But it was Diana’s fault too. To win the heart of the heir to the throne, the shrewd girl had pretended to be a shooting enthusiast. As Charles would narrow his sights on pheasants, Diana narrowed hers on him. To impress Charles, she would fake interest in fishing and “sit for hours on the riverbank as if her life depended on penetrating these mysteries.”
While hunting, shooting, and fishing could be the perquisites for being a royal mistress, all these pretensions fizzled out once Diana married. Originally attracted by the cordial, mannerly, and handsome look of the Prince of Wales, she later fell for “younger, cuter, and far less burdened version of Charles.” The typical Dianaman were smooth, cutout kind of guys like Major Hewitt and bodyguard Barry Mannakee.
In her equations with boy-boy lovers, Diana always strove to be the one with the power "to push the delete button." Like a spoiled super-rich society lady, Diana would treat her ‘toys’ as kept men. Though she merely played with the poor Dodi Fayed, her affair with the Pakistani doctor Dr. Hasnat Khan was more serious. She even considered converting to Islam to marry him and went to the extent of meeting his family at Lahore. But Khan, being a proud Pathan, would marry only a Pakistani Muslim girl which he finally did in 2006.
One of the factors that eclipsed Diana’s married life was sex. According to Charles, their “first night was nothing special. She was painfully naïve.” How ironic! Diana’s virginity, so crucial in getting her to royal bedchamber, ended in a libidinous disappointment for the prince of her dreams. Charles liked things being done to him. He preferred being a passive partner. Author Barbara Cartland, who was Diana’s grandmother by her father’s second marriage, had this judgment on the reasons for the marriage failure: “Of course, you know where it all went wrong. She wouldn’t do oral sex.”
Diana too admitted that sex “wasn’t up to much” and that Charles’s was a mere “roll on, roll off” performance. Don’t blame the woman for not trying. After the birth of her second child, she would seduce Charles by strip teasing in suggestive lingerie and soft music, but he is said to have only “mildly enjoyed” these bedroom antics. According to Brown, the Prince preferred his women to lead him, master him and mother him. Perhaps that explains the intensity he shared with that excellent horse rider Camilla Parker Bowles, the ominous, all-pervasive Rebecca De Winters of Diana’s life.
Article comments
1 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Great writing, Mayank. I'd like to think of it as "the thinking man's review of the thinking man’s Diana trash." Well, all except for the naughty bits -- but that's part of the compliment, too, somehow.
2 - bliffle
...and Tina Brown gets my vote as The Thinking Mans Bombshell. Watch the interview by Charlie Rose, the only man in america who looks good in a pinstripe suit.
3 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net , which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States, and to Boston.com. Nice work!