Diana’s death
Isabel II was widely criticized for her lack of compassion when, in 1997, the “princess of the people”, Diana, mother of Guillermo and Enrique, died in a car accident. She adored by the masses, two years before she had denounced on television the infidelity of her husband, heir to the throne.
While the mourning population laid millions of flowers outside the gates of Buckingham and Kensington palaces, Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth barricaded themselves in their Scottish castle at Balmoral.
Despite the wave of indignation that swept the country, the sovereign did not come out of her silence until the eve of the funeral, when she offered an exceptional televised speech.
“Annus horribilis”
1992 was an “annus horribilis” for the queen, faced with the marital problems of three of her four children. The hardest separation was that of Prince Charles and Diana, after eleven years of tumultuous marriage. They divorced four years later.
That same year, Andrés separated from Sarah Ferguson, photographed bare-breasted in the south of France with his financial adviser licking his toes. They divorced in 1996.
The sovereign’s only daughter, Princess Anne, divorced her first husband Mark Phillips three years after their highly publicized breakup in 1989.
Broken hearts and infidelities
Nicknamed the rebellious princess, Margarita, Elizabeth II’s younger sister, had shaken the traditions and conventions imposed by a royal family years before, which prevented her from living her great love.
She married Antony Armstrong-Jones, a somewhat bohemian fashion and film photographer, in 1960, after being forced to give up her relationship with divorced military man Peter Townsend.
The couple divorced in 1978, after the umpteenth scandal caused by their infidelities.
Edward VIII, love before duty
As a child Elizabeth became Princess of Wales and heir to the throne when, prioritizing love over duty, her uncle King Edward VIII caused a real earthquake by abdicating in 1936.
He did so after only 326 days of reign, to marry Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American commoner, rejected by the Anglican Church, of which he was the head.
As a consequence, the former sovereign was repudiated and replaced by his brother, King George VI, father of Elizabeth, who thus saw his destiny truncated forever by this crisis.