Royal Author Claims Prince Charles Chose Diana as Wife to Honor a Bizarre Tradition: "It Was About…"

Prince Charles and Princess Diana's marriage seemed like a fairytale romance in the beginning. Only those close to the couple initially knew the details of their tumultuous relationship. One striking revelation that later surfaced was that the couple's wedding was reportedly influenced by an archaic requirement. Tina Brown, author of The Palace Papers, claimed that royal tradition demanded a bride to be a virgin.

The tradition heavily influenced the search for a suitable bride for the heir to the throne, ultimately leading Charles to pick Diana. Brown, in an interview, compared the challenge of finding someone who met this expectation to the impossible task of hunting for the Loch Ness monster. As reported by The Cut, Brown stated, “Finding an intact woman in her late twenties amongst his contemporaries might have seemed easy from the Queen Mother’s point of view, but in the freewheeling sexual mores of seventies London society, it was about as likely as a sighting of the Loch Ness monster."

She added, “No wonder he wound up marrying the twenty-year-old ingénue Lady Diana Spencer.” This ruled out Camilla Parker Bowles—Charles' true love—as a potential match since she was already married. In The Palace Papers, Brown wrote, “Camilla understood that the achingly archaic requirement of virginity in a royal bride was a deal-breaker in her relationship with Charles." In hindsight, it is hence interesting to ask if the tradition singularly triggered decades of turmoil for both Charles and Diana as the pair was otherwise incompatible. The aftermath of the same echoes in headlines that haunt the Crown, even as Camilla stepped into her role as Queen Consort, She Knows reported.

As per Vanity Fair, Diana’s uncle, Lord Fermoy, at the time, had stressed, “Purity seems to be at a premium when it comes to discussing a possible bride for Prince Charles...Diana, I can assure you, has never had a lover.” Brown backed up the claim and argued Diana's youthful innocence and lack of previous relationships had greatly appealed to the late Queen. Diana was only 19 when Charles proposed to her.

Although the UK has no such law that requires a royal bride to be a virgin, the Royal Marriages Act of 1772 mandates that descendants of George II must seek the reigning monarch's approval before marrying. So the Queen's approval went a long way in Charles' decision to pick Diana as his wife. The issue of Diana’s virginity also greatly interested the public, especially after the ‘Love Train’ incident of 1980 when the media reported that Diana met Charles late at night on the Royal Train in Wiltshire. This Brown claimed further influenced the Crown to maintain Diana's image as a virgin.