Princess Diana Part 1: The Royal Romance That Was Over Before It Began

Princess Diana Part 1: The Royal Romance That Was Over Before It Began

Kyle Risi: [00:00:00] [00:01:00] We are back season three, baby.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Bitches.

Kyle Risi: Adam. Oh, what, where did that come from? That was very abrupt, very aggressive.

Adam Cox: Is that not okay. Okay.

Kyle Risi: I think that's gonna be shocking for our listeners to record for

Adam Cox: our

Kyle Risi: bitches. God, this is not the best start for season three.

Listen, should we just run the intro?

Adam Cox: Yeah. Okay.

Kyle Risi: Welcome to the Compendium and Assembly of Fascinating Things, a weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any [00:02:00] social gathering.

Adam Cox: We explore stories from the darker corners of true crime, the hidden gems of history, and the jaw dropping deeds of extraordinary people.

Kyle Risi: I'm your host for this week's episode, Kyle Reese.

Adam Cox: And I'm Adam Cox, the secret circus shopper of, of the week. Oh yeah.

Kyle Risi: So you are going around all the different circuses.

Adam Cox: And exploring

Kyle Risi: the

Adam Cox: experience. That's right. And then, feeding back to head office.

Kyle Risi: Are you doing the Compendium circus? Yeah. Oh God, so

Adam Cox: far it's not good.

Kyle Risi: Well, you're the one who started off with Bitch,

Adam Cox: Yeah, I'm a little concerned. I'm gonna have to come up with another 51 random jobs for the circus. Yeah. You need to get your work done.

I've been doing this for two years. I dunno if I can think of anymore.

Kyle Risi: soon you'll just be like, I don't know. Checkout Lady of the Circus.

Adam Cox: To be fair, that's probably next week,

Kyle Risi: So Adam, season three, how do you feel?

Adam Cox: I know we haven't been taken off the air at all.

Kyle Risi: No. In fact, our listeners love us. Who would've ever thought Yeah.

Adam Cox: Not me.

Kyle Risi: I am genuinely, totally humbled by the fact that we managed to last three seasons.

Adam Cox: Yeah. And, the [00:03:00] podcast is still growing. We get some really nice reviews. Nice suggestions. We can't always do the episodes that people suggest, but we do note them down. And when we think we can like do the story justice, then we definitely come back to them

Kyle Risi: So by the time we finish this season in a year's time, that's another 62 ads, like 180 episodes. That's right. It's crazy. So. We're gonna kick off with a bang today, and I'm gonna be telling you a story that I've wanted to tell you for a hell of a long time. But before we get there, Adam, should we do some housekeeping?

Adam Cox: Okay,

Kyle Risi: guys, if you are new to the show and you want to support us, then the absolute best way to support the show and enjoy exclusive perks is to join us over at Patreon. Signing up for free gets you access to next week's episode in the entire seven days before anyone else.

Adam Cox: For as little as $3 a month, you'll become a fellow freak of the show, unlocking our entire back catalog, including classic episodes about the Beanie Baby bubble and the truth behind the Jonestown Massacre.

Kyle Risi: And of course, as a special thank you, our certified free team members receive [00:04:00] an exclusive compendium key chain. All you need to do is just DM us with your address and we will send one straight to your door so we can always be dangling there near your crutch.

Yes.

Adam Cox: And lastly, guys, please follow us on your favorite podcast app and leave us a review. Your support helps others find us and keeps these amazing stories coming.

Kyle Risi: Absolutely guys. If only 10% of the people that actually followed our show left us a review, it would just skyrocket the number of reviews and ratings that we have.

And it would just bring new listens to the show and it costs you absolutely nothing. So if you get a chance, just hit that follow button and give us a star review if you can. A five star review. And if you have a one star review for us,

Adam Cox: don't,

Kyle Risi: I was gonna say, I know a couple podcasts where you could leave those reviews.

Adam Cox: You also have the website as well, so if you do fancy like leaving us, it's slightly. Longer review, then you can do it there.

Kyle Risi: That's right. Yeah. They go on straight away. So, Adam, today on the Compendium, we are diving into an [00:05:00] assembly of childhood ghosts, royal rituals, and a girl who thought she'd found love.

Adam Cox: Okay. I think I've got an idea.

Kyle Risi: What are you thinking? Boy,

Adam Cox: boy, boy. I'm thinking of a princess. Mm-hmm. I'm thinking of a princess we all know and love. Mm-hmm. Princess Diana.

Kyle Risi: Yes, Adam. Today we're actually kicking off season three of the compendium with a story that I've wanted to do for so long, and it's such a massive one that for the first time ever we are doing a three parter episode. We are diving into the life of Princess Diana.

Adam Cox: A three parter. 3, 3, 3 episodes, it goes against the grain. I know it does. The whole point of this episode is one hour.

Kyle Risi: Listen, the way that we've split this out is we have segmented them into kind of the three key areas of her life. So depending on what you're interested in the most, you can just dive into that particular episode so you can [00:06:00] kind of be treated as a standalone episode.

And also to keep in the spirit of things, we may not necessarily release them back to back. Okay. We might split them up over maybe six weeks or so.

Adam Cox: Okay.

Kyle Risi: To give you a bit of a breather. But yeah, Adam, it's a big topic. And listen, it has always been, when it comes to the story of Diana, a massive, contentious subject, especially in the Reese household.

I've always loved Diana ever since I can remember, it's the glamor, it's the charisma . And of course, you can't deny the incredible work that she's done for all of her different charities and the warmth and the utter presence that she has.

Like she's the original drag queen. She oozes charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent all in one.

Adam Cox: I mean, I thought she's the original drag queen.

People be fact checking you, Kyle,

Kyle Risi: but she would be on RuPaul's drug race as a judge if she was still alive today. Guaranteed.

Adam Cox: Maybe, I dunno if that'd allow it. What they call the, the comp. Is it the company the she used to refer to the royal family, like cog, but the [00:07:00] people behind the scenes, but in the institution.

The institution, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's it.

Kyle Risi: And the thing is though, when it comes to Diana, the biggest part of her entire story is that very slow motion tragedy of her marriage to Prince King Charles, as well as of course the isolation, and just the way that she was swallowed up by the entire institution.

Adam Cox: I love how even after two years on the throne mm-hmm. He's still Prince King, Charles he'll never not be a prince.

Kyle Risi: No. He is always gonna be a Prince Charles for me. And I think a lot of people picked up on that very early on the sense of this young woman who was chewed up by the crown, which is maybe why she was embraced so fiercely as a people's princess in the eyes of the public.

Not because she asked for it, but it's because we could sense that she had been disavowed by the very people that were supposed to have protected her, the institution. Do you know what I mean?

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: And every time Diana came up in our household growing up, my mom would always give the world's most theatric eye roll. And it's because my mom always saw her as this kind of master manipulator of the press, and she just didn't trust her.

And [00:08:00] honestly, it used to cause massive fights, especially like in my early twenties when every time we would bring it up my mom would just ah, princess Diana, what a joke, or whatever.

But what I didn't expect, while researching this episode is that my mom wasn't actually totally wrong about that.

Adam Cox: What do you mean?

Kyle Risi: Well, don't get me wrong, I don't see that press savviness as some kind of nefarious Machiavellian thing. I see it as someone who has been hounded and used and violated by the media for so many years who just finally learned how to flip that dynamic and how to work the circus to her own advantage.

She wasn't making the waves. It was more of a case that she learned how to ride the waves. Do you know what I mean?

Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess if you've been, at times probably mistreated by the press mm-hmm. Then yeah, you're gonna try and, weave in your own story or Yeah. Why wouldn't you do that if you could sort of bend the press a little bit?

Kyle Risi: So, I mean, I have a massive apology to make my mum because after reading some of the shocking things that Princess

Adam Cox: did, a scandal

Kyle Risi: absolutely scandalous, but also Adam [00:09:00] utterly, utterly embarrassing. Oh no, I can't wait to get to that in episode two.

now I probably don't need to explain who Princess Diana is. She's still probably one of the most famous women in the world, one of the most photographed people in human history, and that last part has a kind of bitter irony to it because those photos, those flashes are kind of what ended up killing her in the end. And it's because her image just became this commodity. It was a currency. There were literal millions of dollars on the line for a single shot of just her walking to a car, eating lunch, holding hands with someone.

most of those photos were just complete trash. They were like really grainy. They were taken from a mile away from the bushes or whatever, but they sold because. They were pictures of Diana. That's how in demand she

Adam Cox: was. She sold newspapers and magazines, everything.

Kyle Risi: I read this article that the paparazzi used to negotiate kind of syndication rights for her photographs.

Like they would sell the same image to three different publications in like a three day window. And on day one, the [00:10:00] tabloid might pay like $2 million for exclusive rights to print her pictures on day one. And then day two, another one would pay like $600,000 and then day three, someone might pay like a hundred thousand dollars . and what's really hilarious, is no one cared what the picture was. They just cared that it was just a picture of her. Mm-hmm.

now, if you're Gen Z or you just never really heard the full story. The simplest way to frame the life of Princess Diana is as a tragedy. It is a story of a love triangle. Between three of the most privileged people on this planet.

That is Princess Diana, prince Charles, and of course his mistress, Camilla Parker Bowls.

Adam Cox: Well, yeah. I mean, she's now the queen. Can you call her a mistress now? The other woman,

Kyle Risi: yeah, she was the other woman. And I say people very deliberately because in the story, they weren't really people. They were gilded animals in a cage on display, watched by the entire world. And that tragedy, of course, this love triangle ends [00:11:00] with the death of one of the most beloved royals in human history.

Do you, do you remember where you were when the news broke? That she was killed?

Adam Cox: Yeah, I remember I turned on the TV to watch either Saturday morning or Sunday morning cartoons.

Mm-hmm. And they weren't on. And I remember, according to my parents, oh, princess Diana's dead.

Kyle Risi: Did you even know what that meant at the time?

Adam Cox: Yeah. I was about 10, so I knew what it meant. But yeah, I just remember that's how I learned about it. And it was just a bit like. I didn't really understand it.

Mm-hmm. I think at the time

Kyle Risi: it's definitely one of those moments where like nine 11 or the seven seven bombings where it's like, where were you when X happened? Do you know what I mean? And this is definitely one of them.

Adam Cox: where were you?

Kyle Risi: Well, when the news broke, I remember waking up around about 7:00 AM and we were actually watching Toy Story on VHS for the very first time.

And the news suddenly just cut in and just everyone in the house just froze. And we were just all glued to the television pretty much all day. And in the weeks that followed, what I remember the most [00:12:00] vividly was just the sea of flowers and cards outside Buckham Palace.

Adam Cox: Yeah. And I remember, in our local town hall, and I assume just town halls across the country, there were books of condolences, which you could go in and sort of write and the public could go. So I remember doing that with my mom. So yeah, it was a, it's a big, big thing.

Kyle Risi: I read somewhere there underneath all the bouquets. Was just more flowers. So it turned into this kind of thick layer of just mulch. So like they were just putting flowers on top of flowers, on top of flowers, which is yeah, quite eerie in a way. But emotionally, what hit me the hardest was watching Prince Harry walk behind his mother's coffin.

'cause we were roughly around about the same age. And I always thought growing up that my mom looked like Princess Diana. Like they had the same blonde hair blue eyes. They would wear the same iconic 1990s kind of blue eyeliner.

And when I saw him walking behind her coffin, I felt like I was watching myself. Mm-hmm.

So for this very rare three part series, we are drawing on two major biographies. The first is going to be [00:13:00] Diana in her Own Words by a guy called Andrew Morton. And this is actually a book that's based on secretly recorded tapes made about her own life. And when the book came out in 1991, she of course denied having any involvement in it.

But then the tapes leaked and yeah, there was just no denying it. And honestly, you could tell anyway, because the book is really flattering about her. It kind of skims over some the more messier moments, which trust me, there are many.

And of course the second book we're gonna be drawing upon is the Diana Chronicles by a woman called Tina Brown. And Adam, it is the complete opposite of Andrew Morton's book because it's bold, it's unflinching, and sometimes really sensational, but it paints like a more fuller picture. And if you read both together, they give you a really well balanced view of her actual life.

And what I love about Tina's book is just how much she leans into kind of the weirdness and the rituals and the absurdities of royal life. [00:14:00] Like she doesn't sugarcoat anything it's less sugar, it's more salt. 100%. There is a line in her book that really sets the tone of how she's delivering Diana's life story.

And it goes, there is no other rival for her heart. A 28-year-old Charles, Philip Arthur George, his Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, or Arthur as he liked to be called when he climaxed. Oh, really? So that's the tone that we are working through. It really cuts through all the kind of pump and the ceremony and the respects, I guess, and just skewers in on the ridiculousness of it all.

Adam Cox: Yeah. I wasn't ready for that.

So the first book by Andrew Morton mm-hmm. With these tapes, did she know she was being recorded then, or

Kyle Risi: Oh yeah. No, she recorded the tapes and she funneled them to Andrew Morton. Ah, okay. So it's essentially Diana from Diana. It's a memoir, basically. Mm-hmm. Not written by Diana because she had to detach herself from it. But there was a very good reason why she decided to write this book, and it's because she could sense that her marriage has come [00:15:00] to an end she could sense that if she went through a separation or she went through a divorce, that part of those divorce proceedings would probably. Enact a gag order against her. Mm-hmm. So she wanted to Write her own side of the story mm-hmm. And get it out there before, kind of that was a possibility.

Adam Cox: I see. So she basically hired Andrew Morton in order to do that. Mm-hmm.

Kyle Risi: And also Princess Diana is a queen when it comes to pr. Mm-hmm. Like she knows how to work the media. She knows how to work that public kind of persona of hers in the best way. And I'm not saying that in a negative way. She's just very good at this. Mm-hmm. And honestly, this whole story plays out like an episode of Shameless, except everyone is in tiaras and ballgowns. And somehow that contrast between the fantasy and the dysfunctional makes it all so much more relatable because it drives home the one thing we all forget. And that is they're all just people in different outfits. To us. They're just really messy,

Adam Cox: expensive outfits.

Kyle Risi: [00:16:00] Expensive messy outfits. They've got gravy dripping down them.

Ew.

So here's how these three episodes are gonna be split out. The first episode is gonna be all about, princess Diana's childhood, her family, and her courtship with Prince, king Charles, and the cracks as they start to emerge in their early marriage.

Episode two is gonna be all about the collapse. And of course the affairs that kind of come to light, the implosion if you will, leading up to the divorce.

And then episode three is going to be spread across a single year of her life. And that is the final year because we are gonna leave off at the point that she gets divorced and it's almost exactly one year before she will then be killed in a car accident in Paris.

And so, these three episodes, they are a lot. We don't normally do three passes, but I've kept each episode pretty much self-contained. So you can jump in wherever you like.

So you ready for this?

Adam Cox: Let's do

Kyle Risi: it. So what part of Princess Diana's story intrigued you most? You don't have to necessarily say [00:17:00] this one because this is what we're doing.

Adam Cox: I mean, I've watched The Crown. Mm-hmm. And so I think all of her life is interesting, especially as she gets pulled into this almost like arranged marriage, isn't it?

Kind of, yeah. Is what it is. Mm-hmm. And I guess, it's not like the bit that I enjoy the most, but it's her trouble within the family, her bulimia, all that sort of stuff that was hidden for such a long period of time. And it's kinda like keeping up appearances essentially.

Kyle Risi: The bit that I am intrigued by the most, and we'll cover a lot of that in episode two is when she finally decides to separate from Prince Charles because she just blooms, she becomes more confident. She starts taking life into her own hands as she's way more in control and she becomes nasty and vindictive and she also becomes really sexual. And I just live for that. I love it.

Adam Cox: Yeah, you don't expect that in a princess. No, you don't. You don't see that in a Disney movie.

Kyle Risi: No, you definitely don't.

So Adam, the whole princess Diana, being the people's princess kind of [00:18:00] image has nothing to do with her upbringing. Yes. Her father was kind of Earl Spencer, but the real money in her family actually comes from her mother's side. their marriage was 100% a financial kind of alliance rather than any sort of romance, if you will,

when Diana is very little before her dad inherits his title, they actually live in a 10 bedroom modest house. They have six,

Adam Cox: Hang on, 10 bedroom, modest house.

Kyle Risi: They're not living in Althorp, which is kind of the family estate, which is that big massive giant castle type thing.

Adam Cox: Okay. But fine. But no house that is modest as 10 bedrooms.

Kyle Risi: Fair point, fair point. I mean, they also had six members of staff as well.

Adam Cox: Yeah. It's definitely not modest,

Kyle Risi: which sounds posh obviously, but Morton describes her childhood as one where she lacked for nothing materially, but everything emotionally. And hopefully that kind of sums up what her charters is like because her parents' marriage was dysfunctional at best.

It existed solely to preserve the [00:19:00] estate and also to produce a male heir, which is a massive problem when Francis gives birth to two daughters. And then in 1960 she finally does have a son, but he dies just two hours after his birth and Francis never even gets a chance to even hold him. She only finds out what happens to him on his birth certificate, where it lists that he died from extensive malformation.

Adam Cox: So I don't realize even as well, the 1960s for an Earl needed to have a male heir.

Kyle Risi: Oh yeah. Because at that time, the title can only get passed down by the male. Right. And if they don't have a son, then that title goes nowhere.

And of course, when the baby died, that was treated as her failure. So she ends up getting sent to a whole bunch of clinics, and a year later, she finally gives birth again. And it's a girl. And because it was considered bad luck to pick girl names when you were trying for a boy, the baby didn't even have a name for the first few weeks of his life, but eventually they ended up calling it Diana Francis Spencer.

[00:20:00] Oh, okay. And that's Princess Diana. And from the very beginning, Diana was very acutely aware that she was a disappointment. One of her earliest memories was being told that she should have been a boy.

And this is one of the recurring themes that we'll see about Diana, is that when you say something to her, especially when you're a kid who is very observant and they really pick up on things, if it's anything negative, especially about her or her inadequacies in terms of her intellect or whatever, she really holds onto that.

Mm-hmm. And she doesn't let go of it. And it really affects her right into adulthood. It's really sad.

So that throwaway line, the ones that adults barely even remember saying they stay with her for life. Eventually in nine six four, Francis does give birth to a son and his name is Charles.

But by then the damage in their relationship was already done, she's 28 years old, she's done her duty and now she is just ready to leave john. She starts spending more and more time in London. She's going to plays and dinner parties. She's basically carving [00:21:00] out a life of her own and honestly good for her.

Like they were absolutely miserable because like the entire marriage was built on this really stupid basis that A, we need money to fund the estate and also we need a male there.

So just like friction and resentment, especially after two failed daughters just caused an issue and caused a Chism, two failed daughters.

That feels unfair.

Adam Cox: Two,

Kyle Risi: you know what I mean? Failed twice at producing a marry

Adam Cox: children failures. Like

Kyle Risi: it's not what I meant. That's not how, please don't cancel me. This is

Adam Cox: why you're not a parent.

Kyle Risi: Good. Thank God.

One of Diana's earliest memories is watching her dad slap her mom while she's hiding behind her door. So many of her childhood memories are just of her mom crying.

So eventually Francis, she does meet someone else. His name is Peter Han kid, and he's a wealthy sheep farmer. They end up having an affair and she moves to London. She takes her kids with her, and for a while Diana experiences something almost normal, [00:22:00] like they don't have any staff.

She's riding the tube into London. Her mom is doing kind of the school drop offs. And meanwhile, while this very brief moment of normality is taking place, there is a big massive custody battle raging between her dad and her mom.

And in the end, John wins custody. And it's purely because he has a title and he has an estate,

Adam Cox: So he wins custody of Diana and her sisters

Kyle Risi: Diana, his sisters, and of course their brother Charles. Yeah. Mm-hmm. But also, it doesn't help the fact that Francis' own mother, so that's Diana's grandmother, she testifies against Francis in the custody hearing because she doesn't want the kids to stay with her daughter.

Really? Isn't that just awful? Mm-hmm. And it's because she was obsessed with elevating the family status. Like they grew up in Ingham, the Royals Christmas estate, and she'd spent her whole life trying to get the family closer to the crown.

So in her mind, siding with John just made more sense than siding with her daughter. And it's just brutal dude.

And so now John has custody and he is totally [00:23:00] emotionally unequipped. He's completely absent, he's super cold. He's in the house, but he's not really there. I think he's really acutely aware of the fact that he has these inadequacies as a dad because he tries to compensate with these really massive gestures, like renting kind of animals from the local zoo for their birthday parties.

But then the thing is though, after the party ends, the house just goes back to being cold and silence and empty. And even Diana's brother once said that he didn't even eat a meal with his dad until he was seven years old. And even then it was like he was eating across the room from a stranger.

Adam Cox: That seems so bizarre. That does feel like there's any like regular parenting, no care. Fun.

Kyle Risi: But that's the thing though, like because he grew up just exactly the same, he doesn't know any better. And I think that's part of the problem. Mm-hmm. Of course, to help with the kids, John cycles through a series of nannies, they're all young, they're all glamorous, and Diana becomes convinced that they're all trying to marry him.

And so her and her brother, they just terrorize them all. They put like [00:24:00] pins on their chairs, they lock them out the house. It's just total chaos. Like no one sticks around long enough to build kind of any trust or routine. So their lives. Have no real maternal kind of presence around them at all, other than when they're going off to go see their mom.

Adam Cox: They sound like nightmare children.

Kyle Risi: I mean, she probably was a nightmare child.

Adam Cox: It's like they need Mary Poppins to come in and sort them out.

Kyle Risi: If Mary Poppins is gonna go anywhere, it's gonna be to the Spencer household, right?

Adam Cox: Yeah. That'd be an interesting twist on Mary Poppins.

Kyle Risi: It turns out to be Princess Diana. Yeah.

Adam Cox: Like Mary Poppins three.

Kyle Risi: Could be. Yeah. I think you should write to someone.

And of course, like even though they're not together throughout all of this, John and Francis, they are still using their kids as weapons to test their loyalty to see which side they're on. So for example, Diana gets an invite to be a bridesmaid at a family wedding. Her mom gives her a green dress, her dad gives her a white one, and they're both expected to wear their dress that they've given her. So like how do you even [00:25:00] make that choice, right? Whichever one she picks, like someone is going to be let down. So it's absolutely devastating position to be in.

Adam Cox: Or is it just an excuse for a costume change, like mid party?

Kyle Risi: I don't think like 9-year-old Princess Diana's thinking like that.

Adam Cox: She should be.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. So when Diana turns 12, she finally is sent off to boarding school. And this is her chance to escape this weird sense of cold and loneliness. She's suffering through at home. But she's the only one in her class with divorced parents. And so she's acutely aware of this.

And so throughout school she just feels like an outsider amongst everyone else.

Adam Cox: It must have been, a lot less common. If she was growing up today, yeah, that'd be pretty much the norm in terms of co-parenting, like your

Kyle Risi: parents are together

Adam Cox: and different types of families. It's just, that's what it is now.

But back then, and especially from someone with money, that must have been like, yeah, she's a bit like an outcast.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. But the thing is though, even though she feels like an outsider, what's interesting is that her classmates don't really see it that way. Like in interviews they describe her as [00:26:00] actually popular. They describe her as funny, they describe her as athletic. Like she swam, she played netball, she acted in place. She seemed fine.

So there's this really interesting contrast between how she felt and how others saw her. Mm-hmm. That never really went away throughout her entire life.

you can definitely have that disconnect between how you feel and how you present to the world.

Adam Cox: That's what I mean. Like she must have felt like not normal or you know, not the norm. Mm-hmm. and so therefore felt different. But actually, yeah, on the surface of things, which is fine, she's doing okay. That clearly affected her quite a lot.

So she's joining clubs, things like that. What kind of student was she like? Was she good at school?

Kyle Risi: to be honest, she wasn't really the top of a class at all. Like she was just, okay. In fact, in Tina Brown's book, honestly, she's actually really cruel about how she talks about Diana's education. she focuses a lot on how she failed her O levels. But to me that doesn't say that she's stupid. It just says to me that she doesn't test well, do you know what I mean?

Adam Cox: Yeah. Or doesn't perhaps, I dunno, do well in class or whatever, but actually can still be smart.

Kyle Risi: But the [00:27:00] thing is though, Diana believes that she's really dumb as well, and it's probably low confidence that's been passed down from someone who's probably comparing her to the wrong people or comparing her to her brother or whatever it might be.

But she gets this deep sense that she is just completely inadequate when it comes to her intellect. And you can see this little moment, even in adulthood, if you go back to actually the crown, there is this little moment, and you might have missed it if you weren't looking for it, but basically when Charles proposes and they agree to get married, the queen asked Diana to choose her own engagement ring from Wright, the royal collection or whatever.

And one of the jewels that she picks up is a jewel from Burma. And the queen asked her like, do you know where Burma is? And he like, instead of saying no, I dunno where that is. Where is it? Diana just says, I've always been really thick when it comes to geography. So it's really tiny, but that is totally her.

That sums her up perfectly. That's how she talks about herself, like in this constant self-deprecating way, that's what she believed about herself, that she wasn't smart, that [00:28:00] she didn't know enough, and it's probably because someone, probably more than someone told her that over and over until it just ended up sticking.

Adam Cox: Yeah, that's cruel. That's sad. It's awful. I feel so awful for her

Kyle Risi: Yet. She's so extraordinary in her life. Do you know what I mean?

Adam Cox: Yeah. I think everyone looks past that. Everyone's she just seems normal.

Kyle Risi: It's also around about this time as a schoolgirl that people start noticing that Diana has this real incredible gift for empathy. There is this school trip that they all go on to like a mental institution somewhere, and most of the students kind of like really awkward. They're avoiding eye contact with the patients, but Diana does the complete opposite.

She walks straight up to them, she drops to her knees, she meets 'em at eye level, and she just. Connects with them, and then suddenly in that instance, the entire room just shifts the tensions break. The other kids see that there's nothing to be afraid of. Patients realize, oh, these are just kids. They're not gonna rip out my IV bag. And it's just all good. And within minutes, the whole place is just buzzing with voices echoing through the halls. Kids and [00:29:00] patients are laughing and talking. And it all starts with Diana. That's what she was like as a human being.

Adam Cox: So we know Diana for being in the media and obviously, helping kids, whatever it might be, in hospitals, there's the whole, the famous scene where she goes and see an AIDS patient.

Mm-hmm. But you always wonder, was that for kind of show? Was it for the press or whatever? But it seems like this was ingrained into her. It was

Kyle Risi: built into a, and that's 100%. You see all these celebrities that get really involved in this philanthropic world, right? Mm-hmm. They do a lot of charity work, like Bono, for example. While the cameras are rolling, they're really attenti and they're caring but when the cameras are turned off, that's it. But with Diana, it's completely opposite.

There are so many examples when there are no cameras around, where she will go to people's homes privately to check in on them. Mm-hmm. And they're just ordinary members of the public. Wow. So it is something that is completely ingrained in her. And this to her becomes this superpower, this ability to really connect with the most vulnerable, the most overlooked people in society.

That's something [00:30:00] that stays there for the rest of her life. Her mother says that she has as real knack for spotting the most vulnerable person in a room and making them feel comfortable. I mean, what a gift. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And this is essentially what it is that makes her the people's princess, right? People can see this just by seeing how warm she's seeing the fact that she wants to take some flowers from you and she doesn't want to give them to an aid. She'd rather hold 40 bunches of flowers, not be able to see where she's going. People pick up on those types of cues, right?

Yeah.

Tina Brown puts it perfectly. She writes, Diana made her warmth available to everyone. It was an invisible thread of kindness that drew her to people who expected the least, but needed the most.

Yeah. When people start recognizing Diana's empathy, like really seeing it, it sparked something inside of her because for most of her life, she's always felt like she's second best.

She's always kind of comparing herself to her siblings. Like her sisters all seem really brilliant at everything. Her brother went off to [00:31:00] Eaton and then Oxford, she literally thinks that he's a genius.

So over time, that anxiety kind of calcify itself, that self-deprecating voice just becomes her default setting.

So she'll say things like, oh, I'm too thick to know anything about that. But that wasn't just her modesty, that's a defense mechanism. Like if she can say it first, then you can't say it to hurt her.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like it. And this has all come from her childhood into her school, into her early adulthood. Yeah. That's really sad just to have that, 'cause imagine if she had that confidence or someone like raised her up. She could still do all those things, but just. I dunno, she maybe you'd be able to like excel at them more than she did already.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, 100%. It's so sad. And just to be clear, I'm not saying in any way that she's thick, not even close. I'm talking about how she saw herself, like she could play piano, she danced ballet. She wasn't bad at anything really. She just didn't feel exceptional. Especially compared to the other people that she was [00:32:00] orbiting around. Mm-hmm. And so when she finds this ability to connect with other people, something shifts inside her.

And for the very first time in her entire life, she does not feel like a best, which I just think is really special. She's found her superpower essentially.

Adam Cox: She's number one at that.

Kyle Risi: Exactly. So three years after the divorce, Diana's dad meets a woman called Rain Legs. I cannot wait to talk to you about Rain Legs. We're only gonna touch upon her a little bit here. But Rain Legs is my icon.

Adam Cox: Rain Legg. What a name.

Kyle Risi: Yeah it is. So basically they meet at some kind of architectural heritage event and at the time she's still married to like the Earl of Dartmouth or someone equally titled.

And within a few years they get divorced and she just married John and Diana and all the kids, they absolutely hate her. They barely get any time with their dad as it is. So when Rain gets on the scene, they just are scrapping for any kind of little bit of attention that they can get from their dad, as it is.

Adam Cox: Is she a younger woman?

Kyle Risi: Not really, no.

Adam Cox: Okay. I wonder if she was like little miss New boobs.

Kyle Risi: [00:33:00] No, she's not. But I, I honestly, I feel so awful for rain because like she's just as damaged as all of them. And from the moment that she arrives, they just give her absolute hell. Rain comes from money, but it's not the world or the aristocracy kind of money.

Like she's seen as nuro or, or kind of like new money and people just think she's really tacky. She's like a little bit of a, a try too hard, if you will.

Adam Cox: Is she wearing like leopard print

Kyle Risi: She'll do things like, she'll show up at a kid's party at 11:00 AM on a Saturday. It's a swimming pool party. Everyone's wearing swimsuits, flip-flops, rain rolls up wearing a literal emerald green ballgown, and people are like, what the fuck's happening, man, this is a kid's party. Yeah.

She'll also just invent really weird rules as well, just for the sake of it. And they just don't mean anything in the grand scheme of things.

She just does this because the world of aristocracy is just filled with rituals and protocols and this is what she thinks she has to do.

So Christmas for example, she'll like [00:34:00] stack everyone's presents up in these neat little piles and no one's allowed to open up their presents until she checks the watch.

She waits for their hand to get to the 12 o'clock hour, and then she'll give you like the little finger wag and then you can go ahead and rip open your presents. And

she just does these things that are just pointless and meaningless because she thinks that's what dictates being part of the aristocracy.

Adam Cox: Really By like telling people like on the minute. Yeah. When to open their presents. It's just weird. It's imagine I'd feel like, I don't know, almost like a conductor Yeah. Of an orchestra going, you go, okay, wait, wait. Now you, now you,

Kyle Risi: yeah. And the thing is though, the kids absolutely hate her, but John, he's completely besotted with her. Their wedding is just this massive society event and they invite like a thousand guests get this.

Diana only finds out because she reads about it. In the newspapers. What? She's absolutely furious. It's a huge society event. Her brother, he's at boarding school when he finds out, 'cause the teacher goes up to him and he is like, congratulations on your new [00:35:00] stepmom. And he's like, what the fuck? He's just completely humiliated.

Adam Cox: Dad hasn't bothered to tell. Nope. Him.

Kyle Risi: And it's not like they've gone and eloped a thousand people at their wedding. That's a planned party. Six months out you plan that and you don't tell the kids. Wow. It's just one of those classic things where kind of kids are seen and not heard.

Adam Cox: Are they invited?

Kyle Risi: No. They weren't invited

Adam Cox: at all. No. The weddings happened. That's happened. I thought they were like planning it and they didn't tell 'em they were gonna plan it. No. No. The weddings happened. No, that's terrible. That's awful. So they've hidden it for that much amount of time. Mm-hmm. And got married.

Kyle Risi: Isn't that awful?

Adam Cox: Wow. That makes me wanna like divorce my father.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. So you get the resentment against her, right? Mm-hmm. But it's wildly misdirected. It's not rain that they should be angry at. It's their dad. But the kids just don't see it that way. Because it's their dad.

Adam Cox: Yeah. The dad's a douche.

Kyle Risi: And we are gonna come back to Diana's relationship with rain legs because Adam, it gets explosive. Like [00:36:00] Diana as a human being, hits an all time low. When it comes to what she does to rain.

Adam Cox: Oh, she puts like laxative in something. Right?

Kyle Risi: It's worse. Adam, a lot of people say that this, the thing that she does to reign changes their view of her as a human being.

Adam Cox: Pushes her down some steps. Yeah.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. She pushes an old lady down the stairs. Wow. I know. for me, it makes her more relatable. I mean, if pushing, I've pushed a lot of people down the stairs.

It, I genuinely does. She's just a hot mess, just like all of us do you know what I mean? And I love her.

So it was actually around about the age 16 that Diana officially meets Prince Charles. Technically her grandmother swears that they first crossed paths when Diana was just five and Charles was 17 at Sandham, right when she was trying to get in the royal circles orbit.

So that doesn't really count. The real first official meeting happens in 1977. Diana 16, Charles is 29, and at the time he's actually [00:37:00] dating Diana's older sister. Really? Yeah. Did you know that? I did not know that. Yeah.

At the time Sarah is. Struggling with eating disorder. And instead of them getting her proper help, the family decides that they're gonna handle it themselves.

So they tell her like, you're not allowed to speak to Charles on the phone unless you first gain like two pounds. So it's really dark. Mm-hmm. So she clearly gains a two pounds. And at some point after this, Charles comes to dispenser estate, he's spending the day shooting and riding, and at some point he has this moment with Diana where he says, do you care to show me like the galleries upstairs or whatever?

And before she can even say a word, Sarah just swoops in and she's like, no, I'll do it. Push off Pip squeak. And like she just ushers Diana off.

Adam Cox: She felt threatened by her sister.

Kyle Risi: Yeah.

Adam Cox: I guess she's just bought this two pounds and so she's you are not taking my man.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. Diana tells Andrew Morton that her first impressions of Charles was that she thought that he was a deeply sad man.

This is really interesting because she doesn't mean sad as in like [00:38:00] pathetic. She means sad as in like I pitied him. Mm-hmm. Like he seems fragile and that's telling because Diana is drawn to wounded people, right? It's a pattern that we'll see just time and time again throughout all of her personal relationships.

And in Tina's Brown book, she actually says that this is the moment that the actual crush on Prince Charles begins. Because Morton's version is more cynical. Like he's framing it as if she said, he's a sad man.

What a sad loser. Mm-hmm. In the context of when that book was written in the Andrew Morton book, it was at the end of her marriage. So when he receives that information, he sees it as more cynical. Oh, he's a pathetic man, right? Yeah. But she would, her first sight,

So it's interesting,

but either way, Charles and Sarah's relationship, it just doesn't last. And the reason it ends tells you everything that you need to know about the royal family.

Basically, Sarah is off on a ski trip and she ends up chatting to a couple journalists and she ends up admitting to drinking. But most importantly, [00:39:00] she says that she wouldn't marry a man that she didn't love, whether or not he is dustmen or the King of England, if he asked me, I'd just turn him down.

Adam Cox: Right? So she's saying to the press like, I'm not that into him.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, it's, the problem is right, two mistakes that she's made, she's spoken to the press mm-hmm. As a potential eligible kind of suitor to the king. But also, she's publicly denting Charles's image as one of the most eligible bachelors in Britain.

How dare you say that? The, the future king asks you to marry him, that you would say no. So when the palace reads this, they're obviously furious. So they start driving in the nails in their coffin almost immediately to just cut those ties.

Adam Cox: So they're like forcing the end of that relationship

Kyle Risi: essentially.

Yes. And Charles probably might not necessarily want to end the relationship, but he has a very much an understanding that his duty comes first, and that's just part of the parcel, right? Mm-hmm.

And of course, before she knows this, she has a sense that she might have made a mistake. She calls Charles to explain, and by [00:40:00] then, of course, it's too late.

And he just says to her, you've just done something extremely stupid, and he cuts her off and he doesn't speak to her again.

And Tina Brown puts her best, the royal family have a knack of just cutting people off.

Adam Cox: Wow. What a way to end their relationship. Yeah. Although, how serious was it? How long have they been dating?

Kyle Risi: Probably not very long. I don't how long they've been dating for,

Adam Cox: yeah. It's like you, you could have been queen. Yeah. You ruined it.

Kyle Risi: She's probably kicking herself. I don't know. And they really do, they have this knack for just cutting people off whenever there's like a leak within the palace, if someone's caught suspected of gossiping, that drawbridge just comes up and there's just no second chances.

And I get it. They're just protecting their image. It's harsh. And what's sad is, like I said, it's not always what Charles wants to do, but to protect the institution. he has to do these things in order to protect them, right? Mm-hmm.

So there could be someone that he really likes, maybe even loves, but if they go against the institution, then that's just it. Do you know what I [00:41:00] mean?

Adam Cox: Yeah. I'm sure Diana called it something else. Didn't she not say like the company,

Kyle Risi: the firm.

Adam Cox: The firm, yeah. That's it. Yeah. She referred to it and it, it sounds very corporate, it doesn't sound nice, does it?

Kyle Risi: No. It's supposed to be a family.

Adam Cox: Yeah, but actually it's like, that's the thing. Legal finance is all I can think of.

Kyle Risi: Mm. That's it. So the palace, the institution, the firm, they all can be all used interchangeably, if I'm wrong at that. Please. Correct me, but they will.

Yeah, I know. They'll, but while all of this is going on, Diana is away at a Swiss finishing school. She absolutely hates it. And eventually she just ends up dropping out. So she comes back to the UK and the bitch moves to London, and that's where she goes to live, like literally her best life.

She moves in with her mum in her little flat in London. She's got no qualifications. She's got no money. She's got no plan mapped out. She just has a vague idea that maybe she wants to work with kids. So she picks up a few odd jobs here. She's kind of nannying. She's waitressing on the side. At one point, I think she's cleaning for her sister in like her apartment. She's getting paid like one pound an [00:42:00] hour.

Adam Cox: So she's done some really mundane everyday jobs. Really? Yeah. Like we've all done like a filler job for a few summers.

Mm-hmm. Or some of us that's like our career. Like, you know, nothing wrong with that, but she's done some gritty, you know? Yeah. Fire hands dirty.

Kyle Risi: Exactly. And her life, Adam, honestly, is quite simple and it's really quiet. She's not partying, she's not going to clubs. She just cozies up on a windowsill.

She reads a lot. She watches the world go by on the street below. One of my favorite details about this period of her life is that she's completely and utterly obsessed. With soap operas. What do you think her favorite soap opera is?

Adam Cox: It's called Be East Enders. It's

Kyle Risi: East Enders, yeah, yeah, yeah. She also likes Brookside. She watches EE with Joan Collins. Anything that she can get her hands on. And her favorite thing to do is just have a night in watching trash TV and eating beans on toast. I love her.

Adam Cox: There was a period in time where you used to enjoy Smy centers.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, I haven't watched it in about 10 years, man.

Adam Cox: Yeah,

Kyle Risi: yeah. It was mine and Miguel's thing to do. It was, wasn't it? And the crazy [00:43:00] thing is that never changes throughout the rest of her life. She tends to kind of pick up these things that she establishes early on in her childhood and she holds onto them for the rest of her life.

And it's just really endearing. Like even at the height of her fame, this is how she recharges between royal engagements I wouldn't be surprised if one of her favorite things to do would be to just kinda like just randomly scream, get my pap.

Adam Cox: Do

Kyle Risi: you know what I mean? At her

Adam Cox: staff, she's definitely quoted standards to people.

Kyle Risi: 100%. If she hast, I'd be really disappointed. I wonder if any of that's on the record.

Adam Cox: She's done like the diff diffs. No doubt.

Kyle Risi: No doubt. She's like singing along at the end. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So eventually during this period, her parents finally agreed to buy her a flat.

They buy her a flat Adam in Sloan fucking square, which is like the crossover point between Belgravia and Chelsea. So it's very, very posh. She moves in with two of her friends. She's now 19. She has no responsibilities. And she says to Andrew Morton, this period of her life is the happiest that she's ever been in her entire life.

Isn't that just [00:44:00] heartbreaking?

Adam Cox: I think a lot of people, yes, it is heartbreaking. That's not me like playing it down, but I think a lot of people would probably say like their eighteens to their early twenties is probably one of the fun times. 'cause you don't have responsibility. You're just starting out.

Everything is still new and everything is sure

Kyle Risi: For the regular person. But Adam, she's just about to become a princess. And there's not even like, oh, the early days of being a princess was just like the happiest time of my life. Sure. Not even that. Yeah. Okay. She doesn't even count that this, when she's on her own independent, no responsibilities for her is the happiest point in her life.

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. That is sad.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. And her friendship group, they become known as the Sloan Rangers. They're like a super posh subset of the kind of Chelsea crowd. They're all privately educated, they're all expected to marry within their social circle. They wear tweed blazers and tweed skirts. They wear riding boots. Signature thing that they wear are these kind of velvet hairbands people recognize 'em around the village as the Velvet Hairband brigade. [00:45:00] And honestly, Adam, it's just adorable.

Adam Cox: Yeah. 'cause there's no like horses in Sloane Square. No, there isn't. And so they're like wearing equestrian gear.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. They kind of stood out. They did they just look really posh. And they're all goodie. Two shoes in literally every way. So this is where we're actually gonna leave Diana, ? She's 19 years old. She's teaching at a nursery school. And for the very first time, and maybe only time in her entire life, she's completely at peace within herself.

Meanwhile, across London, prince Charles is living a very different reality. Like both him and Diana, they grow up with that pressure, that sense of duty, that overwhelming amount of kind of emotional repression. For Charles, you just dial that up to a hundred because it's, it's dysfunctional. A really good example that gives you a sense of, this is this really incredible footage from 1954 when the Queen arrives back from a month tour away like in New Zealand and Australia, and waiting on the tarmac as the plane lands is 6-year-old Prince Charles.

[00:46:00] Right. The queen walks over to him instead of like grabbing him and hugging him and embracing him and saying, I've missed you so much Prince Charles.

Adam Cox: What did she do? Did she push him over?

Kyle Risi: She just shakes his fucking hand.

Adam Cox: How'd you do? How's it been?

Kyle Risi: Yeah, yeah. That says everything, doesn't it?

Adam Cox: There's no, it's cold. It's cold. I think we've heard stories about his childhood. I think he is the oldest, isn't he? Of course. Yeah. And so therefore probably had a slightly stricter, slightly more, I dunno, further removed upbringing maybe.

And then I think as the other children came along, I dunno if she perhaps got more maternal. I dunno. I don't know.

Kyle Risi: But then also remember you've got Prince Philip as well, right? He's famously ex-military. So with that comes very cold, very tough exterior. Prince Charles is completely the opposite Like, he doesn't like sports, he doesn't like horses. Like he's very intellectual, like he's completely opposite. And Prince Philip refers to him as really weak and weedy, and he says that he needs to harden him up a bit. Adam, bear in mind [00:47:00] at this moment in time, prince Charles is eight years old, right?

And so Philip ships him off to a school called Eston, which is a, a boarding school up in Scotland that is famous for what they call turning boys into men by basically breaking them.

Now remember, he's eight years old, so they are literally shipping him off And the problem is when he gets it, he absolutely hates it. He's really sensitive, he's artistic, he doesn't like sports and so he's bullied mercilessly for it and it's because nobody wants to be seen to be sucking up to the future king of the uk.

And so throughout his entire time at Eston like eight and nine and 10 years old, he does not make a single friend. And when he leaves, he has no real connection with anyone including his parents, because they've shipped him off at this really crucial, informative kind of year.

Do you know what I mean?

Adam Cox: Yeah. Like I feel strange. I feel like if I was a kid there, you'd want to be friends with the king. Not to like suck up, but so I don't [00:48:00] know. He doesn't kill you, behead

Kyle Risi: ya. Yeah. Yeah. No, he doesn't. And it's really sad. Like every person he meets either bows down to him or wants something from him. Like he's literally been raised to think of himself as a literal show pony. Mm-hmm. That everyone is there just to watch him or to support him or to all but around him.

One of his exes says that their first date was just her watching him fish.

For six hours.

Adam Cox: That's not a date, that's, I dunno what that is. Like I could have done this on tv.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, yeah. So when he gets into his twenties, he starts dating around. And Adam, he's just a complete disappointment. Every person or suitor that he's dated, their comments are all the same. He's just really awkward. He's really shy.

He's actually a really disappointing lover. And the reality is, is because he's probably never learned how to build that human connection that wasn't just about himself. Do you know what I mean?

Adam Cox: Yeah. I mean, it's sad really, which I guess is why in [00:49:00] Princess Diana. said that, oh, he is, you know, he's a sad man.

Really? Mm-hmm. 'cause you do feel sorry that he probably has had a really shitty upbringing. Yeah. Not the loving upbringing that a lot of regular folk would have.

Kyle Risi: But this is a big thing for the palace as well, because these women are describing him as a disappointing lover. The palace see this as a problem. And so they start spinning this whole Casanova prince myth around him. They even claim that his uncle Lord, Mount Batten was forced to set up a secret hush fund to pay off some of the women that he seduced and to send them off on their way. But it's so, it's all bullshit. It's just a complete PR move to make him seem like a guess of Nova when he is not.

Adam Cox: It's like, imagine the queen going up to him. You suck in bed. You need to get better at this.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's it. And so at some point he meets Camilla, so she's like two years old. Oh, she

Adam Cox: trains him.

Kyle Risi: God, yeah, probably she's two years older than him. [00:50:00] She's way more confident than him. She's really way more relaxed than he

Adam Cox: is. And experienced.

Kyle Risi: And experienced. Yeah. She's part of the aristocracy world, but not the palace kind.

She's more of the country house kind of aristocracy kind of part of it all. they go hunting all the time. She's driving around in her Range Rover. Her hair is constantly windswept.

She's wearing muddy boots. It's even windy today. How did that even happen? And she's, yeah, she's just doesn't wear any makeup. Like you get the sense that she has this kind of carefree attitude about her. And just like Diana, she doesn't test well in school, but unlike Diana is because Camilla, all she wants to do is just smoke cigarettes on the roof.

Adam Cox: So she's a bit more of a rebel.

Kyle Risi: She's a massive rebel because to her doing well in school just doesn't matter. By this point, she's already inherited like half a million pounds from like a relative, right? Mm-hmm. She's likely to marry into a wealthy family, or she's able to bring [00:51:00] wealth to another family, right? So she has huge amount of options, like her options have asked. And so her entire vibe is, I literally do not need to impress anyone. I'm gonna be fine.

Adam Cox: I see.

Kyle Risi: And you can feel this in how she moves through the world. That confidence is sort of kind of magnetic, even if she's a bit rough around the edges and not considered traditionally beautiful, she's confident in herself basically.

Adam Cox: It's so strange just to hear you say that because like you see her now. Obviously she was the queen, but like she's always immaculate. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. She's not, she's never I dunno, windswept or anything disheveled or something like that.

Kyle Risi: She looks great. Mm-hmm. It's just a bit carefreeness.

Mm-hmm. Right. Do you know what I mean? And people recognize that. And they don't judge her for it. They admire it for it. 'cause she's like, oh, she's so carefree. She's so beautiful. She's so natural, whatever.

Adam Cox: Is she so carefree that she doesn't wear deodorant?

Kyle Risi: I'm sure she's presentable.

Adam Cox: I don't. Carefree. I don't know. Oh, natural.

Kyle Risi: And that's also another thing about Camilla as well. Like she's always been compared or contrasted against her [00:52:00] beauty, especially in comparison to Princess Diana, which is a little bit rough, I guess.

Adam Cox: Well, people like to put women together or head-to-head, don't they? Or the press do. So they do.

Kyle Risi: Tina Brown describes Camilla as grubby knickers aristocracy.

Adam Cox: Grubby knickers. Has she seen her knickers? No. To like verify

Kyle Risi: that. I think it just means like she likes to be outdoors. She goes hunting, she works on the farm, she's a bit carefree, that type of thing. Not like her knickers have like literally got grunge in them.

Adam Cox: Oh God, that's not what I was gonna say. I just, I thought she might flip them the other way and wear 'em two days running probably. Okay. We're talking about the royalty here, Kyle.

Kyle Risi: Respect Kyle.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: But the things are, what Charles sees in her is authenticity, and he falls really hard for her. The official story of how they met is that she walked up to him one day at a polar match and said, my great-grandmother was your great-grandfather's mistress. So how about it?

Adam Cox: Oh, what a chap line.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, it's [00:53:00] most certainly made up, right?

Adam Cox: Oh, Grubby neckers didn't say that.

Kyle Risi: It gives you a sense of kind of the energy that she gave off. She was like that. It's something she would've said. So the reality is that they're probably met through some kind of mutual friends,

Adam Cox: around the back of the bike sheds

Kyle Risi: round the back of the bike sheds while she's kind of having a fag and he's down on his knees, rummaging around in her grubby knickers God.

And so it was not love at first sight when they first meet. And that's because she was on and off again with her boyfriend, who was a guy called Andrew Parker Bowls. And so in Charles, all she saw was just a friend. Mm-hmm.

But in 1972, during one of her and Andrew's off periods, she and Charles, they decide to give it a go.

It only lasts like six months because he ends up getting shipped off to on like an eight month naval tour somewhere. And while he's away, he has this realization that actually he really loves her. Oh. When he gets back, he finds out that Camilla's married Andrew.

Adam Cox: Well that's a, [00:54:00] he was only gone for eight months.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. Do you wanna know how they got married? Because it's insane.

Adam Cox: yeah, go on then.

Kyle Risi: So her parents apparently got fed up with how slow their relationship is moving. So like, will they, won't they, so when they resumed things while Charles was away, her parents just published kind of an engagement notice in the times. Neither of them know about it, but when they find out, they're just like, oh, I guess we're getting married then I guess this is happening.

Adam Cox: What's, what is up with rich people and getting married and not telling people.

Kyle Risi: We're married.

So Charles comes home, he's utterly devastated, but even though she's now married, they stay extremely close. He ends up becoming kind of the godfather to their son. And when Lord Mount Batten, that's his favorite uncle when he's assassinated by the IRA in 1979, it's Camilla and Andrew who helped him through that.

And slowly their friendship just turned into something more. Not Andrews, just Camilla. And so they start doing it.

And the thing is though, they're not screet about it either. at a party, they are literally seen [00:55:00] making out on the dance floor. Andrew is there, he sees the whole thing and he just shrugs. And he says to his mate, she seems like she's fond of him and he seems like he's fond of her. And so Camilla and Andrew are now in this open marriage where on the side, Camilla is having sex with the future King of England.

Adam Cox: I guess the thing is though, they probably both went into it like not in love with each other. Yeah. So they're probably, it doesn't sound like he's hurt by this.

Kyle Risi: No, it doesn't. Yeah. Okay. That's a good way to frame it, because I forgot about that element. They were on and off again. They were forced into this. So, yeah, that makes perfect sense. And of course, the palace, they assume that Charles will eventually move on, but he doesn't.

He gets to the age of 32 he's still not moving on from Camilla. Everyone knows that they're sleeping together. So the queen is forced to get involved and she instructs the palace to start looking for a wife for him.

And the roof is clear, She has to be young, she has to be fertile, ideally from an aristocratic background but crucially, she needs to be a virgin.

Adam Cox: Okay. So how do you, how are they,

Kyle Risi: [00:56:00] how do you assess

Adam Cox: that? How are they gonna verify that?

I mean, one that, yeah. How are they gonna verify that?

Kyle Risi: I don't know. Maybe do they do a Hyman check? I don't know. Is

Adam Cox: How do they know they're gonna be fertile without, obviously not having a child already.

Kyle Risi: I don't know. I guess maybe it's just young.

Adam Cox: Okay. But I just wonder how they're gonna verify this.

Kyle Risi: There's a test, Adam. Everyone knows this. I don't know it 'cause we're gay, so I don't know it.

So they go looking for a virgin, essentially, Adam, there are so many scandals in the world of the aristocracy that they manage to whittle downs, like 12 potential women.

Adam Cox: I was

Kyle Risi: gonna

Adam Cox: say, they're all sleeping around. yeah, they're doing coke, they're doing this, that and the other. They've already had, I don't know, three marriages.

Kyle Risi: So they can barely find, anyway, they find a handful. And then eventually the queen mother, she suggests the granddaughter of an old friend of hers from sanding him.

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Risi: And it's Diana Francis Spencer.

Adam Cox: But did anyone think oh, but he's already dated her sister. Mm-hmm. Is that a bit weird? No, it's fine.

Kyle Risi: I don't, I don't see any problem with that. I dunno. I just,

Adam Cox: she's not the one who portrayed them. Right. Yeah, but it's [00:57:00] connected to the family. They think like, well one sister's done, what is this?

Kyle Risi: No fucking career. Like One person does something wrong, wipe out the whole family. What do you want to cut their heads off.

Adam Cox: I just thought that they're being very selective. I thought they'd be even more selective.

Kyle Risi: Adam, they've wielded down to 12 women in all of fucking England because all of the women that exist are not virgins. I don't think they can be picky at this moment in time.

Adam Cox: You're telling me there's only 12 versions.

Kyle Risi: There's only 12 virgins from the aristocracy in the whole world. There's only eight now.

So Adam, it's July, 1980 and Diana is invited to spend the weekend with the royal family at one of the kind of their country estates. Right. It's a kind of the sort of classic posh summer setup. The men will be playing polo, the woman will be from the sidelines, and then at the end there'll be like a barbecue and they'll just lum it, right?

With like bang as a mash or whatever. And after the match, Diana finds herself sitting on a hay barrel next to Prince Charles. Some say this is a coincidence. Others say this is very deliberately stage. In fact, Tina Brown says [00:58:00] like Diana was there to make a good impression. Mm-hmm. So they get to talking and somewhere in the conversation Diana brings up the death of Charles'. Great uncle Lord. Mount Batten, who obviously, like I said recently was killed in a boat explosion by the RIA. and she says, you looked so sad walking up the aisle, and my heart just meant for you. You should be with someone to look after you. And according to Tina Brown, that was it. She'd managed to tap into Charles's favorite emotion, self-pity

Adam Cox: as a me.

Kyle Risi: Me. Yeah. Basically there was this 19-year-old beautiful girl telling the future King of England, that she felt sorry for him and that just sparked something in him. And he is just sold, like they end up talking right through the night.

The next morning he offers to drive her back to London. She outright says no, which is probably something like he doesn't hear very often. basically, She says that this wouldn't be polite to our hosts. So he just ends up pursuing her because I guess maybe it's a little bit hard to get. [00:59:00] Maybe he sees something in her.

But the point is they're now dating and Adam dating Charles is fucking ridiculous. Every single message that he wants to send has to go through the palace, right? he wants to invite Diana out to the opera on their very first date. That request goes to like eight different people across the palace.

By the time it reaches Princess Diana. She's got 20 minutes to get ready before the car arrives.

Adam Cox: What. She's not gonna, like, she need to stay ready. They need to sort out their logistics of that company.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. It's all paper based as well.

And also every day it has to be chaperoned and it's usually by her grandmother. So their first date is at the opera with granny literally hovering over them with a musty sardine breath. And it's just incredibly awkward.

Adam Cox: What's she gonna be doing? Like, like, you know, peering in whilst they're like talking, probably getting some pop up probably. They're

Kyle Risi: probably like sitting in between them and they have to talk around her.

But the thing is though, this is the first date you're supposed to be kind of sneaking kisses in the back row of the cinema trying to copper feel. Maybe even rummy j around in a pair of knickers.

Adam Cox: I [01:00:00] don't, I don't think they can do that.

Kyle Risi: Not with Granny's sitting next to them.

Adam Cox: Well, definitely not because of that, no, I imagine they've gotta be, they're not gonna do that on the first date in public.

Of course they're not.

But with granny there, it's just didn't even get a chance.

Kyle Risi: Incredibly awkward. Their second date, Adam is even worse. He invites her on a week long cruise on board the royal yachts right. There are over a hundred other people on board they're all there for Charles. it's Just endless formal dinners, awkward conversation. They have zero privacy and on top of that, everyone knows this is their second date.

Adam Cox: That's the weirdest thing. Like you've got, I dunno, you invite on a family holiday essentially. Mm-hmm. And then the rest and everyone else. Yeah. that doesn't seem right.

Kyle Risi: It seems weird. I don't know why Diana doesn't run for the heels at this point. That is beyond me, but she doesn't, and eventually she gets invited to Bmal.

And this is where it becomes clear that the purpose of this invite wasn't to casually meet the family. It's a literal audition.

Adam Cox: Does she [01:01:00] know this before? She goes,

Kyle Risi: I think she knows this. Yeah. I think she knows what's at stake.

Adam Cox: And is she prepped? Does she have any like rehearsed answers or

Kyle Risi: She does well. apparently she passes with flying colors, but basically they want to test if she can survive royal life and it's a fucking minefield every day. She's expected to change outfits four times. Like for breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner. There's a strict pecking order around who she has to greet first, who speaks when, what titles to use. And it's a whole system that she just doesn't really have time to kind of learn properly. Mm-hmm. But she does, well, Andrew Morton says those who navigate this minefield are accepted. Those who don't disappear into the Highland mist.

Adam Cox: Well, they're like taking out the back and shot probably.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. Tina Brown puts it more bluntly. She says, this isn't a courtship, it's a literal obstacle course. Like fucking wipe out.

Adam Cox: Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah, I mean, it'd be interesting to experience it and know that you're pissing off everyone because you're doing it all wrong. Yeah. [01:02:00] I don't wanna go and just get really drunk.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. But the thing is that you gotta be really careful. This is about moral, right? they're really titchy about everything. Like God forbid you sit in that chair over there because like no one sat in their chest. And Queen Victoria, imagine it.

Adam Cox: You sit in it, everyone goes, get out.

Kyle Risi: Johnny, get the shotgun. Yeah. This is also where she comes face to face with the paparazzi for the very first time.

Basically, she's walking along the river with Charles when a bunch of photographers spot them from the hillside. She immediately turns her back. Whips out a compact mirror and starts walking backwards, watching where she's going in the mirror so they can't get a clear shot of her face at all.

And Charles is super impressed. Like she gets this, she understands what's at stake. And at the end of the weekend, prince Philip pulls Charles aside and he says like she's passed with flying colors. And so yeah, it was a test .

Adam Cox: Yeah. She gets to go to date four.

Kyle Risi: So the press, they start asking questions.

They do a little bit of digging to find out who this woman is and eventually they figure out it's this woman [01:03:00] called Diana Spencer and it is game over.

They start camping outside of a flat. They even rent apartments across the street from her house just to photograph her. all they get is just tons and tons of photographs of her literally doing the washing up.

Adam Cox: She's doing it wrong.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, probably She could never do anything. Right. And at the time she is working as a nursery school kind of teacher. They completely hound her. It gets so bad that the parents that are dropping their kids off, they can't even get close to the actual nursery to drop their kids off at the crash.

And so one day just gets far too much for her. She walks out and says, listen, if I pose for a photograph for you, will you just leave me alone for the rest of the day? And they all like, yep.

So she scoops up a couple kids, just grabs them and like she smiles for the camera. They take their shots and just promise they leave.

Adam Cox: Mm. So this is where she's now like learning how to, play the system, play the cameras play. I think at

Kyle Risi: this point, yeah, possibly. But at this point she's just like, ah, I [01:04:00] need to get some work done. I've got coloring to do.

The next day, Adam, it's all over the press and it's a tabloid scandal. Can you guess why

Adam Cox: it's 'cause she's posing

Kyle Risi: how

Adam Cox: with two children?

Kyle Risi: No, it's because she hadn't realized that the sun was behind her when the photographers were taking pictures of her. And so in the photo, you can see a silhouette of her legs through her dress. Q, national meltdown. Woman has legs. Oh, the humanity.

Adam Cox: What a harlet. Showing off those legs.

Kyle Risi: Charles rings her up and he says, I knew your legs were good, but I didn't realize they were that spectacular. And then he says, did you really have to show them to everyone? I'm like, Charles, no.

Adam Cox: She needed to wear, um, while those things that you put under your skirt, like pantyhose, they're not pantyhose. Oh,

Oh, petticoat. Petticoat.

Kyle Risi: Why should she even need to think about that? Adam?

Adam Cox: I'm joking.

Kyle Risi: And from there, they're just relentless. Everywhere she goes, she's hounded constantly. The palace, they give her no support. There's [01:05:00] no guidance, there's no security. They never send her any cars, she's just expected to continue catching the tube and she's one of the most famous women at this moment in time and it's just horrible.

At one point Charles is on the phone with her and he says to her, do you know what? I feel really, really bad for Camilla. She's got three photographers outside her house. And Diana's sitting there thinking, great, I've got like 32. Why is he telling her this? I know.

That's weird.

Adam Cox: So is he still, going after

Kyle Risi: Camilla at this point or dating? I think that they're, they're they're doing it. Yeah. They're doing it.

For sure. So I just feel awful for her because every single night she comes home, all she can do is hide in the corner of the room away from any windows and she just sobs.

Adam Cox: That's so, yeah. So this is where like her life is completely transformed. Mm-hmm. She probably just was not expecting this level of scrutiny. Attention, everything.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. It's so sad. But Adam, she ticks every single box. She's photogenic. she's [01:06:00] got no scandals except for obviously one rumor where she apparently was snuck onto the royal train one night and she apparently slept with Charles.

The Palace obviously denied this, but it's probably true. But still the tabloids think is this massive deal. And other than that one little blip, The palace kind of green light this match and so on February the sixth, 1981, Charles proposes,

Adam Cox: and at this point, I guess she's falling for him, right? But I guess what, sad at the situation, she doesn't seem like she's that happy yet. She does love him.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. I think she's sad at the situation of the press. Mm-hmm. Not at Charles. Mm-hmm. She's caught up in the whirlwind of it. All right. She's 19, like of course you would be. Diana says that she got to Windsor around five. Uh, He sat her down and said, I've missed you so much, but there was no hug. There's no kiss. And then he goes, will you marry me? And she laughs and she thinks it's a joke. And she says, yeah, okay. And then she laughed again, but he's deadly serious. and then [01:07:00] immediately follows it up with, do you realize that one day you will be queen? And she says, I love you so much. and he goes, whatever love means.

Adam Cox: Okay.

Kyle Risi: What do you think of that proposal?

Adam Cox: Well, It's not the best

it's, it feels very, transactional. And I guess for her, she's probably wanting something quite romantic, whatever. And all of a sudden she's got herself into this big lifelong commitment.

Kyle Risi: And the thing is, I don't know if she necessarily wants something romantic. 'Cause I don't necessarily think she knows what that is. She has no frame of reference for anything, she's really young. I guess she's watched enough standards, so she must know

Adam Cox: she's watched Dirty Dancing.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, probably if that was out in the eighties. Yeah. So I dunno, maybe I'll take that back. But what is sad is that Diana says afterwards that there was no embrace, there was no quiet celebration between them. Instead he runs upstairs to tell the bloody queen.

Adam Cox: Well you probably do need to let her know pretty quickly.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. Come on, give a little kiss and rummage around the knickers a bit.

So get this. In total, up to this point, they'd only met [01:08:00] 13 times. Almost never alone. And at this moment she still doesn't even call him Charles. She calls him, sir.

Adam Cox: I feel like I've just got alarm bells. Yeah. Like don't do it.

Kyle Risi: Don't do it. Run, run yet. She's thrilled. She sees zero red flags to her. This is just one big romantic fairytale. But that's because, like I said, she might not necessarily have a real frame of reference to judge things by. Right?

Adam Cox: Yeah. I guess if her parents weren't necessarily in love and

Kyle Risi: true, true age. But she's watched a lot of EastEnders so she should know there's no excuse.

Adam Cox: Yeah. But most people end up getting killed in these standards. True's true. That's not a good reference.

Kyle Risi: I'm gonna get married. I'm gonna get killed. She does get killed. Sad. That was accidental guys. Charles, meanwhile, he probably likes her, but it is clear that a big part of this is just out of a sense of duty, right? But there is one person who's very, very happy about this engagement,

Adam Cox: the queen.

Kyle Risi: Camilla, why's she happy? Because [01:09:00] now that Charles has fulfilled that public kind of pressure to marry, she figures that now they can just carry on as normal. Right? Right. And honestly, I believe, and this is a hot take, if Camilla hadn't approved Diana, the marriage would not have happened to her.

They had found someone together who they knew just wouldn't get in the way, or they thought wouldn't get in the way of them.

Adam Cox: And I guess what, Camilla could never be Queen at this point in time. She wouldn't even been considered. Mm-hmm. I guess she'd already been married actually, so there's no way she'd be considered.

Yep. I mean, it feels very manipulative. I dunno if I believe it, but it would be horrible if that was true.

Kyle Risi: So now they're engaged and the first thing for Diana is to move her ass to Kensington Palace.

She packs up all of her stuff, and that evening when she arrives, she thinks there's going to be kind of like this big lineup of servants ready to greet her, to grab her luggage, to kind of welcome her with open arms. And there's no one there. There's just one single staffer who hands her a key to her apartment and says, welcome to the firm.

Adam Cox: Wow. Again, I'd [01:10:00] be like, actually, do you know what? Maybe I'm just gonna back out this.

Kyle Risi: She gets no guidance, no protocol, there's no, this is how this works. Andrew Morson writes, Diana received less training in her job than the average supermarket checkout operator

Adam Cox: Yeah. That's crazy. You just think it's like sink or swim. Mm-hmm. Or, throw 'em in the deep end, but even still give them like some help.

Kyle Risi: Give them something. Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Cox: What is Charles doing at this point then if she's just gotta move in by herself?

Kyle Risi: Oh yeah, sorry. He's off on a six week tour of Australia New Zealand on his own right. So he's not even there to guide her. In fact, he misses her 20th birthday, so she celebrated without him and there's no one there at the palace

Adam Cox: So what? She can't have her family over or anything

Kyle Risi: like that. She doesn't feel like she can. Wow. The only people she ends up bonding with are the kitchen staff. So she'll go downstairs, she'll just hang out with him in the basement, like waiting for Charles to come back and then just to show her the ropes. And he never does. Even when he does come back, she's okay, how do things work around here?

What's next? Eventually the [01:11:00] queen has to step in and request that Diana's grandmother come in and teach all the ropes because the queen doesn't have the resources to sort it out.

Adam Cox: Why couldn't she have done that beforehand? Yeah,

Kyle Risi: I guess they just, don't think about these things. Yeah. So while Charles is away, Diana is invited to lunch by Camilla, and at first she's really nervous, but also really excited because she thinks Great. I get to meet some of Charles's closest friends, right? Mm-hmm.

During that lunch, Camilla asks, you're not planning on joining him on his hunting weekends are you, and Diana says, I wasn't planning to, and Kimber says, good. Now, that's weird, right?

Adam Cox: Yeah. Is that 'cause you are gonna

Kyle Risi: be there? Exactly. So Diana in this moment it doesn't sink in until a while Later when she finds a package addressed to Charles in his office, when she opens it, it's a gold bracelet engraved with letters f. G, which basically stands for Fred and Gladys, which are actually Charles and Camilla's pet names for each other. [01:12:00] Right.

Adam Cox: Okay.

Kyle Risi: Apparently it's a reference to some kind of BBC radio show from like the olden days or whatever. So she clearly suspects this means something, right? Mm-hmm. So she confronts Charles she begs him not to give her the bracelet and he just gaslight her. Like he tells her you're just being paranoid and he refused to back off. And he says, I'm still gonna give her the bracelet.

So this is the kind of moment where everything clicks for her. This is when she realizes that they are going to be, and she's famously said this , there are three people in this marriage. Mm. And this is when she realizes it, Adam, she's been engaged for like three weeks.

Adam Cox: And so she knows that she's almost like a porn is she gonna be like, is this always gonna be the way then? Mm am I brought here for this? Just as a mask.

Kyle Risi: She does not think that this is always gonna be like this. Mm-hmm. She believes that there is going to be an adjustment period. And then things will just calm down once we get married, it'll be fine. Once we have a baby, it'll be fine. And it just never is. I'm a little bit angry at her for not pulling herself out of this [01:13:00] situation.

Like she's going into this with her eyes wide open, At this point she can see this for what this is, but she just refuses to back out when she so easily could.

Adam Cox: I dunno. Are you thinking, oh, this is a great opportunity, Like you say, maybe it'll all pan out. Actually, if I walk away am I gonna regret this op, you know, to be part of the royal family. I do love Charles. All this sort of stuff must be going on, so it's probably not easy just to give it all up.

Kyle Risi: Who knows? We can't really know which 'cause thinking at this point. The fact is she's gonna go through this.

So at this point, she's 19, she's already insecure, and now she's competing for Charles's affection with this confidence charismatic woman in her thirties who is beloved by all of Charles's friends.

And so it's around this time with all these emotions that she's dealing with that her bulimia starts. Mm-hmm. So as we know, obviously she suffered from bulimia secretly, like for most of kind of her adult life. And it starts as she tells Andrew Morton the [01:14:00] week after she got engaged when Charles put his hand on her waistline and he said, oh, we're a bit chubby here, aren't we?

And so she says, that just triggers something in her. And of course that and the whole Camilla thing. And so she just became really desperate and that's when it started. So throughout her struggle with bulimia, which starts the week after she gets engaged to her wedding, which is six months later, her waist goes from 29 inches to 23.5 inches.

Adam Cox: Wow. That, that's quite bit of, it's

a huge jump, babe. Wait.

Not that she was ever like big or anything like that before. No, she's,

Kyle Risi: no, 29 is tiny.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: So at this moment, she's spiraling and it's all under this pressure. It's because of the lack of support. She's trapped in this idea that she's just not good enough, in light of Camilla. Do you know what I mean? And remember, there is no outlet for her. Like she's got no one to confide in. Her family are so invested in this idea of her becoming the Princess of Wales, that any advice or support they offer is [01:15:00] completely against her own interests because they want her to get married into this family. 'Cause they're all obsessed by it.

Adam Cox: Oh, yeah. They're like, this is, I don't know. They probably think they're gonna get invited to all these different parties. It raises their social status. Yeah. Doesn't it? Everything. It's what they always

Kyle Risi: wanted, right? Mm-hmm. And they're willing to use Princess Diana as a sacrificial lamb in getting that.

Mm-hmm. The only person who gives her any kind of warning about what's coming is Princess Grace of Monaco. So basically she is this American actress from Philadelphia She ends up marrying like the Prince of Monaco and she becomes a princess. So it's, they have a very similar dynamic.

They meet for the very first time at a party in the lead up to the wedding Diana. Ends up completely opening up to Princess Grace. She just spills everything out. Diana is not sure whether or not she wants to go with the wedding. She's not sure what to do about Camilla. And Princess Grace just smiles and says, don't worry, sweetie. It's only going to get worse.

Adam Cox: That's not the pep talk you want to hear.

Kyle Risi: No, but she gives her a warning. Mm. Because she's been through that. And I think [01:16:00] Princess Grace of Mon also died in a car accident. Did she? Yeah. Mm. I think there's a conspiracy going on there.

Adam Cox: Mm. I just,

Kyle Risi: someone killing princesses in cars.

Adam Cox: Probably just a weird coincidence.

Kyle Risi: But it's weird that they had that same kind of crossover. They both had such a terrible time in their royal families in terms of adjusting and stuff.

The thing is though, when she says, sweetie, don't worry, it's only gonna get worse. She's 100% right?

Because two days before the wedding, Diana is sobbing and she tells her sister that she wants to just call the whole thing off. And her sister's like, don't be ridiculous. Your face is already on all the details.

Adam Cox: Yeah. As if like, we, we can't get back. Now once your face is printed on the TT towel. Yeah, that's it.

Kyle Risi: And at the same time, Charles is freaking out right? The night before the wedding. He's sobbing too. He's torn between doing his duty but also worrying about what calling the wedding off. Well, due to Diana's reputation, because if she calls off the wedding, no one questions him, right?

Mm-hmm. But if he calls off the wedding, people are gonna say, well, what's wrong with Diana? Yeah. That ruins her entire future, prospects of any [01:17:00] other relationship that she might get into.

Adam Cox: Okay. So he was thinking about like

Kyle Risi: Yeah,

Adam Cox: like calling off as well. How, how come? Just because he didn't think it was gonna work.

Kyle Risi: He wants to marry Camilla.

Adam Cox: Right. Okay.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. I've heard other accounts where they have a conversation together and he's like, I just don't love you and I don't think I ever will. Wow. It's tough. And so now you've got two people who desperately do not want to go through with this. It's the night before the wedding and neither of them see a way out. And so the wedding goes ahead and Adam, it's fucking boring.

Adam Cox: It just feels weird. 'cause it's, not really that long ago in the grand scheme of things, but this kind of arranged marriage, you feel like. That's, I don't know, kings and queens of however, hundreds of years ago.

But it, you know, it's as recent as 50 odd years or whatever. Yeah.

Kyle Risi: That's so weird. Mm, So in total, the wedding is watched by 750 million people around the world, Andrew Morton and Tina Brown. They, barely mention it in their book, probably for that reason, because it is quite boring. It's just a wedding that's just largely uneventful.

But of course, [01:18:00] the things that are worth mentioning is Diana's dress, which is fucking enormous. It boasts the longest train in royal history. It's uh, eight meters long. It's got 10,000 sequins sewn into it. The dress itself uses 50 meters of silk just all wraps around.

And remember, she's completely tiny and she looks like a giant meringue. It's huge. When they make the dress, they don't actually factor in how she'll fit into the carriage. So on the wedding day, they literally have to ram her into the carriage, and a poor old dad is just squished up against the window.

Adam Cox: Yeah. I thought they should die in these things out in like the walkthrough or something.

Kyle Risi: You would think, I guess you don't do the walkthrough in the wedding dress. Fair enough. Otherwise, prince Charles is gonna be like, oh, bad luck. Mm-hmm. The other thing worth mentioning is, and I think this speaks volumes, is that she requested, they remove the word obey from their wedding vows.

She also tries to get Camilla banned from attending the wedding. But the palace don't like that from an optics point of view. Right. So instead they seat Camilla in one of the worst seats in St. Paul's Cathedral.

Adam Cox: So like right at the back [01:19:00] Behind a pillar.

Behind a pillar. Exactly.

Kyle Risi: That's exactly it. And when you see footage of Diana walking down the aisle, she's actually scanning through the crowd and she's trying to spark Camilla.

Adam Cox: Really?

Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

Adam Cox: Wow.

Kyle Risi: Which is brutal. Dude, that's your wedding day. And get this, I dunno if this is a subtle dig towards Diana, but Camilla's wearing white.

Adam Cox: That's the one thing you should not be wearing. You don't wanna clash.

Kyle Risi: It's just a soap opera, isn't it?

Adam Cox: Mm. You can't mean white though, for like, Camilla. It's gotta be offwhite.

Kyle Risi: Why, because you gotta grab a knickers.

Adam Cox: You're only white when, um, you're a virgin.

That's why they wear like ivory off white things like that.

Kyle Risi: I think that's just more of a style.

Adam Cox: Not traditionally.

Kyle Risi: Oh, I don't know. Moving on. So overall, the day, in spite of everything that's going on, they do look happy. They're smiling, they're waving to the crowds. You wouldn't really know that anything was wrong until Diana, now that they were married, she was hoping that things would just kind of just settle down. She hoped that the bulimia would ease and that Camilla would just fade away and she was right [01:20:00] about one thing.

Camilla does actually just fade away for a little bit. And Diana tries, right? Honestly, she tries way harder than she probably should have. All she wants is Charles' affection. Even years and years later, like whenever she would get styled or fitted with a new outfit, she would always routinely ask the stylist like, do you think my husband will find me sexy in this? So you can tell that just through that kind of language, she wants to make this work.

Adam Cox: Yeah, that's what I've always got. The impression that there are times, it was tough, obviously, but at times she did love him and she did want it to work.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, of course she did. So after they're married, they head off onto the honeymoon.

It starts in the Mediterranean on a cruise where they have 271 people on board. The royal yacht, again, they have zero privacy, no alone time, and it's just bam, one function off the another. Any downtime that she has to herself, it's always on her own because of course, Charles is off doing something else And She's just lonely. Adam. This is her honeymoon. Mm. That's sad. [01:21:00] And again, she will go down, she'll hide in the kitchen. She'll end up just talking to the staff.

One night during dinner, she notices that Charles on their honeymoon is wearing cuff links with two interlocking seas. And she asks him, did Camilla give you those?

And he's like, yeah. So,

Adam Cox: wow. I just, I just feel like, come on, think about it. Whether or not, I dunno, he just seems so oblivious rubbing in her face.

Kyle Risi: do this, your honeymoon, maybe don't wear jewelry from your girlfriend. Yeah. Weirdly, Tina Brown defends this. She says that his valet probably picked out those cufflings for him to wear, but still Charles has the ability to say, do you know what?

Maybe not those ones tonight.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So that's a really weird thing that she would do there. Following the cruise, they then head off to Balmoral to summer with the rest of the family. And again, it's the classic, it's rigid. Like, dude, you are on a holiday. Just lighten up. Why do you need like bagpipes? Kind of like blaring at 6:00 AM in the morning and kind of all this pomp and ceremony [01:22:00] and no one's allowed to sit in that fucking chair. Do you know what I mean?

Adam Cox: It's, yeah. Bagpipes are definitely not relaxing.

Kyle Risi: Here's the thing, Diana, the whole time is extremely cold. Bear in mind, she's so skinny and so tiny, she's suffering with bulimia, but it's because the family, they refuse to put on the heating, right? Considering all the wealth that they have, they have the best of everything. They begrudge putting on the heating even for half an hour.

Adam Cox: Well, you know, they grew up in the war and so you know, they're very careful.

Kyle Risi: On top of that, Charles insists on sleeping with every single window in his bedroom open at night. Apparently is good for kind of the circ rhythm or something, or But Diana is just constantly shivering shut the bloody window jar, not allowed to.

On top of that, every morning, like I said, 6:00 AM bagpipes play across the estate at the queen's request, which is just torture, especially when you've been kept awake until 2:00 AM the previous night, having to listen to Princess Margaret banging out show tunes on the piano.

Adam Cox: And so you're up at six. Thanks. [01:23:00] Oh, this sounds horrendous.

Kyle Risi: It's horrible.

Adam Cox: Unless you're Princess Margaret, you're having a great time. Yeah.

Kyle Risi: I don't think she knows who she is. At one point she suggested Charles, that they go and walk around the gardens. Right. Just be a bit romantic. Spend some time alone.

Finally. And to do that, he has to send a formal request, through the queen secretary to make sure that she doesn't want the grounds to herself. She is literally in the next room.

Adam Cox: Just think like, knock on the door. You gonna be in the garden later? I'll take the morning. You take the afternoon.

Kyle Risi: It's wild. Even Prince Philip has so far requests to eat lunch with his own wife. This is not a family, this is a corporation

Adam Cox: who like introduced these rules. I get someone's doing like a diary management, or you've got this at 11, you've got this at one, whatever. Yeah. Let me know if you wanna do something later. I'll try and fit it in her diary.

Kyle Risi: Let me know if you want me to run me, right? Yeah. . At one

Adam Cox: you, you can have sex at three, but literally that's it today. But yeah, the thought that, especially when you're on holiday, you know what, [01:24:00] there's no schedule.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. You're right.

Obviously, as we know, Diana had this habit of like sneaking down to the kitchens to kinda spend time with the staff , but at Balmoral, they're so afraid that they're gonna get sacked, that they lock her out of the kitchen because

Adam Cox: she, why? Because she's talking to them too much or,

Kyle Risi: yeah, this, is a world where servants are required to turn and face the wall whenever a royal passes them in the corridor. Like they need to become invisible, That is weird.

When they finally get some alone time. Charles's idea of romance is to take Diana out to like the mos or something, and he will just read her these really long dry passages from his favorite memoirist, which he says he's doing to provide her with spiritual and intellectual sustenance.

Adam Cox: How?

Kyle Risi: I don't know. In his biography, Charles writes, I was baffled by the lack of interest in these subjects. I wanted to talk to her about Carl Young, but she just tuned out. I'm like, fuck sake, Charles. Ask her what she's interested in.

Adam Cox: [01:25:00] God. Yeah. Take an interest in her. Just once.

Kyle Risi: At this point, she just wants to scream and it's only the honeymoon. Tina Brown says it's at Balmoral, that Diana has a moment of icy clarity that this situation, this disconnect, wasn't something temporary. This was literally the blueprint for the rest of her life.

Adam Cox: Oh, that must have been horrible. Like that realization and like it just dawns on you, yeah.

Kyle Risi: So at this point, she falls into a massive depression, like on paper, they come from similar worlds, but in reality, they are nothing alike. And the problem is that Charles just isn't willing to meet halfway in any way to accommodate any of her needs.

Like it's the royal family's way, or literally nothing. But equally, I honestly don't think either of them have the emotional vocabulary to express any of this. They just don't talk about it. Instead, it just manifests as these explosive fights. So really great example of how they come from just such different worlds is that Diane is watching Charles get dressed one day. His valet laid out three shirts for him. [01:26:00] Charles doesn't like any of them, so instead of just walking over to the closet, which is like literally two steps behind him, he calls the valet back in and Diana's like, just walk back two steps, pick a different shirt for yourself and let the valet focus on more important things.

And Charles goes, but he's paid to do it.

Adam Cox: I just feel like there's so much inefficiency going on. Like they could, like it's probably saved a hell of a lot of money. It's probably, they have probably cut corners or cut back now.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. But back then, Jesus. I think it's just that they do come from different worlds.

They just do things different. Look, Diana's a show dog, right? Who's met and fallen in love with another show dog, a tiny poodle, right? Mm-hmm. And she thinks, yes, I'll go and live with this family of poodles. Like we're both show dogs, we're basically the same, right? She says to the poodle, do you have a fetch and play with the stick?

And he's like, I'm familiar with the stick, but I've never considered it. Like they're just so different.

Adam Cox: Yeah. As an alien world, I can't imagine. I'd be so frustrated if I lived in the royal family.

Kyle Risi: And the thing is though, I think the frustration would be less if they both could [01:27:00] communicate this is the problem of everything. They do not know how to communicate. It's just this complete inability to express themselves or to talk to each other. That sends her into this deep depression.

The palace ends up sending her to a bunch of doctors who all say that she has anxiety and they prescribe her Valium. It's supposed to be take one of these when you feel overwhelmed, kind of sort of thing, right?

Mm-hmm. But the palace builds us into her routine. So it's like 10:00 AM and they're like, Diana, time for your pills. And they're shaking and looking in the face and like,

Adam Cox: that's weird. So she has to take a Valium a day.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. So she's always drugged up all of the time. They're bickering constantly. Like, could you just not let your corgi chew and my diaphragm sort of thing. But then that ramps up to like really spiteful things. Like Diana will tell him You'll never be king. And the thing is though, that sounds funny to us, but that's something that really Oh, that would cuts Charles deep.

Adam Cox: Yeah, I can imagine. Like this is what he's been built for.

Kyle Risi: Exactly. So the fighting then turns physical mostly on Diana's part, right? She's like hitting [01:28:00] him and slapping him and stuff. He has no idea what to do. her behavior is 100% excusable, , but it's also a massive, massive cry for help.

Mm-hmm. Three months after they get married, she falls pregnant. She's violently sick. Like it's the worst morning sickness, like every single day. The only upside of any of this is that this gives her an excuse to ditch the Valium.

The downside is that she's feeding everything again, all the anxiety, situation that she's in, just floods back to her.

This includes the anxiety about Camilla and her need for Charles's love, and that, that the fact that she's competing for it. So while she's pregnant, the bulimia starts up again.

Adam Cox: God, that's can't be good to, you know, whilst trying to have a baby

Kyle Risi: with all this going on behind closed doors, they're still royals, right? So this still requires to go on these official royal appointments and their first big joint appearance is like a walkabout in Wales. She's super nervous, and on top of that, she has to give a speech in Welsh.

Adam Cox: [01:29:00] Does she know Welsh?

Kyle Risi: I think she probably learned it, but that's messy at best, right? Yeah. That's a hard language

Adam Cox: you're gonna mess up.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. And it is. It's exactly that. It's messy, but Adam, it's real. And people can tell that she's tried really hard and this sort of marks the beginning of the public's love for her, but it's also because she really gets in there with the crowd.

Latina Brown says when the queen appears in public, she's formal, she's dignified. She might accept a bouquet, but she doesn't shake hands and she doesn't kiss any babies. Mm-hmm. Diana's doing both, right? She's kissing babies. She's, she's benching men. Bums, yeah. She's hugging. She's got a full arm of flowers.

She refuses to hand them over to a, so she can't see where she's going. Go at my flowers. Get off. I mean, it is, when the royal family sees this, they hate it. She gets chastised for being far too emotional, far too visible, too warm. Apparently. That's just not the royal way.

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. Gotta act aloof.

Kyle Risi: They, exactly. That's what they're saying. And they're saying this [01:30:00] while they're staring at the approval ratings for the monarchy that is now skyrocketing because of Diana. It's so fucked up. Charles hates it as well, not because it's not royal enough. Because he's jealous

Adam Cox: because the tension is not on him.

Kyle Risi: get this right before the wedding, he was the most popular royal at 12% approval rating, which is what he used to, used to brag with. It's like, well, 'cause like 12

Adam Cox: over like nine or something.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, pretty much. He's like, I'm the most popular royal in the royal family. Respect and like drop his mic. So when Diana's approval ratings come in at 80 plus percent, he's furious.

Charles' solo tours typically drawing crowds of like 20,000 people. Right. Which is huge When he tour with Diana, 400,000 plus.

Adam Cox: Wow.

Kyle Risi: There is this moment where they're out greeting the crowds in Wales, the turnout is so big that they decide to split up. Diana takes one side of the street, Charles takes the other side, and as Charles approaches his side, there's a very, [01:31:00] very audible groan from the crown as they realize they're getting Charles and not Diana

Adam Cox: which is shit. I get it. Yeah. That must be hard. I mean, I'm not, I don't hate Charles at all or anything. No,

But I dunno, sometimes you like he, he seems a bit of an idiot. But then I get that. At this point in time, Yeah, he must, that must make him feel really shit.

Kyle Risi: But the overall rating for the royal family is going up and it is because of Diana, but instead of seeing her as an asset, as a force for good, for the monarchy, they treat her like a liability. Awful.

Adam Cox: Isn't, it's the same sort of thing, that's happened with Meghan and Harry, isn't it? Yeah. Where I think they thought that, Meghan could do a whole world of good to the royal family. Mm-hmm. Not to say they needed like this big public image or anything, but just Yeah. She could elevate them or take it in a new direction.

Yeah. Kind of enhance, I should say. And it's the same sort of thing. She didn't know how to curtsy do this. Speak Welsh, whatever it was. Yeah. So it's crazy how history did repeat itself.

Kyle Risi: Yes, 100%. Basically, Charles sees Diana as a [01:32:00] spotlight thief. Mm. He really wants to use his platform as a Principal Wales to talk about big intellectual issues like sustainability, overpopulation, and climate policy, which is great, but every time.

Yeah. Which is great, but every time he does the headlines just say, oh, look how good Diana looks in red.

Adam Cox: Yeah. And I get from that point of view, it's do we really need to be talking about her dress? Can we not talk about something more meaningful? Like, but look at her dress.

Kyle Risi: So he resents her this is the start of them living two very different lives behind closed doors.

things start falling apart in public. A lot of it is performative. Like it's not horrendous at this point, but there's definitely big cracks. Remember they still have Harry to come, so they clearly are on and off and on and off. Right? And they try for a long time, but at this point, it's a few months in and there are big fis in their relationship.

So there is a connection there, but it's just really strained but also really complex. Mm-hmm. But her mental health just gets worse. She starts self-harming, like she's cutting her wrists and her chest. Did you [01:33:00] know that?

Adam Cox: I did know that she's self-harmed. Yeah.

Kyle Risi: At one point she tries to use a serrated lemon slicer to cut herself. Just so like she'll feel something other than what she was feeling in that moment. There's this instant when she's pregnant with William, where she apparently.

Throws herself down the stairs. Really? She and Charles had been fighting something about him wanting to go hunting and her not wanting him to go, she threatens suicide. Charles calls a bluff, and so as he's walking out the door, she throws herself down the stairs.

And so we're not sure if this was an actual suicide attempt. Diane herself tells Andrew Morton that it was, but Tina Brown insists that based on how devoted she was as a mother, she would never put a baby at risk in that way.

Adam Cox: But she hadn't given birth yet, right?

Kyle Risi: No. But she was pregnant Yeah. With a baby. So why would she wanna put the kid at risk? But she also says that the staff that were there that day back up and say that she was insistent that she slipped, right?

Mm-hmm. And if this was a call for help, she would've been like, she wouldn't have said that, [01:34:00] right? Yeah. Yeah. So there's a belief that Diana said that to Andrew Morton, because of course, this was towards the end of the relationship, and she wanted to make Charles look like he was very uncaring.

But around six months into the pregnancy, the media actually start turning on her not because they don't like her, but it's large, because they're trying to tap into her as a commodity. They're still trying to work out like what angles sell the best. And they kind of stumble into them by accident.

But once they stumble into them, they go, ah, this, this sells papers. Mm-hmm. So let's recreate more of this. And basically it all starts when she gets packed in The Bahamas wearing a red bikini. And at the time she's a few months pregnant with William. And so when the pictures come out, it's this huge scandal like, how dare a pregnant woman wear a bikini?

It was that kind of sort of thing. So it was like the legs thing all over again. And so from there, every single picture that they take of her is twisted into some kind of nonsense headline. Like she's Pap leaving the house and the headline will be Diana Storms Out. Do you know what I mean? Because that sells better. But it's literally just her leaving the house.

Adam Cox: Yeah. She's just, yeah. [01:35:00] Shut the door with some force.

Kyle Risi: It breaks that Charles was turning to vegetarianism and the headline reads, Diana forces vegetarianism on her husband. She's not even vegetarian.

Adam Cox: She's there having steak every night. Yeah.

Kyle Risi: The palace, they have to finally intervene when she's almost crushed trying to buy a packet of wine gums at a shop. 'Cause she just gets swarmed. The palace summon all the major press outlets. It's so serious, Adam, that the queen herself is there and basically they're there to tell the press to fuck off. Really? So they do actually get involved because I didn't think they did. Yeah. They tried

Adam Cox: to stay away from the press.

Kyle Risi: Well, at this point, when she's pregnant, it's more about William.

Adam Cox: Ah, yeah.

Kyle Risi: So they come in, they tell the press to back off and to be a little more respectful to consider that she's pregnant with William. And at the end a Jonas raises his hand and he goes, if lady die wants to buy some wine gums, can she not just send a member of staff?

Adam Cox: Yeah. Or send write a letter to someone to go get it.

Kyle Risi: Oh, that didn't land the way that I thought it would [01:36:00] because the queen looks at him, doesn't miss a beat, and just says, what an extremely pompous man you are.

And then she walks off.

Adam Cox: Yeah, she says that. Yeah. Wow. I bet. I bet she said. So. Letter a member of staff get her wine gums. Yeah, probably. Or Or Murray Mint.

Kyle Risi: So yes, the queen has her iconic moments. Eventually though, on June the 21st, 1982, prince William is born after 16 hour labor. Charles is there. It's the first for kind of Royal fathers the Queen visits, and famously says, thank goodness he does not look like his father. She says that. Yeah.

Adam Cox: Wow. Thanks

Kyle Risi: mom. And Prince Charles says the journalist, like when our slide Does William look like you? And he's like, God no.

Which is a nice moment of kind of self-awareness from him, right? Yeah.

And so what's really lovely is that after William is born, both Charles and Diana, they agree that they are gonna raise their kids differently. They both come from very awkward, cold, family dynamics. And they are committed to being present, affectionate, warm, and nothing like their parents.

[01:37:00] Mm-hmm. But Charles adds one caveat. He's like, I'm committed to doing exactly that, being warm and being caring everything our parents were, but only behind closed doors.

Which is wild to me because he does not understand that his entire job as a senior royal is optics. Mm. Do you know what I mean?

Like he knows the monarchy's image hasn't done well for the last 30 years. Right. Diana swooped in the image skyrocketed. He sees how Diana's warmth has elevated that image. And so saying that he's only gonna be a dotting father in private. It's just totally misguided.

Adam Cox: Yeah. But I guess he's got his mom probably saying, yeah, we don't do that. That's not how we do it.

Kyle Risi: No, it's so wrong. If they want to be relevant, they wanna update the modern family, they wanna modernize it. You have to roll with the punches. You have to be more relatable.

So following William's birth. Diana falls into postpartum depression. And again, the palace sent it to a couple of psychologists. One of them insists that she called him every day at [01:38:00] 6:00 PM and recount everything Charles has said to her throughout the day. And so every day at six, she's basically reliving the worst parts of her day. And so every day just ends with her sobbing.

Adam Cox: How does that help?

Kyle Risi: It doesn't, oh, that's, it doesn't.

Turns out he's on retainer from the publication, and he's getting paid a thousand dollars a week to leak all her secrets. Ah. Oh, we don't know this, this point though.

Adam Cox: Okay.

that's what's actually happening.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. So she begs the palace to at least let her choose, like her own treatment plan.

And eventually they give in, she decides to try acupuncture and astrology in a bit of Tai Chi and Adam, weirdly, it helps and I'm not saying that stuff works, but it works for her and that speaks volumes because she finally has some semblance of control in a world where she literally has none.

Adam Cox: I was just about to say, I bet it was about control, having some influence on her life. So it probably just makes her feel good that she gets to make a decision.

Kyle Risi: And I really do wonder if [01:39:00] that's what the problem has always been up until now, every aspect of her life, as you said. It's been dictated by other people, what to wear, what to say, what to eat with, to stand.

This is the first thing that she gets to choose. And so when William is 1-year-old, Diana starts to notice that Charles keeps slipping outta the house. he's staying out more, he's sleeping at different friend's houses, she can't reach him. And there's also just no explanation.

And so one day in 1983 diner walks into his study, she picks up the phone, clicks, redial, and on the other end of the phone there's a voice that says, hello, this is Camilla Parker Bowls.

And that is how she finds out that the affair is back on. Mm mm So it didn't last very long, did it? One year he stopped sticking it in her.

And Adam, that is the story of Princess Diana, part one, her early life, her courtship with Charles, and the very slow unraveling of a [01:40:00] marriage.

Adam Cox: Yeah, there's a lot in there. Like, so

Kyle Risi: much

Adam Cox: in there, so much. I told you it would be an epic. Yeah. Wow. It's almost like, well they did make a movie. I, they made a 10 part documentary series. Yeah, there's been a few. You just, when you relive some of those moments of her early years, yeah. you just can't help but. Understand how it just got outta control and that's it. and she just feels so sorry for her. Really.

Kyle Risi: What's the thing that sticks out for you the most?

Adam Cox: That she just doesn't have a say? It feels like that she loves Charles, but she feels probably trapped. Yeah. And I imagine at this point in time, doesn't feel like there's a way out. Mm-hmm.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, I think so. It's, certainly a heartbreaker one, she's had a terrible start.

She's had a terrible childhood and she's just, she had one moment of happiness, true happiness in her life. And then it was gone because she thought she was jumping into a fairytale. Mm-hmm. And she wasn't, what she didn't realize is that she was already in a fairytale in that little flat on Sloan Square.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Jumped into a bit of a, [01:41:00] not a nightmare. 'cause obviously she had a, you know, her kids and all sorts, and that I'm sure there's so much that she is appreciative or was appreciative. Yeah. The fact that she, you know, could do a lot of good. Mm-hmm. At this moment in time, it probably didn't seem like that.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, So Adam, next time we'll be diving into the affairs, the betrayal and the slow motion. Very steady, clearly approaching end of their marriage. Mm-hmm.

And I'm so looking forward to it because actually this is probably for me, the most interesting part of Diana's life because she's got all sorts of things. She's, there's growth in there. This final realization there is very, very complex and strange behavior from Diana herself.

Mm-hmm. Very questionable stuff. And I just love But she does some incredible, incredible things as well. And it just makes her more relatable.

Adam Cox: I feel like this episode sounds like we're gonna learn some stuff that we probably is not that common knowledge.

No, Can't wait. I love it.

Kyle Risi: And so that brings us to the end of another fascinating foray into the compendium [01:42:00] and assembly of fascinating things. We hope you enjoyed the ride as much as we did.

Adam Cox: And if today's episode sparks your curiosity, then please do us a favor and follow us on your favorite podcast app. It truly makes a world of difference and helps more people discover the show.

Kyle Risi: And for our dedicate, it freaks out there. Don't forget that next week's episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon, and of course it is completely free to access.

Adam Cox: And if you want even more, then please join our certified Frees tier to unlock the entire archive, delve into exclusive content and get a sneak peek at what's coming next.

Kyle Risi: We drop new episodes every Tuesday, and until then, remember, every fairytale comes with fine print. We'll see you next time.

Adam Cox: See you. [01:43:00]