Anne Allan, the former dance teacher and confidant of Princess Diana has shared a deeply personal insight into the royal’s tumultuous relationship with King Charles, including how she felt she ‘wasn’t enough’
Princess Diana’s former dance teacher, Anne Allan has lifted the lid on a turbulent period in the royal’s life as she recounted her experience of teaching her to dance in her new memoir Dancing With Diana.
Over the course of nine years, Anne became a confidant and source of comfort to the Princess of Wales as she attended regular dancing classes, with the dancer, now 75, having revealed that Diana once confided in her about her troubled marriage to then-Prince Charles.
Recounting the situation in an excerpt from the book which was published in People, Anne wrote: “Slowly, after a few more minutes of gentle sobbing, [Diana] said, ‘I just can’t seem to do anything right when it comes to my husband. I do love him so much and want him to be proud of me, but I don’t think he feels the same way,’”
She continued: “I just let her talk, not offering advice, but just listening. She continued, ‘I don’t understand why I am not enough for him; I think he prefers an older woman.”
According to Allan, during their regular interactions she had noticed a number of “tongue-in-cheek” comments from the Princess surrounding her husband, as she initially suspected he was having an affair, something that Anne tried to reassure Diana was not the case. However, as more truths came to light over the following months, Diana was left feeling more and more inadequate about not being “enough” for her husband after he had seemingly reconnected with his former flame and now-wife Queen Camilla.
Before Diana and Charles wed in 1981, the monarch and Camilla, 77, dated in the ‘70s, before parting ways. Camilla went on to marry Andrew Parker Bowles in 1973, before later divorcing in 1995. However she allegedly went on to have an affair with Charles in 1986, a subject which caused Diana a great deal of pain.
“‘I know he is seeing Camilla again. Am I expected to accept that, like the other Princesses of Wales before, one just turns a blind eye to husbands having a mistress!’” Allan wrote, recalling Diana’s emotional admission to her.
“‘Why does he not love me? I really don’t understand. I have tried everything, tried to conform to his wishes even though I don’t always agree. There’s no affection between us, and I am always on my own. I just want to be loved. I can’t keep going on like this. They are really expecting me to just say nothing and keep going. How do I do that?’”
In 1992, after a number of years of marital strife, Charles and Diana decided to separate and formally divorced four years later. Yet even despite the divorce, Diana was determined to make sure Prince William and Prince Harry were at the heart of her decisions as she vowed to keep her family “together”
She tragically died one year after her divorce was finalised.