King Charles III's royal tour joke about wanting "two wives," just two years after his marriage to Princess Diana, has gone viral after resurfacing on TikTok.
Charles and Diana married at St Paul's Cathedral in central London on July 29, 1981. They divorced in 1996 and the princess tragically died at the age of 36 in a Paris car crash just a year later.
After the couple's separation in 1992, the breakdown of their marriage was the subject of mass reporting, documentaries, movies and social media posts. A number of those have referenced Charles' joke made during the couple's 1983 visit to Australia and New Zealand as evidence of cracks beginning to show at a very early stage.
Uploaded to TikTok by user _thequeenmath on July 22, footage of Charles giving a speech during a farewell banquet attended by himself and Diana in Auckland, New Zealand, has been viewed over 150,000 times on the platform so far.
The banquet came at the end of the couple's six-week tour. Diana had been the central focus during her solo and joint engagements with Charles, something she later told her biographer he had a hard time accepting.
Referencing the crowds that turned out to see the prince and princess, and their insatiable desire to see Diana, Charles told banquet attendees in Auckland: "I've come to the conclusion that really it would have been easier to have two wives to cover both sides of the street. And I could have walked down the middle directing the operation."
@_thequeenmath Nessa epoca Diana ja sabia sobre Camila, mesmo assim Charles sem um pingo de responsabilidade afetiva faz a seguinte “Piada”: #realezabritanica #princesadiana #ladydiana #queen #principedegales👑 #princesadegales #viral #princessdiana #foryou #princecharles #reicharles #queen #queenelizabeth #viral #1983 #ladydi #queendiana #king #kingcharles #diana ♬ another love - ✨️
The comment was met with laughter from the audience, with news cameras picking up the 21-year-old Diana's shy reaction. The TikTok video has been liked in excess of 25,000 times and received numerous comments.
On Charles' reaction to the attention Diana had received from the Australian and New Zealand crowds, the princess told biographer Andrew Morton in 1992 that he grew jealous.
"Basically our tour was a great success," she told Morton. "Everybody always said when we were in the car: 'Oh, we're in the wrong side, we want to see her, we don't want to see him,' and that's all we could hear when we went down those crowds and obviously he wasn't used to it and nor was I."
"He took it out on me," she said in the transcripts of her interviews for Morton that were published after her death. "He was jealous; I understood the jealousy but I couldn't explain that I didn't ask for it."
The issue clearly remained with the princess as she referenced it again in 1995 during her controversial interview with BBC's Panorama.
Asked by interviewer Martin Bashir—who was criticized in a 2021 independent inquiry into the interview for using "deceitful" behavior to secure it—whether she was happily married at the time of the 1983 tour, Diana responded:
"Very much so. But, the pressure on us both as a couple with the media was phenomenal, and misunderstood by a great many people.
"We'd be going round Australia, for instance, and all you could hear was: 'Oh, she's on the other side'. Now, if you're a man like my husband, a proud man, you mind about that if you hear it every day for four weeks and you feel low about it, instead of feeling happy and sharing it."
In the early years of their marriage, Charles would often joke about Diana in his speeches during joint tours. During a visit to Newfoundland, Canada, again in 1983, the prince joked about the unusual place names in the area.
"Having heard what the premier was saying about all the different names that there are in Newfoundland," he said. "I'm very sad that I can't take my wife to an amazing place called Leading Tickles West...If I did I have a nasty feeling I might come off worst."
The joke got a round of laughter from the crowd, but as the prince looked to his wife, who responded with an embarrassed smile, he added: "I try my best to embarrass her in each speech that I make."
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.
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About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more
