Princess Diana told biographer Andrew Morton that she and Prince Charles were “closer than they’d ever been” in the six weeks before the birth of their second son, Prince Harry, but that the marriage then “went down the drain” when Harry arrived, according to transcriptions of taped conversations published in Morton’s biography.
Diana, who recorded interviews with Morton that formed the basis of his 1992 book Diana: Her True Story and its later revised editions, recounted that she knew the fetus was male from a scan and did not tell Charles. She said his disappointment at having another boy lasted beyond the birth on Sept. 15, 1984, and continued through Harry’s christening on Dec. 21, 1984.
In the transcriptions, Diana described a sudden rupture: "We were very, very close to each other the six weeks before Harry was born, the closest we've ever, ever been and will be. Then suddenly, as Harry was born, it just went bang, our marriage, the whole thing went down the drain." She said that minutes after the birth Charles’s first private reaction was, she quoted him as saying, "Oh God, it's a boy," followed by a remark about Harry’s red hair. Diana said Charles publicly told waiting journalists, "He's wonderful. Absolutely marvellous." She added that at the christening Charles allegedly told her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, "We're so disappointed, we thought it would be a girl," a comment she said was met with a sharp rebuke.
Morton, in a foreword to the 2019 revised edition of the book, described the story as almost implausible and recounted the unlikely circumstances by which the taped interviews and Diana’s account reached him. The book and recordings played a central role in exposing tensions in the royal marriage that were otherwise kept private at the time.
Diana also described pressures surrounding the birth of the couple’s first son, William, saying she had been induced on a date chosen to fit around Charles’s polo schedule. "When we had William, we had to find a date in the diary that suited Charles and his polo," she told Morton, saying she had agreed to an induction because she could no longer cope with daily media scrutiny.
Prince Harry has since addressed his place in the royal succession in his 2023 memoir Spare, writing that he was brought into the world as the “shadow, the support, the Plan B,” a description that echoed the long-standing public narrative of an heir and a spare. In Spare, Harry wrote that he first heard, at about age 21, that his father had allegedly quipped on the day of his birth, "Wonderful! Now you've given me an Heir and a Spare - my work is done," though he framed it as a possibly joking remark and observed that Charles was said to have gone off to meet a girlfriend soon afterwards.
The couple’s relationship deteriorated over the following decade. Morton’s book was published in 1992; later that year, Prime Minister John Major announced that Charles and Diana would separate. The divorce was finalised in August 1996. Diana lost the style of Her Royal Highness in the settlement, and she died in a car crash in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997.
The accounts in Morton’s book and in the tapes have been widely cited in subsequent coverage of the royal family and helped shape public understanding of the breakdown of Charles and Diana’s marriage. The reports of Charles’s wish for a daughter and his reaction to a second son have been echoed in royal memoirs and biographies, and the dynamics have been referenced repeatedly in examinations of the upbringing and later estrangement between members of the family.
The rift between Harry, his brother William and their father has been well documented in recent years, including in public statements and memoirs. Media reports have at times suggested possibilities of reconciliation, but the recorded comments and recollections in Morton’s book remain a notable contemporaneous account of how Diana remembered events around Harry’s birth and the immediate aftermath that she said contributed to the deterioration of their marriage.