On the day of the Royal Wedding, memories of odd doings during the groom’s toddler days with his fabled mother:
In the 1980s, a women’s magazine editor was duty-bound to run cover stories about super-celebrity “Di.” I did, including one showing her holding up Prince William, with a line reading “Princess Diana Faces the ‘Terrible Twos’ and Baby No. 2,” based on a suspicion that the royal timetable called for a backup prince sooner than later.
The day the issue came out, the Palace announced her second pregnancy, and besieged by phone calls from reporters about how we knew, I responded with exquisite bad taste, “Inside information.”
Soon afterward, we did get “inside information” from Buckingham Palace. Astonishingly, to refute rumors about Princess Diana’s marriage and her mothering, the Queen’s Press Secretary and his associate gave an exclusive interview to a McCalls reporter.
At the time, their choice of an American magazine seemed strange, perhaps influenced by the fact that the interviewer was a beautiful young woman, but in hindsight, it must have been more complicated than that–the start of Palace intrigue against Princess Diana.
This suspicion is confirmed by the fact that they brought up rumors we had never heard before, and their denials were laced with confirmation that there was some truth to them.