Diana was initially considered the perfect match for Charles when he suggested marrying her to his parents. Young and aristocratic, they thought she would make an ideal Queen Consort to the first-in-line to the throne. However, their marriage crumbled under the pressure of public scrutiny and rumours of infidelity. Diana later said they began to drift as a couple shortly after Prince Harry’s birth. By 1992, they were officially separated, and after several years of the two of them publicising their difficulties and spats, the Queen ordered they divorce in 1996.

The Queen Mother had always favoured Charles, and therefore some believe the messy split from Diana increased the royal’s hostility towards the ‘People’s Princess’.

Writing for the Daily Mail in 2017, Major Colin Burgess – former equerry to the Queen Mother – revealed: “For all the friendliness and warmth which made her so popular there was a streak of steel in the Queen Mother and I got a glimpse of what it could be like to cross her shortly after I began working for her in the summer of 1994.”

He explained: “While she had all the time in the world for Charles, it was quite clear that the Queen Mother had no love at all for the Princess of Wales.

“Once Diana split from Charles, she was very much persona non grata, and I never again heard her name mentioned by, or in front of, the Queen Mum, not even when I saw her a couple of months after Diana’s death, by which time I had left her employ.”

However, their split did not just affect the family, but everyone who worked for ‘the Firm’.

Major Burgess continued: “His separation from Princess Diana polarised their staff, who had no choice but to take sides, and if you walked into any of his offices, you could easily witness something being thrown at someone in anger.

“Even the Prince would pick things up and launch them at one of his staff if that person had done something wrong or said something inappropriate to the press.”

Major Burgess also revealed how the Queen Mother “was still quite fond of” Sarah Ferguson, even after her ‘toe-sucking’ scandal and from Prince Andrew.

The former couple still spent time together after the divorce, and this was reportedly never condemned by the Queen Mother. Major Burgess claimed this was the Queen Mother knew Fergie brought “joy” Andrew.

She said to her equerry: “You know, Andrew does love her so.”

Major Burgess also mentioned what happened when he asked his boss if she had seen Jonathan Dimbleby’s television documentary, in which Charles revealed his affair with now wife Camilla Parker Bowles in 1994.

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Apparently, the Queen Mother gave him a look which “could have frozen fire”.

“There was a smile there but she spoke through gritted teeth and her eyes narrowed slightly as she said: ‘Some things are best not discussed.’”

He explained: “She meant that Charles shouldn’t have done the interview and, probably more pointedly, that I shouldn’t be asking her about it.”

Prince Charles was the Queen Mother’s favourite grandchild, Major Burgess said, because “all the formality surrounding the monarch meant that, no matter how much he wanted to, he just couldn’t get close to her”.

Charles and Diana continued to have strained relations right up until her death the following year.

She tragically died from injuries sustained in a car accident in Paris in 1997.

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