Princess Diana wasn’t afraid to speak the truth about what was going down in her marriage to a then-Prince Charles. During her notorious BBC Panorama interview, the people’s princess famously said “there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” There was also a more private interaction that took place between Princess Diana and Camilla Parker Bowles during a 1987 party regarding her and Charles’s affair. Diana attended the gathering, which was hosted by Camilla’s sister, Annabel Elliot, despite not being close with any of the other guests, per Diana’s former bodyguard, Ken Wharfe.
In Andrew Morton’s biography Diana: Her True Story, Diana described herself as a “fish out of water” at the party, though she decided to try her “hardest.”
During an interview with ITV, Wharfe recalled the tension when Diana arrived, which surprised many of the partygoers.
“Diana didn’t have any particular friendships at that party but when we arrived there, it was almost like freeze-framing a scene in a movie because there was this surprise that Diana had even arrived,” he said, per the Mirror.
About an hour later, things got even more heated when Diana grabbed Wharfe and told him she couldn’t find her husband or Parker Bowles.
“Now, I couldn’t say no; clearly, this woman was in some distress.” Wharfe remembered. “Eventually, we found the prince and Camilla [sitting] on a sofa in the basement of this property, just talking.”
In that moment, Diana found the “confidence” to confront Parker Bowles for the first time, Wharfe said. And she had some choice words for the pair, who would eventually go on to get married and become the king and queen of England.
“I didn’t know quite what Diana was going to do at that point but, with a great deal of confidence, Diana just went up to both of them and said to Camilla ‘please don’t treat me like an idiot, I know what’s going on,'” he recounted.
Per Morton’s biography, Diana also said, “It must be hell for both of you,” before adding to Parker Bowles, “I wasn’t born yesterday.”
