The Royal Family Was Looking for a “Particular Kind of Girl” When It Came to Finding Prince Charles a Wife, Author Says

Once upon a time, Prince Charles was a very eligible bachelor—but the woman he wanted to marry (spoiler alert: he is now married to her) was already spoken for. Camilla Shand married Andrew Parker-Bowles in 1973, and broke Charles’ heart in the process. By late 1980 and early 1981, Charles was 32, and pressure was mounting to go ahead and tie the knot. The royal family was looking for a “particular kind of girl” for the heir to the throne to marry, author Wendy Holden said, and found that girl in the form of Diana Spencer, who was just 19. (She turned 20 less than a month before she and Charles married on July 29, 1981.)

After in-depth research into Diana’s life as she planned to novelize the late Princess of Wales’ 36 years, Holden said she was surprised at how “extreme” real royal life actually was behind Palace walls, per People. “It was a collision between different aspirations and ideas,” she said. “The royal family wanted Charles to get married because he was 30, and they wanted a particular kind of girl. She needed to be young, she needed to be aristocratic, and she needed to be without a past. It was a very pragmatic decision. She was practically the only person who was left. He had had so many girlfriends by then.”

As she debuted her book about Diana, The Princess, in London, Holden said “From her [Diana’s] point of view it was love—she thought he was going to sweep her away and be a knight on a white charger, everything she always wanted. I hadn’t appreciated the extent to which what we saw the day before the wedding wasn’t just a little bit different from the reality, but the actual complete reverse. How extreme it was, how dramatic it was, and how different it was. That was the surprise to me.”

The Princess tells the story of Diana’s childhood, her time sharing an apartment with girlfriends in London, her entrance into royal life, and, ultimately, her unhappy marriage, People reports. It is told mostly through the eyes of a fictional friend. Holden also wrote The Governess (the story of the teacher and childhood confidante of Her late Majesty) and The Duchess (about Wallis Simpson); The Princess is the latest in a historical fiction trilogy.

Holden said Diana—who passed away 26 years ago this month in a Parisian car accident—has moved from being a contemporary figure to a historical one. This “generational” change has allowed her to become the subject of historical fiction, and to research for The Princess, Holden turned to many biographies about Diana, including Andrew Morton’s Diana: Her True Story.

Today, Holden said, had Diana lived, “She had a good sense of humor, so maybe she’d have been able to dial down these entrenched positions,” she said of the rift between members of the royal family, not the least of which exists between her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. “She would have put family above all and relationships above all and tried not to have them not take up these extreme positions.”