Princess Diana reportedly felt “totally excluded” from Prince William’s christening and later recalled crying throughout the occasion.
Prince William was christened at Buckingham Palace on August 4, 1982, just six weeks after his birth to the then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
Although photographs presented the image of a joyful royal celebration, Diana later described the day as one of the most painful moments of her early motherhood.
In Andrew Morton’s book Diana: Her True Story, the late Princess of Wales spoke openly about struggling with postpartum depression and feeling left out of decisions concerning her newborn son.
“Nobody asked me when it was suitable for William,” Diana said of the christening.
“Eleven a.m. couldn’t have been worse. Endless pictures of the Queen, Queen Mother, Charles, and William. I was excluded totally that day. I felt desperate because I had literally just given birth.”
Diana added that she was unwell and overwhelmed by emotion during the ceremony.
“I wasn’t very well, and I just blubbed my eyes out. William started crying, too. Well, he just sensed that I wasn’t exactly hunky-dory,” she recalled.
According to Radar Online, a source who knew Diana at the time said she felt that decisions were being made for her while she was physically and emotionally vulnerable.
“There was a sense that the occasion became more about royal presentation than her wellbeing as a new mother,” the source claimed. “The distress she described shows how unsupported she felt within the institution at that point.”
