In taped interviews that made up the meat of Andrew Morton's supposedly unauthorized 1991 biography Diana: Her True Story (reissued as Her True Story in Her Own Words after her death), Diana recalled her first impression of Charles when she saw him at Althorp, her family's Northampton estate, in 1977: "God, what a sad man."
Both of her grandmothers had served as ladies-in-waiting to Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and Diana's father, John Spencer, was a viscount, so the family was British nobility and their social circle always included members of the royal family. Charles' much younger brothers, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward, were among Diana's childhood playmates—and she felt terrible for them as well.
"Look at the life they have, how awful," she often thought, per Morton. Moreover, her sister Jane ended up marrying Robert Fellowes, then assistant private secretary to the queen, in 1978. (He assumed the top private secretary job in 1990.)
As for the queen, Diana had "known her since I was tiny so it was no big deal" being around her, she recalled. At least up until July 1980 when, after reuniting with Charles at the home of a mutual friend, the prince "leapt on me practically." He ended up proposing marriage on Feb. 6, 1981, after roughly seven months of sporadic dates.
