Prince Charles 'nearly pulled out of wedding' to Princess Diana, new biography claims
THE Prince of Wales was so racked with doubt about marrying Princess Diana that he told an aide he couldn't go through with the wedding, a new biography claims.
Both Prince Charles and his fiancee considered calling off the wedding, according to Catherine Mayer's unauthorised biography Charles: Heart Of A King.
While the Prince suffered cold feet over rushing into nuptials with a girl he hardly knew, the former Lady Diana Spencer was aware that Charles had feelings for Camilla Parker Bowles.
Ms Mayer, whose book is published on Thursday, quotes a source close to the Prince as saying he was "desperate" on the eve of the 1981 ceremony.
After a brief courtship and a five-month engagement, Diana was "not the jolly country girl he had assumed".
Instead, Charles found her to be a highly sensitive, complex woman, in the throes of an eating disorder, the book asserts.
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Diana was not the jolly country girl he had assumed
Charles is said to have told a confidant: "I can't go through with it. I can't do it."
Ms Mayer's book quotes the friend as saying: "I always told him afterwards that if it had been a Catholic marriage, it could have been declared null.
"Because he wasn't really [committed], because she started with the bulimia and everything before the wedding."
Clarence House has cast doubt over the claims in the book, saying the Time magazine journalist has used "artistic licence" to describe the amount of time she spent with Charles.
She interviewed the Prince while researching an article for the magazine. An unnamed Clarence House aide said at the weekend that Ms Mayer asked the Prince just "three questions" in their meeting.
"She had about nine minutes with him; to suggest she had 10 minutes would be stretching it. It seems that artistic licence is being used to portray how much access she had.
"She has attended a number of events since then as part of the royal rota," according to the aide.
Ms Mayer said yesterday: "My Prince Charles biography is unauthorised and makes no over-claims about access."
The book is being serialised in The Times ahead of its publication.
