Princess Diana and Prince Charles “Both Cried” During an Unexpected Moment on the Day They Finalized Their Divorce
Princess Diana and Prince Charles “Both Cried” During an Unexpected Moment on the Day They Finalized Their Divorce
Rachel BurchfieldSun, October 25, 2026 at 7:20 PM UTC
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Credit: Getty ImagesThe Gist -
Princess Diana and Prince Charles were separated for four years before their divorce was finalized on August 28, 1996.
On that day, the former couple “sat down together on the sofa, and they both cried,” a biographer claimed.
Diana died almost exactly a year later in 1997.
Princess Diana and Prince Charles finalized their divorce 30 years ago, marking the end of their contentious and highly publicized marriage. On August 28, 1996, the pair made their separation official, nearly four years after splitting up in 1992, and shared one final emotional moment together.
In the documentary, The Royal Family at War, royal biographer Ingrid Seward said, “Diana did tell me something quite interesting. She said that on the day of the divorce, she and Charles sat down together on the sofa, and they both cried.”
Prince Charles and Princess Diana on November 3, 1992Credit: Getty Images
Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliam also said that, while this may be surprising for many to hear, “It seems once Charles and Diana accepted that their marriage was over, they both did have a natural feeling of sadness. But there was also a lot of mutual exhaustion after fighting their relationship battle in public for so many years that might have just caused this emotional moment.”
According to Seward, who is also the editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, once Charles and Diana agreed to end their tumultuous marriage, “It was this crazy separation, but by the time the divorce was finalized, they were on much better terms.”
Princess Diana and Prince Charles on March 15, 1989Credit: Getty
Fitzwilliams added that after agreeing to separate and ultimately divorce, “things had calmed down a little between the two.”
“They had their own lives and their children to look after,” he said. “Their marriage was a disaster from early on, but despite the bitterness between them, they were both very good parents to Prince William and Prince Harry throughout.”
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Diana and Charles had a difficult marriage from the very start; the princess recalled years later how their 1981 honeymoon was marred by “total jealousy,” while royal experts claim the couple had “many blazing rows.” The source of Diana’s grief in part was Charles’s longtime mistress and then ex-girlfriend, Camilla Parker Bowles—now Queen Camilla—who had gifted Charles cufflinks with two entwined “C’s” following his wedding to Diana.
While on the 12-day Mediterranean cruise aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia, Diana at one point “destroyed” the art supplies Charles had brought and “hated” the books he read because she “was offended that he might prefer to bury his head in one of them rather than sit and talk to her.”
Princess Diana, Prince Harry, Prince William, and Prince Charles on September 6, 1995Credit: Getty
In June 1997, former Vanity Fair and The New Yorker editor-in-chief and royal biographer Tina Brown had lunch with the former Princess of Wales and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour in New York City. In Brown’s 2007 book The Diana Chronicles (via TIME), she wrote about the lunch and said that “At the end of Diana’s life, she and Charles were on the best terms they’d been for a very long time. Charles got into the habit of dropping in on her at Kensington Palace, and they would have tea and a sort of rueful exchange. They even had some laughs together.”
“It was definitely calming down—the boys were older,” Brown added. “They talked about their philanthropies.” Brown also said that Diana “had accepted Camilla. One thing she had finally done was really understand that Camilla was the love of his life, and there was just nothing she could do about it.”
Princess Diana on June 17, 1997Credit: Getty
Yet, Brown continued, Diana told her and Wintour “she would go back to Charles in a heartbeat if he wanted her,” reportedly adding that she thought that she and Charles would have made a great team. Sadly, just 368 days after their divorce was finalized, Diana tragically lost her life following a Paris car crash on August 31, 1997. She was just 36 years old.
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