“Cold, taciturn, distant, except in the presence of the paparazzi.” That’s how King Juan Carlos of Spain describes Princess Diana in his long-awaited memoir, Reconciliation, which is due out next month.
For an interview in Le Figaro Magazine, journalist Charles Jaigu traveled to the former monarch’s residence in Abu Dhabi to discuss the memoir, which was written in collaboration with French writer Laurence Debray. He also denied ever having a relationship with Diana, whom he got to know when she spent summers at Marivent Palace with King Charles III, her then husband, and their two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry.
The late princess’s marriage to Charles had already begun to founder by the time they first visited Marivent, and Diana might have found an ally in King Juan Carlos. This might explain why Diana decided to stay in Marivent after Charles returned to England, and she ultimately returned for another three years.
“The king was very attentive to her, perhaps too much so,” Roberto Devorik, Diana’s former adviser and confidant, later told Vanity Fair España. “One summer he told her that she looked very much like the British journalist Selina Scott. After one of those vacations, Diana confessed to me that Queen Sofia had not liked her very much,” he said, adding, “[Diana] flirted with Juan Carlos, but innocently, as any woman would do.”
August 1987: Princess Diana, Prince Charles, and their sons William and Harry on holiday with the Spanish royal family at the Marivent Palace in Mallorca, Spain.Photo by Terry Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images.
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