The Princess by Wendy Holden

When I was ten, Prince Charles and Princess Diana got married. There was very little that was more romantic to a ten year old me than what appeared to be a fairy tale marriage happening. That it later went so very wrong was quite sad and the rest of the world has never stopped speculating about everything that happened, even though we all know (or think we know) all of the mitigating factors and where the bulk of the blame lies. In Wendy Holden’s novel, The Princess, she looks at Diana’s life through the eyes of a fictional childhood friend and then allows Diana to tell this friend the story of her courtship with the Prince.

Perhaps I should have expected a bit of a hagiography, given that the narrator of the novel remembers the youthful Diana with love, and recognizing that this is fictionalized (albeit based on books written by others who had access to Diana and to existing interviews), it was still disappointing to have such a saintly picture of the princess, rather than a picture of a fully human, flawed, but still much loved woman who lived every little girl’s dream once upon a time, even if that dream didn’t turn out to be the reality. In addition to the young, naive, and sainted Diana, there are chapters from the Queen Mums perspective as she plots to marry Charles off to someone suitable, and from Charles' own perspective as he initially tries to avoid this marriage and later capitulates to his duty. Charles does not come off as sympathetic as Diana but he is also drawn as a pawn to a large extent. Diana's unrealistic expectations and her deep desire to be loved the way she saw in romance novels (in spite of witnessing her own parents' terrible marriage) make her seem much younger than her 19 years. This is probably only a novel for diehard royal fans as it is quite frothy and light but it also doesn't add much dimension to Diana or truly imagine what this doomed marriage was like so fans might also feel as if they already know this fictionalized story from primary sources.