The moment Princess Diana and Prince Charles got engaged back in 1981, they instantly became one of the most famous and most powerful couples. Many women wanted to be in her place, not knowing that the relationship and the marriage were doomed from the start, and the future King was to be blamed for that.

People close to the late princess, among which Diana’s astrologer, Penny Thornton, claim that the problems between Diana and Charles didn’t start when she learned he was having an affair with Camilla, who later became his wife, but way before that.

Shortly after they announced their engagement, Charles and Diana sat in front of the cameras. Charles said he was “delighted and frankly amazed” that Diana wanted a royal life with him and the then-soon-to-be princess noted that Charles was “pretty amazing.” But then, a question followed, and Charles’ answer to it traumatized young Diana. When the reported asked them in they were in love, Diana said yes, and Charles answered, “Whatever ‘in love’ means.”

What many dubbed “the wedding of the century” ended in a painful separation which eventually led to divorce, after Queen Elizabeth urged her son and her daughter-in-law to officially call their relation quits.

The truth is that Princess Diana was everything but ordinary, “breaking” traditions when it came to her children’s happiness. Her passion for motherhood was unmatched. She was perfectly aware that her children needed to be protected from the outside world and she was determined to teach them about what’s outside the walls of the royal palace. At the same time, she wanted their childhood to be as normal as possible.

Following her separation from Charles, she feared that they could take her boys from her.

Biographer Howard Hodgson, author of the 2007 book Charles: The Man Who Will Be King, wrote: “She was well aware that the Queen had the constitutional right and authority under common law to take control of both boys’ care and education.

“As such she could become the boys’ guardian or even appoint one: this would probably be their father and that might lead to Diana’s exclusion if she finally burned all her bridges with the Royal Family.”

Once the marriage was over, Princess Diana would spend Christmas Day alone, according to former royal chef Darren McGrady.

Speaking with royal reporter Omid Scobie for Yahoo UK series The Royal Story, McGrady revealed: “It was always quite sad when you were working with the princess the day before Christmas.

“William and Harry would go off to Sandringham and Princess Diana was there on her own. And she insisted the staff spending their time with their families over Christmas, so we would leave food in the refrigerator.

“So there was the princess, on her own, on Christmas Day.”

According to McGrady, the late princess didn’t feel comfortable while at Sandringham where the royals gathered together each December because “[it] was so tight, so compact. There were so many people there, all the families.

“You just couldn’t get away. You came out of the dining room, and you couldn’t go into the sitting room because there were three or four people in there playing charades or Scrabble or something.”

The former royal chef added, “She would go off for a walk on her own and often I would bump into her when she was out walking. So, I think that’s probably what she wasn’t keen on.”

In the book Diana: Her True Story, royal author Andrew Morton wrote that in audio recordings he had received, the People’s Princess could be heard saying she felt like an “outsider” at Sandringham, which was “terrifying and so disappointing.”

“No boisterous behaviour, lots of tension, silly behaviour, silly jokes that outsiders would find odd but insiders understood. I sure was [an outsider].”

Diana died in a car crash August 31, 1997.

She lost her life after she and her partner Dodi Fayed, the son of Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed, her driver Henri Paul, and her bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones crashed the Mercedes in the Pont de I’Alma tunnel in Paris while trying to escape the paparazzi.