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Flashback Friday: When Princess Diana threw herself down the stairs while she was pregnant with Prince William
About 20 years after Princess Diana’s tragic death, a series of audio transcripts were released, in which Lady Diana detailed her struggles with mental health issues. She revealed that she threw herself down the stairs while she was pregnant with Prince William.
It’s no secret that Princess Diana and Prince Charles were never a happy couple. We have enough controversies and scandals to support that fact. While back in the day, people knew that Diana was having a hard time adjusting to the royal lifestyle, no one ever properly understood just how much her dysfunctional personal life and a cold relationship with her husband affected her. Even though she was chased by the media everywhere she went, Princess Diana never openly discussed what she was going through.
She did share her heart-breaking thoughts with her biographer, Andrew Morton, but only after he promised to keep her secrets under tight wraps. Respecting her decision, Andrew did not share her extremely explosive revelations with anyone for years. The Princess died tragically in a car crash in 1997. And about 20 years after her death, a series of audio transcripts, which served as the source material for Andrew’s book titled Diana: Her True Story, were released. The revelations she made in those audio transcripts left people shocked to say the least.
The most disturbing revelation of them all was her struggle with mental health issues. She revealed that she threw herself down the stairs while she was four months pregnant with her elder son, Prince William. While speaking about her depression, Diana said she was going through a bad phase and tried to share it with her husband, but Charles did not take her seriously and said she was making it all up, Daily Mail reported.
In the recording, Diana asserted that she wanted her husband to take her seriously, and in an act of desperation to force her husband to listen to her, she threw herself down the stairs. “I had told Charles I felt desperate and I was crying my eyes out. He said I was crying wolf. So I threw myself down the stairs,” she revealed. Diana mentioned that Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II saw it all. “The Queen comes out, absolutely horrified, shaking - she was so frightened,” she said.
Diana admitted that her actions were a desperate cry for help. While her baby was fine, the Princess had bruises around her stomach. However, her husband continued to dismiss her problems. She also revealed Prince Philip had told his son that if his and Diana’s marriage wasn't working five years after they wed, he could go back to living his fun single lifestyle. In the audio transcripts, Diana spoke about struggling with her eating disorder, bulimia.
Diana mentioned that thanks to her husband, she became acutely aware of her less than-perfect-body before she even got married to him. She decided to lose weight to please her to-be husband. "My husband put his hand on my waistline and said: 'Oh, a bit chubby here, aren't we?' and that triggered off something in me,” she said. Diana admitted that the rumours about Charles and Camilla also made her desperate, Marie Claire reported.
“I was desperate, desperate. I remember the first time I made myself sick. I was so thrilled because I thought this was the release of tension... The first time I was measured for my wedding dress, I was 29 inches around the waist. The day I got married, I was 23½ inches. I had shrunk into nothing from February to July. I had shrunk to nothing," she recalled.
She also recalled fainting at an event she was attending with her husband because she was “overtired” and wasn’t able to keep her food down. For the unversed, bulimia is an eating disorder in which people binge eat a large amount of food and then try to get rid usually by vomiting it out. She also mentioned that it deeply bothered her that she was perceived as a spoilt woman who was giving her husband "a hard time".
She mentioned that she crumbled under the pressure and tried to cut her wrists, and even threw herself against a display cabinet and broke the glass. Diana admitted that she didn’t think she was good enough and was somehow punishing herself for it. She says she slashed her chest and thighs in a desperate attempt to catch her husband’s attention. She revealed that when Prince William was just 3-years-old, he called Diana "the most selfish woman he had ever met" because he'd heard his father saying it so often.
