April 26, 2026 • 14 mins
The fairy tale curdles into public warfare. The Morton book reveals Diana's bulimia and suicide attempts. Camillagate tapes expose Charles's intimate conversations with his mistress. Squidgygate reveals Diana's own affair. Both sides brief the press relentlessly. The Queen watches helplessly as her heir's marriage becomes a global spectacle. The institution is powerless to contain the damage.
While no one truly knows what happens behind closed palace doors, this series uses news sources, on-the-record quotes, and some artistic license to craft this entertainment series. Some moments have been dramatized for storytelling effect. AI narration was used in creation of this series.
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While no one truly knows what happens behind closed palace doors, this series uses news sources, on-the-record quotes, and some artistic license to craft this entertainment series. Some moments have been dramatized for storytelling effect. AI narration was used in creation of this series.
Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!
Subscribe now for exclusive shows like 'Palace Intrigue,' and get bonus content from Deep Crown (our exclusive Palace Insider!) Or get 'Daily Comedy News,' and '5 Good News Stories’ with no commercials! Plans start at $4.99 per month, or save 20% with a yearly plan at $49.99. Join today and help support the show!
We now have Merch! FREE SHIPPING! Check out all the products like T-shirts, mugs, bags, jackets and more with logos and slogans from your favorite shows! Did we mention there’s free shipping? Get 10% off with code NewMerch10 Go to Caloroga.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Calarogu shark media. There is a particular kind of war
that is fought not on battlefields, but in newspaper columns,
not with weapons, but with whispers. It is the kind
of war where both sides smile for the cameras and
(00:26):
then brief their allies the moment the shutters stop clicking.
It is a war of image and narrative, of carefully
placed stories and calculated leaks. And in the late nineteen
eighties and early nineteen nineties, this is exactly the war
that Charles and Diana waged against each other, with the
British press as their battlefield and the watching world as
(00:49):
their audience. It would come to be known as the
War of the Waleses, and it would leave the monarchy
shaken to its foundations. To understand how they got there,
you have to understand what the marriage looked like from
the inside. By the middle of the nineteen eighties, from
(01:12):
the outside, the fairy tale held. Two children had arrived.
William born in June of nineteen eighty two, robust and
cherubic and adored by the nation. Harry born in September
of nineteen eighty four, red haired and spirited. The family
was photographed at polo matches, on ski slopes, on the
(01:35):
steps of hospitals. They looked like what the Palace needed
them to look like. But behind the doors of Kensington Palace,
the marriage had become a cold and miserable arrangement. Charles
and Diana occupied separate emotional worlds. They spent increasing amounts
of time apart. Charles retreated to High Grove, his country
(01:57):
estate in Gloucestershire, where he could garden and and entertain
the circle of friends he preferred. Diana stayed in London,
adrift and isolated, struggling with an eating disorder that had
become severe. Bolimia had taken hold of Diana in the
early years of the marriage. She would later describe throwing
(02:17):
up four or five times a day a way of
managing the anxiety and loneliness and sense of powerlessness that
had come to define her life. The Palace did not
know how to respond to this. Mental health was not
a subject the institution understood or discussed. The approach was
the one it always used. Carry on, be seen, perform
(02:39):
the duty. The feelings were your own problem. Charles, for
his part, felt overwhelmed and unequipped. He had been raised
by a father who expressed love through expectation and a
mother who expressed it through presence without warmth. He did
not have the tools Diana needed him to have. When
she wept, he withdrew. When she raged, he retreated to
(03:04):
High Grove. And Camilla Parker Bowles was always there, steady
and calm and uncomplicated, the antidote to everything Diana represented.
By many accounts, Charles and Camilla remained in contact throughout
the marriage. They were careful, They were discreet, but not
careful enough. This is Crown and Controversy, King Charles, Episode two,
(03:34):
The War of the Waleses. In nineteen ninety two, everything
broke open at once. The author, Andrew Morton, had been
working in secret for years on a book about Diana.
(03:57):
What made this book different from every previous royal biography
was its source. Diana herself had secretly recorded hours of
deeply personal testimony on audio cassettes, smuggled out of Kensington
Palace and handed to Morton through a trusted intermediary. The
palace had no idea it was coming. Diana Her True
(04:18):
Story was published in June of nineteen ninety two. Its
contents were unlike anything the public had ever read about
the royal family. Diana's bolimia, her suicide attempts, her profound
loneliness inside the marriage, her belief that Charles never loved her,
her sense that the Palace had abandoned her to suffer alone.
(04:40):
The book was a sensation. It sold out immediately, The
tabloids ran excerpts for days, and the public, which had
watched Diana for a decade and sensed something beneath the surface,
now had confirmation of what that something was. The sympathy
for Diana was overwhelming, The damage to Charles was severe.
(05:03):
The Palace responded the way it always responded, with silence
and careful deniability. Charles did not confirm the book. He
did not deny it. He continued his public schedule. By
most accounts, he was privately furious and wounded. He felt exposed, ambushed, betrayed.
(05:24):
The woman he had married had gone to a journalist
and told the world the most private details of their
life together. Whatever his failures as a husband, this felt
like a declaration of war. Diana denied initially that she
had cooperated with Morton. The denial did not hold too
many details were too specific, too intimate, only she could
(05:47):
have known them. The Palace knew it, the press knew it,
the public strongly suspected it. And then came the tapes.
In November of nineteen ninety two, a transcript of a
recorded phone conversation between Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles was published.
The recording had been made several years earlier, leaked through
channels that were never fully explained. The content was explicit,
(06:10):
it was intimate. It was, by any measure, the most
embarrassing thing to happen to a member of the British
royal family in living memory. Charles and Camilla were caught
on tapes speaking to each other with the ease and
tenderness of two people who had loved each other for
a very long time. The intimacy of the conversation went
far beyond a casual friendship. This was widely interpreted as
(06:35):
evidence of a continuing relationship conducted while Charles was married
to the most famous woman in the world. The transcript
was nicknamed Camilla Gate by the press, and it ran
on front pages around the world. It was read aloud
on radio programs. It was dissected in Parliament, It was
discussed in living rooms and pubs and offices across Britain.
(06:59):
The to the throne had been caught in what the
world interpreted as an affair, and the evidence was right
there in his own words. By most accounts, Charles was
deeply humiliated, not just embarrassed, but genuinely and profoundly exposed
in a way that a man of his particular pride
and reserve found almost unbearable. He'd spent his life in
(07:23):
service to an institution that demanded dignity above all else,
and now his most private moments had been broadcast to
the world. The Queen watched all of this with a
composure that those around her described as almost unnerving. Elizabeth
had survived crises before, she would survive this one. But
(07:46):
she was also, according to those close to her, genuinely alarmed.
The monarchy's relationship with the public depended on a degree
of mystique, a separation between the institution and the mess
of ordinary human feeling. That mystique was evaporating in real time.
(08:15):
Diana was not finished. If Charles had Camilla as his ally,
Diana had something more powerful, the press, and through the press,
the public. She understood instinctively what Charles had never quite
grasped that in the modern world, public love was its
own form of protection. The more the people adored her,
the harder it was for the Palace to simply manage
(08:37):
her into silence. Diana was widely believed to be working,
through allies in the press, to shape her side of
the story. Sympathetic accounts appeared in newspapers and magazines, painting
her as a woman wronged, a mother devoted, a princess
abandoned by an institution that did not deserve her. Some
(08:58):
of these stories were accurate, some were shaped. All of
them served a purpose. In nineteen ninety two, a second
set of tapes emerged. These were recordings of Diana in
intimate telephone conversations with a man named James Gilby, a
family friend. The tapes were nicknamed Squidgygait, after an endearment
(09:20):
Gilby used for Diana in the recordings. In them, Diana
spoke candidly about her unhappiness inside the royal family, her
frustration with the institution, her fears about the future. The
revelation that Diana had also been conducting an intimate friendship
outside her marriage complicated the public narrative somewhat, but only somewhat.
(09:43):
Diana's approval ratings remained extraordinary. She was not seen as
the villain of this story. She was seen as a
woman who had sought comfort in the ruins of a
marriage that had never truly begun. The public extended her
the grace it was not yet ready to extend to Charles.
Both sides were seen as using the press to shape
(10:05):
the narrative, briefing and counterbriefing, each acutely aware that the
other was doing the same. The Palace tried to stay
above it, and mostly failed. The Queen's advisers urged restraint.
Restraint was not something either Charles or Diana was capable
of anymore. In December of nineteen ninety two, Prime Minister
(10:26):
John Major stood up in the House of Commons and
announced that the Prince and Princess of Wales had agreed
to separate. He was careful to note that the separation
had no constitutional implications. He was careful not to use
the word divorce. The Palace was still hoping somehow that
this could be managed, contained resolved without the finality of
(10:50):
a legal ending. It could not. The years between nineteen
ninety two and the eventual divorce in nineteen ninety six
were a continuation of the same grinding, public mutually destructive conflict.
Charles gave a television interview in which he acknowledged his
(11:10):
relationship with Camilla, describing it as having resumed after the
marriage had irretrievably broken down. He was asked directly whether
he had tried to be faithful to his marriage vows.
He said that he had until the marriage had broken down.
It was at best a partial defense. Diana watched that interview,
(11:32):
and then in November of nineteen ninety five, sat down
for one of her own. She told the BBC's Martin
Basher things she had never said publicly before. She spoke
of her bolimia, she spoke of her self harm, She
confirmed her affair with the cavalry officer James Hewitt, and
she said, in words that rang out across the world,
(11:54):
there were three of us in this marriage, so it
was a bit crowded. Twenty three million people in the
United Kingdom alone watched that interview. The Queen, who had
not been told it was happening, was by every account furious,
not with Charles specifically, not with Diana specifically, but with
the situation itself. With the impossibility of it, with the
(12:16):
way the two of them had turned the most private
of failures into the most public of spectacles. She wrote
to both of them shortly afterward and told them in
terms that brooked no argument, that a divorce must now
proceed as quickly as possible. The War of the Whaless
had consumed nearly a decade. It had damaged Charles's reputation
(12:40):
in ways that would take years to repair. It had
made Diana one of the most beloved figures on the planet.
It had shaken public faith in the monarchy at a
time when the institution could least afford it, and it
had not yet reached its most devastating chapter. Next time,
(13:03):
on Crown and Controversy, King Charles, the divorce is finalized
and Diana loses her royal title. Charles feels relief, shadowed
by guilt, and Diana, freed from the Institution, but stripped
of its protection, steps out alone into a world that
is about to become far more dangerous than she knows.
(13:26):
Crown and Controversy is a production of Calaroga Shark Media
executive producers Mark Francis and John McDermot. While no one
truly knows what happens behind closed palace doors. This series
uses news sources, on the record, quotes, and some artistic
license to craft this entertainment series. Some moments have been
(13:48):
dramatized for storytelling effect, where appropriate character perspectives and motivations
are drawn from reported accounts, interviews, and biographical sources. AI
narration was used in the creation of this series. To
keep up with the modern day Royal family, follow our
(14:09):
podcast Palace Intrigue, a seven day a week, ten minute
update on the Royals.
Calarogu shark media. There is a particular kind of war
that is fought not on battlefields, but in newspaper columns,
not with weapons, but with whispers. It is the kind
of war where both sides smile for the cameras and
(00:26):
then brief their allies the moment the shutters stop clicking.
It is a war of image and narrative, of carefully
placed stories and calculated leaks. And in the late nineteen
eighties and early nineteen nineties, this is exactly the war
that Charles and Diana waged against each other, with the
British press as their battlefield and the watching world as
(00:49):
their audience. It would come to be known as the
War of the Waleses, and it would leave the monarchy
shaken to its foundations. To understand how they got there,
you have to understand what the marriage looked like from
the inside. By the middle of the nineteen eighties, from
(01:12):
the outside, the fairy tale held. Two children had arrived.
William born in June of nineteen eighty two, robust and
cherubic and adored by the nation. Harry born in September
of nineteen eighty four, red haired and spirited. The family
was photographed at polo matches, on ski slopes, on the
(01:35):
steps of hospitals. They looked like what the Palace needed
them to look like. But behind the doors of Kensington Palace,
the marriage had become a cold and miserable arrangement. Charles
and Diana occupied separate emotional worlds. They spent increasing amounts
of time apart. Charles retreated to High Grove, his country
(01:57):
estate in Gloucestershire, where he could garden and and entertain
the circle of friends he preferred. Diana stayed in London,
adrift and isolated, struggling with an eating disorder that had
become severe. Bolimia had taken hold of Diana in the
early years of the marriage. She would later describe throwing
(02:17):
up four or five times a day a way of
managing the anxiety and loneliness and sense of powerlessness that
had come to define her life. The Palace did not
know how to respond to this. Mental health was not
a subject the institution understood or discussed. The approach was
the one it always used. Carry on, be seen, perform
(02:39):
the duty. The feelings were your own problem. Charles, for
his part, felt overwhelmed and unequipped. He had been raised
by a father who expressed love through expectation and a
mother who expressed it through presence without warmth. He did
not have the tools Diana needed him to have. When
she wept, he withdrew. When she raged, he retreated to
(03:04):
High Grove. And Camilla Parker Bowles was always there, steady
and calm and uncomplicated, the antidote to everything Diana represented.
By many accounts, Charles and Camilla remained in contact throughout
the marriage. They were careful, They were discreet, but not
careful enough. This is Crown and Controversy, King Charles, Episode two,
(03:34):
The War of the Waleses. In nineteen ninety two, everything
broke open at once. The author, Andrew Morton, had been
working in secret for years on a book about Diana.
(03:57):
What made this book different from every previous royal biography
was its source. Diana herself had secretly recorded hours of
deeply personal testimony on audio cassettes, smuggled out of Kensington
Palace and handed to Morton through a trusted intermediary. The
palace had no idea it was coming. Diana Her True
(04:18):
Story was published in June of nineteen ninety two. Its
contents were unlike anything the public had ever read about
the royal family. Diana's bolimia, her suicide attempts, her profound
loneliness inside the marriage, her belief that Charles never loved her,
her sense that the Palace had abandoned her to suffer alone.
(04:40):
The book was a sensation. It sold out immediately, The
tabloids ran excerpts for days, and the public, which had
watched Diana for a decade and sensed something beneath the surface,
now had confirmation of what that something was. The sympathy
for Diana was overwhelming, The damage to Charles was severe.
(05:03):
The Palace responded the way it always responded, with silence
and careful deniability. Charles did not confirm the book. He
did not deny it. He continued his public schedule. By
most accounts, he was privately furious and wounded. He felt exposed, ambushed, betrayed.
(05:24):
The woman he had married had gone to a journalist
and told the world the most private details of their
life together. Whatever his failures as a husband, this felt
like a declaration of war. Diana denied initially that she
had cooperated with Morton. The denial did not hold too
many details were too specific, too intimate, only she could
(05:47):
have known them. The Palace knew it, the press knew it,
the public strongly suspected it. And then came the tapes.
In November of nineteen ninety two, a transcript of a
recorded phone conversation between Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles was published.
The recording had been made several years earlier, leaked through
channels that were never fully explained. The content was explicit,
(06:10):
it was intimate. It was, by any measure, the most
embarrassing thing to happen to a member of the British
royal family in living memory. Charles and Camilla were caught
on tapes speaking to each other with the ease and
tenderness of two people who had loved each other for
a very long time. The intimacy of the conversation went
far beyond a casual friendship. This was widely interpreted as
(06:35):
evidence of a continuing relationship conducted while Charles was married
to the most famous woman in the world. The transcript
was nicknamed Camilla Gate by the press, and it ran
on front pages around the world. It was read aloud
on radio programs. It was dissected in Parliament, It was
discussed in living rooms and pubs and offices across Britain.
(06:59):
The to the throne had been caught in what the
world interpreted as an affair, and the evidence was right
there in his own words. By most accounts, Charles was
deeply humiliated, not just embarrassed, but genuinely and profoundly exposed
in a way that a man of his particular pride
and reserve found almost unbearable. He'd spent his life in
(07:23):
service to an institution that demanded dignity above all else,
and now his most private moments had been broadcast to
the world. The Queen watched all of this with a
composure that those around her described as almost unnerving. Elizabeth
had survived crises before, she would survive this one. But
(07:46):
she was also, according to those close to her, genuinely alarmed.
The monarchy's relationship with the public depended on a degree
of mystique, a separation between the institution and the mess
of ordinary human feeling. That mystique was evaporating in real time.
(08:15):
Diana was not finished. If Charles had Camilla as his ally,
Diana had something more powerful, the press, and through the press,
the public. She understood instinctively what Charles had never quite
grasped that in the modern world, public love was its
own form of protection. The more the people adored her,
the harder it was for the Palace to simply manage
(08:37):
her into silence. Diana was widely believed to be working,
through allies in the press, to shape her side of
the story. Sympathetic accounts appeared in newspapers and magazines, painting
her as a woman wronged, a mother devoted, a princess
abandoned by an institution that did not deserve her. Some
(08:58):
of these stories were accurate, some were shaped. All of
them served a purpose. In nineteen ninety two, a second
set of tapes emerged. These were recordings of Diana in
intimate telephone conversations with a man named James Gilby, a
family friend. The tapes were nicknamed Squidgygait, after an endearment
(09:20):
Gilby used for Diana in the recordings. In them, Diana
spoke candidly about her unhappiness inside the royal family, her
frustration with the institution, her fears about the future. The
revelation that Diana had also been conducting an intimate friendship
outside her marriage complicated the public narrative somewhat, but only somewhat.
(09:43):
Diana's approval ratings remained extraordinary. She was not seen as
the villain of this story. She was seen as a
woman who had sought comfort in the ruins of a
marriage that had never truly begun. The public extended her
the grace it was not yet ready to extend to Charles.
Both sides were seen as using the press to shape
(10:05):
the narrative, briefing and counterbriefing, each acutely aware that the
other was doing the same. The Palace tried to stay
above it, and mostly failed. The Queen's advisers urged restraint.
Restraint was not something either Charles or Diana was capable
of anymore. In December of nineteen ninety two, Prime Minister
(10:26):
John Major stood up in the House of Commons and
announced that the Prince and Princess of Wales had agreed
to separate. He was careful to note that the separation
had no constitutional implications. He was careful not to use
the word divorce. The Palace was still hoping somehow that
this could be managed, contained resolved without the finality of
(10:50):
a legal ending. It could not. The years between nineteen
ninety two and the eventual divorce in nineteen ninety six
were a continuation of the same grinding, public mutually destructive conflict.
Charles gave a television interview in which he acknowledged his
(11:10):
relationship with Camilla, describing it as having resumed after the
marriage had irretrievably broken down. He was asked directly whether
he had tried to be faithful to his marriage vows.
He said that he had until the marriage had broken down.
It was at best a partial defense. Diana watched that interview,
(11:32):
and then in November of nineteen ninety five, sat down
for one of her own. She told the BBC's Martin
Basher things she had never said publicly before. She spoke
of her bolimia, she spoke of her self harm, She
confirmed her affair with the cavalry officer James Hewitt, and
she said, in words that rang out across the world,
(11:54):
there were three of us in this marriage, so it
was a bit crowded. Twenty three million people in the
United Kingdom alone watched that interview. The Queen, who had
not been told it was happening, was by every account furious,
not with Charles specifically, not with Diana specifically, but with
the situation itself. With the impossibility of it, with the
(12:16):
way the two of them had turned the most private
of failures into the most public of spectacles. She wrote
to both of them shortly afterward and told them in
terms that brooked no argument, that a divorce must now
proceed as quickly as possible. The War of the Whaless
had consumed nearly a decade. It had damaged Charles's reputation
(12:40):
in ways that would take years to repair. It had
made Diana one of the most beloved figures on the planet.
It had shaken public faith in the monarchy at a
time when the institution could least afford it, and it
had not yet reached its most devastating chapter. Next time,
(13:03):
on Crown and Controversy, King Charles, the divorce is finalized
and Diana loses her royal title. Charles feels relief, shadowed
by guilt, and Diana, freed from the Institution, but stripped
of its protection, steps out alone into a world that
is about to become far more dangerous than she knows.
(13:26):
Crown and Controversy is a production of Calaroga Shark Media
executive producers Mark Francis and John McDermot. While no one
truly knows what happens behind closed palace doors. This series
uses news sources, on the record, quotes, and some artistic
license to craft this entertainment series. Some moments have been
(13:48):
dramatized for storytelling effect, where appropriate character perspectives and motivations
are drawn from reported accounts, interviews, and biographical sources. AI
narration was used in the creation of this series. To
keep up with the modern day Royal family, follow our
(14:09):
podcast Palace Intrigue, a seven day a week, ten minute
update on the Royals.
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