Desperate Prince Charles wanted to pull out of his wedding to Diana when he realised how 'incomp
According to the Daily Mail, Prince Charles agonised over whether to call off his wedding to Diana.
Despite realising that he and the aristocrat's daughter were incompatible, he felt powerless to do anything about it.
Breaking off the engagement 'would have been cataclysmic', he said.
And he described himself as being 'permanently between the devil and deep blue sea'.
Years later and still troubled by the tragedy of the marriage, he wept tears of frustration as he told friends: 'I desperately wanted to get out of the wedding in 1981, when during the engagement I discovered just how awful the prospects were.'
The story of the heir to the throne's anguish over the doomed marriage is told in an explosive new royal biography to mark his landmark 70th birthday next month.
It reveals how Charles wants to challenge 'pernicious lies' about him – which he believes were orchestrated by Diana herself.
Veteran royal correspondent Robert Jobson, the book's author, has accompanied the prince for 18 months on tours around the world.
Mr Jobson, who has reported on the royals for almost three decades, has spoken to many current and former members of his staff – and to Charles himself.
The result is a compelling book full of ground-breaking new material which is being serialised in the Mail today and next week.
.
Among the sensational revelations are:
â– How Charles is already 'Shadow King' and the Queen could stand aside at 95, allowing him to become Regent.
â– How shocked Charles was by his sons' level of belligerence;
â– His dismay at being excluded from the boys' 2017 documentary about Princess Diana;
â– Harry's meltdown ahead of his wedding to Meghan Markle;
â– How Charles 'talks to the dead', including Earl Mountbatten, his mentor murdered by the IRA;
â– His disdain for Tony Blair, whom he once mockingly referred to as 'our magnificent leader;'
â– His despair at the Iraq War, telling friends Mr Blair had behaved like George Bush's poodle;
â– How he disagrees with the burka bans introduced by France and other European countries;
â– His distrust of US evangelicalism and the lobbying power of giant American corporations;
â– His fear that America's chemically-gown corn was fuelling that country's ever-growing obesity and diabetes crisis;
Charles emerges from this powerful portrait as a contented figure, who is far from bitter but has strong views on some of the most vital issues facing us today.
But it is the revelation about his heartache over Diana that is bound to raise eyebrows.
Ever since Diana confided in biographer Andrew Morton we have known that the princess wanted to back out of the marriage
But until now we had no idea that the prince did too.
It is at times brutal reading as the book details Charles's sadness at his failure to confront what was to become an unfolding tragedy.
Mr Jobson says that the prince knew within just a handful of meetings they were ill-suited.
He told friends how in the weeks leading up to the wedding when he tried to explain his daily routine,
Diana seemed incapable of grasping what he was saying.
The more he saw her, the more he realised he was making a mistake.
Charles said he blamed no one – neither his father nor his mother – for his inability to back out of the engagement.
Instead he blamed his own failure to get to know Diana properly beforehand.
The princess said they had met no more than 12 times before their engagement in February 1981.
According to Mr Jobson, the prince is haunted by sadness over the doomed marriage to this day.
Prince Charles and Camilla at St George's Chapel, Windsor, after a ceremony blessing their wedding
Culled from Daily Mail