The Crown S5 E9 Real History: The

Divorce Settlement Between

Charles And Diana
www.historyextra.com

Did the Queen write letters to Charles and Diana,

instructing that they must divorce?

Queen Elizabeth did write a letter to her daughter-in-law. “I

have consulted with the Archbishop of Canterbury and
with the prime minister,” she wrote, as said in The Royal
Observer. “And, of course, with Charles, and we have
decided that the best course for you is divorce.”

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The Queen was given approval for this request by both

prime minister John Major and George Carey, the
Archbishop of Canterbury.

“There comes a time, sad and painful as it is, that a

marriage has to be recognised as dead, and after the
shenanigans and tantrums of the past few weeks, it has
been very publicly obvious that it does seem to have died,”
the Archdeacon of York, George Austin, told BBC television
at the time.
Charles (Dominic West) and Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) in
'The Crown' (Photo by Netflix)

It was just days after the Queen’s letters were sent, on 21

December 1995, that Buckingham Palace announced the
separation: “After considering the present situation,” it
said, “the Queen wrote to both the prince and princess
earlier this week and gave them their view, supported by
the Duke of Edinburgh, that an early divorce is desirable.”

What did the divorce settlement between Charles and

Diana entail?

The agreement specified that the couple would share

custody of Prince William and Prince Harry. Due to Diana
not being an official member of the royal family, she was
made to relinquish her title of ‘Her Royal Highness’ but
was allowed to keep the title ‘Princess of Wales’.

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A timeline of Charles’s and Diana’s Divorce

1986: Charles and Diana both have extramarital affairs –

Charles with Camilla Parker Bowles, and Diana with
Captain James Hewitt

1987–92: The couple suffer rumours of marital trouble. In

1987, Diana’s decision to not join the family’s annual trip to
Balmoral leads to headlines suggesting a “royal break”
between the couple.

May 1992: Andrew Morton publishes Diana: Her True Story,

which shares details of the couple’s collapsed marriage.
The story behind the two’s communication features in
episode two of The Crown.

December 1992: John Major announces Charles’s and

Diana’s separation to the House of Commons.

November 1995: Diana sits down for an interview with

BBC journalist Martin Bashir, on Panorama, which 23
million people tune in to watch. This is covered in episode
eight of The Crown.
August 1996: Charles and Diana officially divorce.

Diana would also retain full access to the royal family’s

private jets and her apartments at Kensington Palace. She
was also able to use the state apartments at St James’s
Palace for entertaining, and keep the jewellery she had
gained during her marriage to Charles.

The financial settlement between the couple has never

been confirmed, but Diana is believed to have been given a
lump sum of £17m and an annual stipend of £400,000.

Did John Major play a mediatory role in the divorce

proceedings?

Richard Toye told HistoryExtra that John Major “met

separately with the Queen, Charles, and Diana, to discuss
the issue before the couple’s divorce in 1996. Major’s
biographer, Anthony Sheldon, later revealed that Diana
sent the prime minister several appreciative letters.”
Queen Elizabeth II in diplomatic meeting with her Prime
Minister awards John Major with an honour (Photo by ©
Pool Photograph/Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)

Apart from this, there is little information regarding John

Major’s role in the divorce proceedings between Charles
and Diana. He remains unrevealing over the conversations
that did take place between him and the monarchy at the
time; on 15 October 2022, his spokesperson said that
“discussions between the monarch and prime minster are
entirely private and – for Sir John – will always remain so.”

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Was John Major close with the Queen?

“You are the rarest of things,” the Queen tells John Major
in The Crown, “someone that is easy to like and trust.”

Whilst these words are a fictional supposition, it is said

that the two did share a close relationship due to Major
supporting the Queen through her ‘annus horribilis’ in
1992, along with the other scandals she faced during the
1990s.

Read more | Philip Murphy on The Crown: “If

scholars can’t write accurate histories of the Queen’s
reign, drama is what we’ll continue to rely on”

Another sign of his closeness to the royal family was the

appointing of Major as William and Harry’s special
guardian following the death of their mother, Diana. He
was also the only ex-prime minister invited to Prince
Harry’s wedding to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, in 2018.
Was Mark Bolland hired by Camilla and Charles to repair
their image?

Charles and Mark Bolland (Photo by Tim Graham Photo

Library via Getty Images)

Mark Bolland, a British public relations executive, served

as Deputy Private Secretary to Charles between 1997 and
2002. He is seen as a key figure in the rehabilitation of
Charles’s relationship with Camilla, following Charles’s
divorce with Diana and other scandals – including their
intercepted call that included a conversation depicted in
episode five. Bolland has sometimes been labelled by
publications, including The Telegraph, as the royal family’s
first ‘spin doctor’, which is the title Camilla (Olivia
Williams) uses for him in The Crown.
 Read more | Royal historian Tracy Borman on the
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Bolland was the brains behind much of Charles’s and

Camilla’s press coverage as the royals approached the
new millennium. In 2000, the Queen met Camilla at
Highgrove during a 60th birthday party for Constantine II
of Greece. Bolland ensured this was as high-profile as it
could have been. Journalist and biographer Tina Brown
wrote in her 2022 book, The Palace Papers, that Bolland
was a “strong ally of Camilla”.

However, his techniques to secure the couple public

favour were not short of controversy. Bolland was later
accused by former palace press officer Dicky Arbiter
spinning against other members of the royal family, to
make Camilla look good in comparison. He left the post in
February 2002 and set up his own agency.