Princess Diana Couldn't Stand The 'Wretched' Objects Prince Charles Brought On Their Honeymoon

Honeymoons are generally thought of as a time to bond with one's new spouse, but unfortunately for Princess Diana, the then-Prince Charles had other ideas. The groom packed painting supplies and books for the cruise portion of their post-wedding trip, and according to more than one royal biographer, Diana was not amused.

In Penny Junor's biography of now-Queen Camilla, "The Duchess," the author writes that ahead of his honeymoon with Diana, "The prince envisaged a wonderful holiday in the sun, swimming, reading, painting and writing thank-you letters." To his majesty's credit, while reading is generally a solitary activity, his idea was that he and his bride would later discuss the books. However, the princess was heartbroken. "Diana was no reader and was offended that he should prefer to bury his head in a book rather than sit and talk to her. She hated his wretched books," Junor writes. As for the painting, that idea didn't go down particularly well either. In fact, there was one occasion when Diana became so irritated that she took matters into her own hands. "One day, when he was sitting on the veranda deck, he went off to look at something for half an hour. He came back to find she had destroyed the whole lot," Junor penned. 

That Diana was so upset about King Charles III's pastimes isn't that surprising when taking into account that, despite it being their honeymoon, they were barely ever alone together. "We were never on our own. I remember crying my eyes out on my honeymoon. I was so tired," Diana said in the secret tapes used for Andrew Morton's 1992 biography on her, "Diana: Her True Story — In Her Own Words" (via YouTube). Sadly, Charles' hobbies weren't the only reason why.

Taking fairly antisocial hobbies along on a honeymoon where the newlyweds would already be spending very little time together as just the two of them would be a pretty shady move by the then-Prince Charles in itself, but Princess Diana also told Andrew Morton that he'd taken some particularly offensive keepsakes along with them as well. As she shared in the secret tapes with Morton, her new husband kept not just one, but two reminders of Camilla Parker-Bowles with him. 

"We were opening our diaries to discuss various things. Out comes two pictures of Camilla," Diana recalled (via YouTube). There was another reminder of Camilla at a white-tie dinner that took place during their honeymoon. "Cufflinks arrive on his wrists, two 'C's entwined, like the Chanel 'C,'" Diana recounted. Of course, they weren't Chanel, and Diana noted that she "got it in one. I knew exactly." Sadly, when she confronted her new husband about them and asked if Queen Camilla had given them to him, he'd asked why that should be an issue. "He said, 'What's wrong? They're a present from a friend,'" she said. 

In one particularly heartbreaking recollection from the honeymoon, Diana admitted that she couldn't even escape her new reality while she slept. "My dreams were appalling at night. I dreamt of Camilla the whole time," Diana shared. A heartbreaking start to a very difficult marriage, and even decades after her death, our hearts go out to the late princess.