The marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana had been turbulent for years before a June 1991 incident became the beginning of the end of their 10-year marriage.Ultimately, Charles and Diana would separate the next year in 1992 and divorce in 1996.On June 3, 1991, their eldest son Prince William was severely injured by a golf club, requiring hospitalization and surgery—and Charles and Diana’s reactions to William’s injury were markedly different.
The marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana wasn’t a fit from the start—in addition to being nearly 13 years apart in age, the two had little in common.
After marrying in 1981 and having sons Prince William and Prince Harry in 1982 and 1984, respectively, the relationship had deteriorated by the mid-1980s; Charles is said to, per The Daily Mail, have resumed his relationship with former girlfriend Camilla Parker Bowles by 1986. By 1991, the marriage was in serious trouble, and an incident involving William signaled that, for all intents and purposes, the 10-year marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales was effectively over. They’d go on to separate the next year, in 1992, and divorce in 1996.
Princess Diana and Prince Charles in October 1991.
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But on June 3, 1991, Diana was enjoying lunch with a friend at her favorite Italian restaurant when she learned from a bodyguard that William, who was 8 years old at the time, had suffered a “severe blow” to his head when he and a schoolmate were playing with a golf club at their boarding school, Ludgrove.
Diana immediately left the restaurant to head to be with her son; Charles, too, headed to Royal Berkshire Hospital, where young William had been taken for tests. William was later transferred by ambulance to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children.
Thankfully, according to The Daily Mail, William was “chirpy and chatty” as he rode in the ambulance alongside Diana. Charles, meanwhile, followed closely behind in his Aston Martin.
Prince William and Princess Diana in March 1991.
Terry Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images
Doctors soon uncovered that William suffered a depressed fracture of the skull, which required an immediate operation. Andrew Morton wrote in his 1992 biography of Diana that doctors “made it clear that there were potentially serious risks, albeit relatively small, both in the operation and in the possibility that the prince could have suffered damage to the brain during the initial accident.” Diana held William’s hand as he was wheeled into surgery for the 75-minute operation; Charles left the hospital to attend a performance at the Royal Opera House.
While the Prince of Wales’s decision to put duty before his son was shocking to the public, it didn’t surprise Diana, The Daily Mail reported. She accepted his decision to go to the opera and leave William behind at the hospital as “nothing out of the ordinary,” Morton wrote. Diana later said that William’s surgery “was one of the longest hours of her life,” according to The Daily Mail.
Prince William and Princess Diana on June 1, 1991.
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Charles did not return to the hospital after the opera. Instead, he boarded the royal train for an overnight journey to a royal engagement. In his defense, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said Charles stayed in close touch with doctors, but the media had a field day with Charles’s absence from his son—and his wife. The Sun, for example, had a front page headline that proclaimed, “What Kind of Dad Are You?”
“Had this been an isolated incident it would have been unbelievable,” a close friend of Diana’s told Morton. “She wasn’t surprised. It merely confirmed everything she thought about him and reinforced the feeling that he found it difficult to relate to the children. She got no support at all, no cuddles, no affection, nothing.”
Princess Diana in Canada in 1991.
Photo by Jayne Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images
After two nights at the hospital, William was discharged and returned home with Diana. After learning of the public’s disdain with him, Charles allegedly blamed Diana for making an “awful nonsense” about the severity of William’s injury, claiming that he was unaware that William could have suffered brain damage, according to The Daily Mail.
“The dramatically different manner in which the couple responded to William’s injury publicly underlined what those within their immediate circle had known for some time: the fairytale marriage between the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer was over in all but name,” Morton wrote of the situation.
Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1987.
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William, for his part, still carries a scar across his forehead from the incident 34 years ago, which he jokingly calls his “Harry Potter” scar. “I call it that because it glows sometimes and some people notice it—other times they don’t notice it at all,” he said in 2009, explaining the injury came from being “hit by a golf club when I was playing golf with a friend.”
“Yeah, we were on a putting green and the next thing you know there was a 7-iron, and it came out of nowhere and hit me in the head,” William added.
King Charles and Prince William on May 13, 2024.
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In a new documentary called William and Catherine: Putting Family First, royal biographer Ingrid Seward said that later, “Charles said to William, ‘Please don’t make the mistake that I made,’ and ‘I want you to enjoy your family life’”—clearly regretting his decision to put duty over family in his younger years.
“Charles was very insistent about this because he said, ‘I was so dedicated to duty, I couldn’t make way for family life in the way that I should’ve done’—and that’s what William did,” Seward continued.