What King Charles 'deeply regrets' from marriage to Princess Diana

You won't be surprised to hear that King Charles has regrets from his marriage to the late Princess Diana, given what we know now about their union.

"Both of them [Charles and Diana] behaved badly in that first marriage and made decisions that none of us could ever condone," a friend of the royals told the Daily Mail's Rebecca English as part of a new report. "But we can seek to try to understand them."

Seemingly alluding to Charles not being able to marry Camilla when he wanted to, the friend added: "When you look back on it now, asking someone to sacrifice... happiness for the sake of their public persona seems really quite cruel."

Charles and Camilla were romantically involved prior to the King-in-waiting's marriage to Diana Spencer, but they broke up and Camilla got engaged to Andrew Parker Bowles while Charles was in the Royal Navy, according to People.

However, their story was far from over, and Charles and Camilla got involved again while she was married, but before Diana came into the picture. Charles and Diana married in 1981 and it's unclear whether Charles was still seeing Camilla at this point, but we do know that they had an affair from around 1986 onwards. The two pieces of proof we have: recordings of private phone calls between them (including *that* tampon conversation), and Diana's assertion that "There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded" on the BBC's Panorama in 1995.

Diana is also known to have had several affairs during their marriage, which was largely unhappy. Charles and Diana officially separated in 1992, then divorced in 1996. As you well know, they shared children Prince William, born in 1982, and Prince Harry, born in 1984.

Meanwhile, Camilla divorced from Andrew — with whom she also had two children — in 1995, and Charles and Camilla went public with their relationship in 1999, then married in 2005.