In 1991, Princess Diana made a series of recordings telling stories about her life, which were then used by author Andrew Morton to write the biography “Diana: Her True Story — In Her Own Words” (per NBC News). Amongst the stories she told, she talked about what it was like when Prince Charles proposed: “So he said, ‘Will you marry me?’ And I laughed. I remember thinking this is a joke. So I said, ‘yes, OK.’ I laughed.”
But for Prince Charles, it was no laughing matter. Diana described him as being, “deadly serious.” And he wanted to confirm that she understood the gravity of the situation, asking Diana, “‘You do realize that one day you’ll be queen?'” From there, it seems like Diana had almost a kind of premonition. She described hearing a voice in her head that said, “‘You won’t be queen, but you’ll have a tough role.'” But even with that little voice, she still said yes.
The Princess Diana tapes were also used in the National Geographic documentary “Diana: In Her Own Words,” and in the documentary, you can hear how she felt in retrospect about the proposal: “In my immaturity, which was enormous, I thought that he was very much in love with me, which he was. He sort of had the besotted look about him, looking back at it, but it wasn’t the genuine sort” (via Entertainment Weekly).
