Did Princess Diana Cheat on Prince Charles? Who She Had Affair With

A turn of events. According to a royal officer, Princess Diana cheated on Prince Charles before his affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles.

Charles and Diana, then Prince and Princess of Wales, were married on 19 July 1981 and divorced on 26 August 1996. Charles married his second wife, Camilla Parker Bowles, on April 9, 2005. In the documentation from 2022 The Diana Interview: A Princess’s Revenge, Diana’s astrologer and friend, Penny Thornton, claimed the princess told her Charles had said he “didn’t love her” the day before their wedding. “One of the most shocking things Diana told me was that the night before the wedding Charles told her he didn’t love her,” Thornton said. “I think Charles didn’t want to go into the wedding under the wrong assumptions. He wanted to work it out with her and it was devastating for Diana.”

Did Princess Diana cheat on Prince Charles?

Image: Getty Images.

Did Princess Diana cheat on Prince Charles before his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles? Allan Peters, a personal protection officer who worked with the Prince of Wales for nine years, told CNN’s new docuseries: Dianathat the Princess of Wales had a romance with her bodyguard Barry Mannakee months before Charles’ affair with Camilla. “The widespread perception is that the Prince of Wales was wrong throughout his marriage and that is definitely and clearly not the case,” Peters said in the docuseries, according to Newsweek.

He continued: “The first person to get lost was the princess. He went back to see Mrs. Parker-Bowles after learning of her affair with Mannakee. Nobody is the bad guy. In my view, everyone is a victim. He was under a lot of pressure to get married and she too was a victim of that whole process.”

The documentaries included private speech coaching tapes with Diana, in which she said she “fell deeply in love with Mannakee when she was “24 or 25.” Diana and Charles married on July 29, 1981. She turned 24 on July 1, 1985, a year before her affair with her bodyguard was discovered. “I’m going to tell you about one of the biggest crushes of my life, which I can’t easily talk about,” Diana told her speech coach Peter Settelen in the tapes. “When I was 24 or 25, I fell deeply in love with someone who worked in this environment. And he was the best friend I’ve ever had. “I was always walking around trying to see him. I just wore my heart on my sleeve and was only happy when he was there and the rest.”

She continued, “Yes, I thought you could say I did, yes (see him as a father figure). I’m sure I did. I was like a little girl in front of him the whole time.”

The docuseries reported that Diana Settelen told Settelen that she knew Charles – who first started dating Camilla in 1970 – had gotten back to his ex five years after their marriage, in 1986, although Diana suspected their affair earlier. “My father-in-law said to my husband, ‘Erm, if your marriage doesn’t work out, you can always go back to her after five years,’ which is exactly, I mean really, I know it happened after five years, I already knew before something happens,” Diana said to Settelen on tapes.

According to the docuseries, Mannakee was fired from his job as Diana’s bodyguard in 1986 after their affair was discovered. Months later in 1987, he died in a car accident while in the passenger seat of a motorcycle. The death was ruled an accident, but Diana believed at the time it may have been “pushed off”. “Charles said to me, ‘He died in a motorcycle accident’ and that was the hardest blow of my life, I have to say. It was killer,” she said in the tapes. And Charles, even though he knew it, but he never had any proof, and he just did it to me so much, and there was nothing I could do. I just sat there all day going through this huge high profile visit to Cannes, just devastated. “I think he took off. But here we are. We will never know. I should never have played with fire and I did. I got badly burned.”

In the docuseries, Peters recalled a time when he confronted Diana about her romance with Mannakee, where she admitted to being in love with him. “Barry Mannakee was a protection officer on our team and I noticed that her behavior was unusual when we were anywhere near Barry Mannakee, which certainly indicated that something might have happened between them, so I decided to go with her to talk about it,” Peters said.

He continued: “For the first 20 minutes she was absolutely categorical in denial but then she told me exactly what was going on. She kind of had a relationship with Mannakee. My main thing was to convince them how dangerous and impossible it would be for them to stay with the boys. It was just madness.”

According to Peters, Diana was told Mannakee was removed from his position as her bodyguard because the working hours were too much for his personal life, an excuse Diana didn’t buy. “They went on a joint engagement and she was obviously very upset,” Peters said. Peters also revealed that Prince Charles asked him why Diana was upset after Mannakee was removed from her personal protection.

“The Prince of Wales came up to me and said, ‘Why is the princess acting the way she is? What on earth is going on,’” recalled Peters. “So I said, ‘You need to talk to her.’ And he said, “Well, I’ve tried all that and the only thing that seems to upset her is that Barry Mannakee is back in uniform, and if she’s that upset, Barry can stay.” “At that stage I was forced to say, ‘Well sir, if he stays, I’m afraid I’ll have to go.'”

Peters claimed that it was during this conversation that Charles realized Diana’s feelings for Mannakee. “And I think that’s where the penny dropped. He was deeply shocked and was clearly, clearly very upset,” he said.

Image: Courtesy of Thorndike Press.

For more information on Princess Diana, check out Andrew Morton’s biography. Diana: Her true story – in her words. The New York Times bestseller, first published in 1992, is the only authorized biography of Princess Diana. The book, which Diana worked on, contains raw and unfiltered quotes from the Princess of Wales about her unhappy marriage to Prince Charles, her relationship with Queen Elizabeth II, her life in the House of Windsor and her hopes, dreams and fears for her children, Prince William and Prince Harry, before her death in 1997. The biography, which has been described as “the closest we’ll ever get” to an autobiography by Princess Diana, was released in 2017 with new footage commemorating the People’s Princess’ 20th death.

At STYLECASTER our mission is to bring style to people and we only offer products that we think you will love as much as we do. Please note that if you purchase something by clicking a link in this story, we may receive a small sales commission.