PRINCESS Diana would have eventually “accepted” Charles’ relationship with Camilla if she was still alive, her former bodyguard says.
Ken Wharfe has opened up about his working life with Diana 27 years after she died in Paris.
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Diana and Charles got married on July 29, 1981Credit: Getty – Contributor
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The then Prince and Princess of Wales in Korea, November 1992 – their last official trip togetherCredit: Tim Graham – Getty
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Ken Wharfe, pictured with Diana in 1988, was the royal’s bodyguard for six yearsCredit: Tim Graham – Getty
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Diana Spencer and Camilla Parker-Bowles at Ludlow Races where Prince Charles was competing in 1980Credit: Hulton Archive – Getty
The then-Prince and Princess of Wales split in 1992 and finalised their divorce in 1996.
Two years after Diana was killed in a horror car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997, Camilla and Charles publicly revealed their relationship.
But Wharfe, who was Diana’s personal protection officer from 1987 to 1993, said Camilla was on the scene from day one.
Diana famously outed their affair to Martin Bashir in an interview that sent shockwaves across the world.
“There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” she said.
Wharfe told The Sun: “Part of Diana’s problem was that she naively believed that the relationship with Camilla would fade away.
“But let’s be honest, Camilla was there from day one.
“Camilla from my time, I went there in the mids 80s, was very much the discussion at the time.
“And Diana’s openness, she felt it necessary to give me the complete low down of the relationship.
“I questioned that at the time, but actually having listened to her, it made me understand Diana a lot better.
I was gobsmacked as Diana told me EVERYTHING about Charles’ affair, I kept her secrets for years
“And she naively believed that it would end.
“There is no doubt in my mind that Diana did love Charles. I mean she said that to me repeatedly.”
A year after divorcing Charles, Diana was tragically killed at the age of 36 in a shocking car crash in Paris.
Egyptian film producer Dodi Fayed, 42, and Ritz security chief Henri Paul, who was driving, were also killed in the 1997 crash.
The sole survivor of the crash was Dodi’s bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones.
Paul had been drinking before getting behind the wheel and was driving at a high speed when the car smashed into the 13th pillar of the Pont de l’Alma underpass.
Wharfe believes that had Diana not been killed, she and Charles wouldn’t have restarted their relationship at any point.
He says, however, that Diana would’ve eventually accepted Charles and Camilla being together.
He said: “From my own experience in life, you move on and you change, you mellow slightly, and you deal with situations in a much calmer way.
“And I’m sure Diana would have done that. She was very good at that.”
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The wreckage of the car Diana was travelling in before it crashed in 1997Credit: AFP
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Camilla and Charles were pictured as a couple at her sister’s party at the Ritz in 1999Credit: News Group Newspapers Ltd
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The couple got engaged in 2005Credit: Reuters
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Charles and Camilla got married in 2005Credit: PA
He added: “Time, as everyone says, is a great healer.
“Diana was angry with the Prince of Wales, angry with her circumstances, angry with Camilla, angry with everybody.
“But you know you know, things heal. And as time progressed, she would have been in her 60s now, she would have accepted.”
Charles and Camilla’s relationship began back in 1971 when the pair were introduced by mutual friend Lucia Santa Cruz.
Aged 23 they quickly became close friends talking for hours on the phone and spending as much time together as possible.
But their relationship never progressed after Charles’ great-uncle Lord Mountbatten warned she was not sufficiently aristocratic.
The pair went their separate ways – and after Charles returned from serving in the Royal Navy, he discovered she was engaged to Andrew Parker Bowles.
Diana was angry with the Prince of Wales, angry with her circumstances, angry with Camilla, angry with everybody.
Ken Wharfe
Camilla and Andrew tied the knot in 1973, while Charles married Diana eight years later on July 29, 1981.
But Camilla and Charles kept up contact, and Diana recounted her “tricky” relationship to Andrew Morton for the 1992 biography Diana: Her True Story – In Her Own Words.
She claimed that before her wedding, she found out Charles had a bracelet made with the initials “G” and “F” for Gladys and Fred – pet names Camilla and Charles had for each other.
Diana also found photos of Camilla in Charles’ diary on their honeymoon, as well as cufflinks with the initials “C” and “C” intertwined.
In 1994, Charles admitted to Jonathan Dimbleby in a TV documentary that while he had been faithful to Diana initially, he had only been so until his marriage had “irretrievably broken down”.
In 1989, Diana confronted Camilla about their affair at a party.
But it wasn’t until two years after Diana’s death that the couple stepped out publicly at a party for Camilla’s sister at The Ritz in London.
But following public outrage, the couple kept their romance on the lowdown with Camilla describing the backlash as “hell” and something she “wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy.”
Camilla even waited until 2000 to meet the late Queen and she and Charles didn’t share their first kiss in public until 2001.
In 2003 the couple moved into their current home of Clarence House and two years later the couple announced their engagement.
The pair tied the knot in a civil ceremony at Windsor Guildhall, on April 9, 2005.
