominant figure in the public imagination. Any

80
00:05:46.040 --> 00:05:50.480
move to formalize Charles's relationship with Camilla too quickly would

81
00:05:50.519 --> 00:05:54.480
be read as triumphalism, as rubbing the nation's face in

82
00:05:54.560 --> 00:05:57.160
the affair that had broken up the fairy tale. So

83
00:05:57.240 --> 00:06:02.079
the approach was measured patient, a long game played with care.

84
00:06:04.519 --> 00:06:07.360
Charles and Camilla began appearing in the same photographs at

85
00:06:07.399 --> 00:06:12.319
the same events, carefully staged, surrounded by other people, nothing

86
00:06:12.360 --> 00:06:15.399
that could be called a public declaration, but enough to

87
00:06:15.439 --> 00:06:19.160
signal that she was part of his world. Camilla was

88
00:06:19.160 --> 00:06:24.759
photographed doing charitable work. She was introduced gradually, incrementally to

89
00:06:24.839 --> 00:06:27.759
a public that needed time to see her as a

90
00:06:27.800 --> 00:06:31.920
serious and substantive person rather than simply the woman who

91
00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:35.879
had come between Charles and Diana. It was widely understood

92
00:06:36.040 --> 00:06:39.759
as a gradual effort to rehabilitate her public image, and

93
00:06:39.839 --> 00:06:43.079
it was understood by everyone involved to be a long

94
00:06:43.160 --> 00:06:48.439
and uncertain process. Meanwhile, Diana was navigating her new position

95
00:06:48.639 --> 00:06:52.319
with a combination of freedom and vulnerability that those around

96
00:06:52.360 --> 00:06:56.920
her found difficult to watch. She was free, genuinely and

97
00:06:57.240 --> 00:06:59.639
for the first time in her adult life, from the

98
00:06:59.680 --> 00:07:05.040
concerts of the institution, She could travel where she wanted,

99
00:07:05.720 --> 00:07:10.040
speak more openly than before, pursue the humanitarian work that

100
00:07:10.079 --> 00:07:13.959
had come to define her public purpose. Her campaign against

101
00:07:14.040 --> 00:07:18.519
land mines was drawing international attention. She was using her

102
00:07:18.560 --> 00:07:21.839
platform in ways that went beyond anything the Palace had

103
00:07:21.920 --> 00:07:26.160
ever sanctioned or encouraged. But she was also, by many accounts,

104
00:07:26.399 --> 00:07:29.800
more exposed than she had ever been. The title she

105
00:07:29.800 --> 00:07:33.959
had lost was not just ceremonial. By many accounts, it

106
00:07:34.040 --> 00:07:38.000
also marked a weakening of the institutional protections and formal

107
00:07:38.040 --> 00:07:42.800
structures that had surrounded her life. Without those structures, she

108
00:07:42.879 --> 00:07:46.680
was navigating a world in which the paparazzi followed her everywhere,

109
00:07:46.839 --> 00:07:50.240
in which her every movement was tracked and photographed and sold,

110
00:07:50.680 --> 00:07:53.920
with fewer formal resources to manage or mitigate that pressure.

111
00:08:14.079 --> 00:08:17.800
The summer of nineteen ninety six past, the divorce was processed,

112
00:08:18.160 --> 00:08:21.600
the lawyers settled their accounts, The Palace moved on to

113
00:08:21.720 --> 00:08:24.399
other business. Britain moved on, too, in the way that

114
00:08:24.480 --> 00:08:28.199
it does, absorbing the extraordinary into the fabric of the

115
00:08:28.319 --> 00:08:32.080
ordinary until it no longer seems extraordinary at all. Charles

116
00:08:32.120 --> 00:08:35.799
resumed his public duties with the focused determination that had

117
00:08:35.799 --> 00:08:38.759
always characterized his approach to the role he had been

118
00:08:38.799 --> 00:08:42.039
born into. He was, in many respects better suited to

119
00:08:42.080 --> 00:08:44.919
the work than his marriage years had allowed him to appear.

120
00:08:45.799 --> 00:08:50.279
His interest in architecture, in the environment, in sustainable farming

121
00:08:50.320 --> 00:08:54.279
and organic agriculture, in the preservation of traditional crafts and

122
00:08:54.320 --> 00:08:59.720
communities were genuine and deeply held. Without the constant noise

123
00:08:59.759 --> 00:09:04.080
of the marital war, those interests had more room to breathe.

124
00:09:04.240 --> 00:09:07.120
He was also a father, and by many accounts, the

125
00:09:07.200 --> 00:09:11.639
divorce sharpened his attention to that role. William was fourteen

126
00:09:11.960 --> 00:09:16.240
when the divorce was finalized. Harry was eleven. Both boys

127
00:09:16.279 --> 00:09:20.279
were navigating the particular difficulty of being children of famous

128
00:09:20.320 --> 00:09:24.840
warring parents whose private pain had been conducted almost entirely

129
00:09:24.879 --> 00:09:29.320
in public. Charles was aware of the damage. He was

130
00:09:29.320 --> 00:09:32.639
not always equipped to address it directly, but the awareness

131
00:09:32.720 --> 00:09:36.919
was there. William, in particular, was already beginning to show

132
00:09:36.960 --> 00:09:43.480
the qualities that would later define his public role. Serious, measured, watchful.

133
00:09:44.360 --> 00:09:47.039
He had grown up faster than any child should have to,

134
00:09:47.759 --> 00:09:51.960
absorbing the tensions of a household under permanent siege. His

135
00:09:52.000 --> 00:09:56.000
relationship with his father was, by most accounts complicated by

136
00:09:56.000 --> 00:09:59.360
the years of conflict, but it was also sustained by

137
00:09:59.399 --> 00:10:04.000
a genuine bond, by shared experiences of loss and pressure

138
00:10:04.279 --> 00:10:08.080
that few people outside their particular world could fully understand.

139
00:10:09.080 --> 00:10:12.919
Harry was younger, and by many later accounts, he appeared

140
00:10:12.960 --> 00:10:17.000
to carry the turmoil differently, perhaps more visibly, though the

141
00:10:17.039 --> 00:10:19.399
full weight of what he was carrying would not become

142
00:10:19.480 --> 00:10:23.519
clear to the world for many years. The divorce was

143
00:10:23.600 --> 00:10:27.279
not yet the worst thing that would happen to him.

144
00:10:27.360 --> 00:10:30.919
That was still more than a year away. For now,

145
00:10:31.120 --> 00:10:33.120
in the late months of nineteen ninety six, there was

146
00:10:33.159 --> 00:10:37.919
a kind of fragile equilibrium. The war was formerly over.

147
00:10:38.519 --> 00:10:42.039
The lawyers had done their work. Charles and Diana existed

148
00:10:42.039 --> 00:10:46.039
in separate orbits, occasionally intersecting around their sons, but no

149
00:10:46.159 --> 00:10:49.279
longer locked in the daily combat that had defined the

150
00:10:49.320 --> 00:10:54.399
previous decade. Diana was building something new for herself, something

151
00:10:54.440 --> 00:10:57.360
that felt to those who knew her like the beginning

152
00:10:57.360 --> 00:11:01.159
of a genuine reinvention. She was free. She was fifty

153
00:11:01.200 --> 00:11:18.279
six days from her death. Next time on Crown and Controversy,

154
00:11:18.600 --> 00:11:21.919
King Charles Diana dies in a Paris tunnel, and the

155
00:11:21.919 --> 00:11:26.360
world stops. Charles flies to Paris to bring her body

156
00:11:26.360 --> 00:11:29.399
home and must tell his sons their mother is gone.

157
00:11:30.559 --> 00:11:33.639
As the nation's grief turns to anger at the royal family,

158
00:11:34.120 --> 00:11:38.279
Charles walks behind Diana's coffin with his two devastated boys,

159
00:11:38.639 --> 00:11:41.440
appearing to carry a weight that many believed would never

160
00:11:41.519 --> 00:11:50.759
fully leave him.

161
00:11:51.279 --> 00:11:55.120
Crown and Controversy is a production of Calaroga Shark Media

162
00:11:55.919 --> 00:12:00.879
executive producers Mark Francis and John McDermot. While no one

163
00:12:00.919 --> 00:12:04.879
truly knows what happens behind closed palace doors, this series

164
00:12:04.960 --> 00:12:08.879
uses news sources, on the record, quotes, and some artistic

165
00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:13.480
license to craft this entertainment series. Some moments have been

166
00:12:13.559 --> 00:12:19.799
dramatized for storytelling effect where appropriate character perspectives and motivations

167
00:12:20.200 --> 00:12:26.559
are drawn from reported accounts, interviews, and biographical sources. AI

168
00:12:26.720 --> 00:12:32.240
narration was used in the creation of this series. To

169
00:12:32.320 --> 00:12:35.279
keep up with the modern day Royal family, follow our

170
00:12:35.279 --> 00:12:39.200
podcast Palace Intrigue, a seven day a week, ten minute

171
00:12:39.279 --> 00:12:48.759
update on the Royals.