How Prince Charles Tried To Get Out Of Marrying Diana Spencer

Prince Charles fought a desperate battle to get out of his wedding to Lady Diana Spencer — but he was forced into marriage to Princess Diana by his powerful family and his illicit lover Camilla Parker Bowles!

Royal insider Nigel Dempster revealed the palace intrigue from early 1981 — after a frustrated Charles began declaring that his marriage proposal to Di after only 12 dates was a "bloody awful mistake." Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip, however, were behind the rushed romance, with his father having told Charles he'd been "living on borrowed time" as a bachelor since his 30th birthday in 1978.

Charles went to his sister, Princess Anne, for help shortly before the spectacular wedding, but she told him: "You've got to play the hand you're dealt." Camilla — his longtime mistress and phone-sex partner — also insisted that he should marry the woman he knew he would never love. Camilla called the 20-year-old Diana "an absolute mouse" who would pose no threat to their affair, adding: "She will be fine. She is almost perfect."

    Dempster's tell-all book, Behind Palace Doors, reported that Charles spoke to a close female friend just a month before the doomed wedding, complaining that Diana "is exquisitely pretty, a perfect poppet, but she's a child — she doesn't look old enough to be out of school, much less married."

The author also revealed that bachelor Charles was being forced to give up his string of conquests who "came for dinner, and left early in the morning." But one ex-lover reported that Charles himself was a disappointing and "excruciatingly shy" bedmate who ordered women to call him Arthur (one of his middle names) in the throes of passion — and "could only do it in the missionary position with the lights out!"