For instance, you have so much pain inside yourself that you try and hurt yourself on the outside cuz you want help, but it’s the wrong help you’re asking for. In 1995, no one talked about this publicly. Certainly not royals. Certainly not in prime time. People see it as crying wolf or attention seeking, and they think because you’re in the media all the time, you’ve got enough attention, inverted commas.
But I was actually crying out cuz I wanted to get better in order to go forward and continue my duty and my role as wife, mother, Princess of Wales. So, I yes, I did inflict upon myself. I didn’t like myself. I was ashamed that I couldn’t cope with the pressures. She wasn’t performing. She was drowning, [music] and she broke a taboo that didn’t even have a name yet.
The depression was resolved, as you say. But it was subsequently reported that you suffered bulimia. Mhm. Is that true? Mhm. Yes, I did. I had bulimia for a number of years. And that’s like a secret disease you inflicted upon yourself because your self-esteem was too low, and you don’t think you’re worthy or valuable.
You fill your stomach up four or five times a day. Some Some do it more, and it gives you a feeling of comfort. It’s like having a pair of arms around you, but it’s temporarily temporary. [snorts] Then you you were disgusted at the bloatedness of your stomach, and then you bring it all up again. She calls it a secret disease. You hide it because you’re ashamed.
Because your weight doesn’t change the way it does with anorexia. So, there’s no visible proof. You can pretend the whole way through. What was the cause? Cause was a situation where we my husband and I had to keep everything together because we didn’t want to disappoint the public. And yet there obviously there was a lot of anxiety going on within our four walls.
She doesn’t describe the bulimia as her problem. She describes it as a symptom, a signal that something was deeply wrong inside their marriage. I was crying out for help, but giving the wrong signals. And people were using my bulimia as a coat on a hanger. They decided that was the problem. Diana was unstable. And when Bashir pushes further, she names the cause directly.
By 1986, she says, she was aware that Charles had renewed his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles. She knew from staff, from people who cared about the marriage. Around 1986, again according to the biography written by Jonathan Dimbleby about your husband, he says that your husband renewed his relationship with Mrs. Camilla Parker Bowles.
Were you aware of that? Yes, I was. But I wasn’t in a position to do anything about it. What effect did that have on you? Pretty devastating. Rampant bulimia, if you can have rampant bulimia, and just a feeling of being no good at anything and being useless and hopeless and failed in every direction. And with a husband who was having a relationship with somebody else? >> Was a husband who loved someone else, yes.
You really thought that? Mhm. I didn’t think that, I knew it. Meanwhile, the public was watching a seemingly functioning royal couple. Same car, same engagements, same appearances. But behind closed doors, the reality was completely different. When they traveled abroad, they stayed in separate apartments, same floor, but separate.
Of course, that got leaked, too. She says they were actually a good team in public. She means it. Which somehow makes the whole picture more heartbreaking. Two people performing a marriage for the world while privately living in entirely different ones. Do you think Mrs. Parker Bowles was a factor in the breakdown of your marriage? Well, there were three of us in this marriage. So, it was a bit crowded.
>> [snorts] >> Then came the separation, December 1992, announced on the radio while Diana was on an engagement up north. She heard it alone, she says. A fairy tale had come to an end. But what came after the separation was, in many ways, worse. Because now she was no longer just a difficult wife.
She was a problem to be managed. Visits abroad were blocked. Letters went missing. And when a recording of a private phone call between her and a close friend was leaked to the press, she knew exactly what it was and what it was for. It was to make the public change their attitude towards me. It was It was a very much a poker game, chess game. A chess game.
That’s how she describes her own marriage breaking apart in public, as a strategic battle where every move was calculated, and every leak was a weapon. I’ll fight till the end because I believe that I have a role to fulfill. And I got two children to bring up. And that brings us to the question at the heart of the whole interview.
Not who did what to whom, but what does she actually want? What is she fighting for? Do you think you’ll ever be queen? No, I don’t. No. I’d like to be a queen of people’s hearts, in people’s hearts. But I don’t see myself being queen of this country. I don’t think many people would want me to be queen, actually.
When I say many people, I mean the establishment that I’m married into. Because they’ve decided that I’m a non-starter. In 1995, that sounded like a beautiful metaphor. Two years later, it became something else. Why do you think they decided that? Because I do things differently. Because I don’t go by a rule book. Because I lead from the heart, not the head.
And albeit that’s got me into trouble in my work, I understand that. But someone’s got to go out there and love people and show it. They see me as a a threat of some kind. Why do they see you as a threat? I think every strong woman in history has had to walk down a similar path, and I think it’s the strength that causes the confusion and the fear.
Why is she strong? Where does she get it from? Where is she taking it? Where is she going to use it? Why do the public still support her? She also talks about what the monarchy needs to become, not as someone tearing it down, but as someone who genuinely fears it becoming irrelevant. [music] “People are indifferent now,” she says.
They don’t care. People don’t care anymore. Force-fed royal drama for years and exhausted by it. “And indifference,” she says, “is the real danger.” She’s been taking William and Harry to homeless shelters, to hospices, to places no child of that family had likely ever been. She wants them to understand people’s fears, people’s hopes, people’s grief.
