Prince Charles’ whirlwind romance with Princess Diana’s sister

Princess Diana and Prince Charles might have had a famous wedding but before they tied the knot, Charles was dating Diana’s older sister Sarah Spencer.

Bianca Mastroianni

3 min read

November 16, 2020 - 11:14AM

Princess Diana and Prince Charles might have had a famous marriage (in the end for the wrong reason), but before the pair tied the knot he dated Diana’s older sister Sarah Spencer first.

It was Sarah who introduced Charles to Diana.

Prince Charles was 32-years-old when he married Lady Diana Spencer and as the world’s most eligible bachelor had been linked to several women over the years.

There was the then Camilla Shand (now his wife the Duchess of Cornwall) who would go onto marry Andrew Parker Bowles and, for a short time, Diana’s older sister – Lady Sarah Spencer.

Their relationship, and how it led to Charles and Diana’s first meeting, is featured in The Crown season 4, now streaming on Netflix.

Sarah, who like Diana had the title “Lady”, was 22 and was seen as being a suitable match for the future king, coming from an aristocratic family background – the daughter of an earl.

Charles dated Sarah before marrying her little sister Diana.

It was Charles’ relationship with Sarah that led to his first meeting with a very young Diana, during a hunting trip to the Spencer family’s grand country estate of Althorp in November 1977.

Charles was 29 while Diana was only 16.

Sarah actually calls herself Cupid for introducing them, after she was outwardly accepting of their relationship.

“I introduced them. I’m Cupid,” The Guardian reported her as saying when Diana and Charles announced their engagement.

So what happened between Lady Sarah and Prince Charles that ended their relationship?

It’s simple. Sarah wasn’t in love with him.

After spending a weekend at Windsor Castle, Sarah bluntly said to reporters, “Charles makes me laugh a lot. I really enjoy being with him,” but then added “there is no chance of my marrying him. I’m not in love with him.

“And I wouldn’t marry anyone I didn’t love whether he were the dustman or the King of England,” Lady Sarah said. She also called Prince Charles a “romantic who falls in love easily”,

Sarah Spencer was not in love with Charles.

Unfortunately, Lady Sarah also talked to the press about their relationship, a move that apparently infuriated Charles.

When Sarah finally confessed that a story full of her quotes was about to come out, royal biographer Tina Brown claims he said to her coldly: “You’ve just done something extremely stupid.”

Sarah went onto marry Neil Edmund McCorquodale and the pair have three children.

Diana apparently told her friends that she would marry Prince Charles because he was “the one man on the planet who is not allowed to divorce me,” according to The Diana Chronicles.

Diana spoke to author Andrew Morton, who wrote Diana: Her True Story — In Her Own Words about how Charles proposed to her.

“He said: ‘Will you marry me?’ and I laughed. I remember thinking, ‘This is a joke,’ and I said: ’Yeah, OK,’ and laughed. He was deadly serious. He said: ‘You do realise that one day you will be queen.’ And a voice said to me inside: ‘You won’t be queen, but you’ll have a tough role’. So I thought ‘OK,’ so I said: ‘Yes’. I said: ‘I love you so much, I love you so much.’ He said: ‘Whatever love means’.”