The world was obsessed with royal couple Prince Charles and Princess Diana when they tied the knot in 1981 but after they got married, the Prince of Wales reportedly struggled with feeling upstaged by his wife’s popularity. 

“[Diana] sort of metamorphosed into a very, very elegant blonde beauty. They did a visit to Wales which was the beginning of, for Prince Charles, realizing, ‘They’ve come out to see my wife, they haven’t come out to see me,'” Lady Elizabeth Anson, a party planner and a cousin to Queen Elizabeth, told People in a new interview. 

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Interestingly, Charles’ jealousy over other royal family members’ popularity allegedly didn’t end with Diana. When his eldest son, Prince William, married Kate Middleton in 2011, Charles reportedly felt self-conscious about everyone’s adoration for the newlyweds and Kate’s parents, Carole and Michael Middleton. 

“Charles grew worried that the public’s attention was switching to them. Charles saw Kate and William as the new stars and feared he’d be in trouble,” Charles’ friend Robert Higdon told author Tom Bower in the unauthorized royal biography, Rebel Prince: The Power, Passion and Defiance of Prince Charles

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In his book, Bower also wrote that Charles felt “usurped” by the Middletons when Kate and William once chose to spend Christmas with the Duchess of Cambridge’s brood instead of the royal family. Furthermore, Bower claimed that Prince George and Princess Charlotte‘s close relationship with their Grandma Carole and Grandpa Michael has made him feel “isolated” from his royal grandchildren.

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