However, the princess still wanted to save their marriage, a heartbreaking new memoir claims.
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An upcoming memoir from Princess Diana’s longtime dance teacher is revealing heartbreaking new details about her unhappy marriage with King Charles. Anne Allen—who began teaching dance lessons to the late royal shortly after she married Charles—claims she became Diana’s confidante during the nine years they spent working together, and was privy to some of the princess’s most candid confessions about her relationship as Charles pursued an affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles.
In an exclusive excerpt from the memoir shared with People, the London City Ballet dancer revealed that Diana struggled with not feeling “enough” for her husband, but said that keeping their family together was “the most important thing” to her even while they were estranged.
Allen claims that cracks in the couple’s marriage began to show when Diana got visibly emotional and started crying during a dance lesson. The teacher recounted the “hurt” and “helplessness” the late princess displayed as she confided, “I just can’t seem to do anything right when it comes to my husband. I do love him so much and want him to be proud of me, but I don’t think he feels the same way.”
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Diana reportedly told Allen that she knew that Charles had begun his affair with Camilla again, saying, “I don’t understand why I am not enough for him. I think he prefers an older woman. Am I expected to accept that, like the other Princesses of Wales before, one just turns a blind eye to husbands having a mistress?”
She also shared her anguish over the loneliness she felt, saying she’d tried everything to mend bridges and get closer to her husband.
“Why does he not love me? I really don’t understand,” she reportedly told her dance teacher. “I have tried everything, tried to conform to his wishes even though I don’t always agree. There’s no affection between us, and I am always on my own. I just want to be loved. I can’t keep going on like this. They are really expecting me to just say nothing and keep going. How do I do that?”
Allen also shared another vulnerable moment later on, when Charles and Diana were living separate lives and considering ending their marriage. The teacher claims that the late princess was conflicted as she still wanted to work things out with the father of her two kids amidst their estrangement.
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“I just don’t know what to do, Anne. I find myself in an unbearable situation,” Diana reportedly told her teacher after breaking down at the dance studio. “I haven’t seen Charles for weeks and he doesn’t want to talk to me. I thought he would come back to me, and we could work things out. How do I go on when I’m not wanted?”
Allen also claimed that Diana was still willing to work past the couple’s issues despite Charles’s infidelity, as she reportedly told her dance teacher, “Keeping my family together is the most important thing to me.”