What Makes A Royal Photo Real? A Strange Detail In Every Official Image Of Diana And Charles

Picture the scene: the then-Prince Charles and Diana are getting ready for an official photoshoot. It’s likely been weeks if not months in the making. Every detail has been planned, every move has been choreographed and every hair has been assigned a specific angle at which to rest. Anything that we see in the shot has probably been placed to best portray the couple – or the Crown.

Diana and Charles have no doubt been through hair and make-up. They’ve put on their deliberately picked outfits, too. That means there’s just one last step to complete before the snapping starts. But as the royal couple finally take their positions, there’s a strange dynamic between the pair. It creates the odd detail that’s visible in almost every official picture of Charles and Diana. The detail people are only just starting to notice.

It’s kind of weird that this is only coming to attention now. After all, Diana and Charles have been in the spotlight for a long time! The intense media interest in the couple began from the moment they went public with their engagement in 1981. Yet before he had asked Diana to marry him, Charles had met his beloved just a handful of times. From almost the very start of their relationship, then, the pair were public property.

The first inklings the media had of the romance came when Diana was spotted at Balmoral, the royal family’s Scottish estate. Then, after their engagement was announced to the world, interest in the young woman ramped up to a fever pitch. But while Diana seemed to handle her newfound attention with elegance, all was seemingly not well behind the scenes. And there were apparently early signs of the pressure Diana was under.

According to an article by The New York Times in 1981, the then 19-year-old Diana had broken down inside her car following the paparazzi onslaught. The newspaper said that the young aristocrat had said of the photographers, “I know it’s just a job they have to do, but sometimes I do wish they wouldn’t.”

Sadly, the paparazzi were to become a constant in Diana’s life. In fact, she would later be dubbed the most photographed woman in the world. Naturally, the incessant attention she received was stressful for the Princess of Wales herself. Though it reportedly put an extra strain on her marriage to Charles, too.

Diana would later suggest that Charles had been jealous of her popularity. In a now-infamous interview with the BBC reporter Martin Bashir in 1995, the Princess of Wales explained, “The pressure on us both as a couple with the media was phenomenal. And [it was] misunderstood by a great many people.” However, it’s important to note that Diana was manipulated into giving this interview.

Diana recalled how, on a trip to Australia, she’d heard crowds complain when they ended up on the side Charles was walking on – rather than being close to her. The princess explained, “All you could hear was, ‘Oh, she’s on the other side.’ They weren’t on the right side to wave at me or to touch me.”

Revealing Charles’ apparent reaction to such comments, Diana claimed, “If you’re a man like my husband – a proud man – you mind about that if you hear it every day for four weeks. And you feel low about it, instead of feeling happy and sharing it.” She added, “I felt very uncomfortable with [it], and I felt it was unfair because I wanted to share.”

In that very same interview with Martin Bashir, Diana appeared to claim that Charles was envious of the adulation that came her way. When asked if she’d been “flattered” by the media attention, Diana replied, “No, not particularly. Because with the media attention came a lot of jealousy. A great deal of complicated situations arose because of that.”

There was also little that Diana, Charles, or any of the other royals could have done to contain the media interest that came their way. And they certainly didn’t have too much control over what pictures were published in the press. Formal photographs – on the other hand – were another story. These were often carefully curated to portray the exact message the monarchy wanted to present.

Naturally, the royals have commissioned official portraits of themselves for centuries. Even prior to the advent of photography, the main medium for these pictures was the canvas. Though the images were not only a way of presenting the subjects in question to the public. No, they were also opportunities to show off their land, homes, and immense wealth.

It may not be evident at first glance, but portraits of the royal family — old and new —are actually highly choreographed. They can make the monarchy appear relatable in the modern age while still affirming its longevity and authority. So in a way, we are still only seeing what the subjects themselves want us to see.

Take Charles and Diana, who posed for their first official photos in 1981 after announcing their engagement. In the snaps – which were taken on the grounds of Buckingham Palace – Charles looks smart in a suit and tie, while Diana dons a cobalt blue outfit. Perhaps intentionally, the hue perfectly matches her sapphire engagement ring. There’s also one telling detail hidden in the image that fans only spotted many years later.

But this hidden detail only added yet another awkward moment to Charles and Diana’s engagement announcement. For reference — and just like William and Kate and Harry and Meghan after them — the couple took part in a televised interview shortly after the photocall. And it was then that Charles delivered a memorable line that would go on to haunt his marriage.

This is how the cringe-inducing moment went down. During their engagement interview, a reporter told Charles and Diana, “You both look very much in love.” Diana responded, “Oh, yes. Absolutely.” But Charles added, “Whatever ‘in love’ means.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the comment was met by an awkward silence. The future king was lucky Twitter had not yet been invented.

The Princess of Wales would later recall the uncomfortable moment in a clip included in the 2017 documentary Diana: In Her Own Words. She said, “This ridiculous [reporter] said, ‘Are you in love?’ I thought, what a thick question. So I said, ‘Yes, of course, we are,’ and Charles turned round and said, ‘Whatever love means.’ And that threw me completely. I thought, ‘What a strange answer.’ It traumatized me.”

Even so, Charles and Diana married less than six months after announcing their engagement. And while there are countless images depicting the lavish ceremony, the official portraits from the wedding day tell a story all of their own. In them, the newlyweds smile brightly in the opulence of Buckingham Palace’s throne room. Yet that strange detail is still there for all to see.

And despite the fairytale wedding, Charles and Diana would not get their happily ever after. Their marriage was strained pretty much from the start. Still, the royal couple usually managed to put on happy faces for photocalls marking occasions such as the births of Prince William, in 1982, and Prince Harry, two years later. Eagle-eyed fans have noticed, though, that Charles is generally set to stand higher than Diana in these images – as is the case in nearly all of the formal, posed photos of the pair.

It seems that Charles and Diana were still obliged to pose for official photos together even when their marriage was reportedly on the rocks. There were family photos, snaps from royal visits abroad, and even stamps to commemorate the royal couple. But look closely at this wealth of images, and you’ll see a running theme in many of them.

The odd detail is easy to overlook, but it’s significant nonetheless. That’s because, in almost every official photograph of the royal couple, Charles looks as though he is a good degree taller than his wife. And yet, in reality, the pair were almost exactly the same height. They both measured in at 5’8”, according to The Sun.

In fact, it was claimed that the Princess of Wales picked her wedding shoes carefully, so as not to tower over her groom on the big day. In the end, she wore almost no heel – ensuring she and Charles were equal in height as they stood together at the altar. Further measures would need to be taken for other pictures, though.

Not wanting to overshadow the groom on your wedding day is one thing. But that doesn’t explain why almost every official photograph of Charles and Diana depicts a height difference between the couple. To do so, each shot would have had to have been carefully orchestrated in order to create the illusion that Charles was taller than his wife.

But why would the palace go to such lengths to suggest that Charles was taller than Diana when he in fact wasn’t? Well, the answer could all be down to the traditional — if not slightly outdated — idea that husbands should have a height advantage over their wives. This theory was put forward by Occidental College professor Lisa Wade in an article on The Society Pages website.

In the article, Lisa said, “This effort to make Charles appear taller is a social commitment to the idea that men are taller and women shorter. When our own bodies, and our chosen mates, don’t follow this rule, sometimes we’ll go to great lengths to preserve the illusion.” Lisa then went on to explain how this desire for men to be taller than their wives affected the royal couple and the way they were portrayed

She said, “When Charles and Diana were posed together formally, however, they were typically arranged so as to suggest that he was significantly taller than her, or at least to disguise the fact that he was not.” But the news of the fake height discrepancy between Charles and Diana didn’t go down too well when it was picked up on social media.

As you might imagine, some commentators decried the deception as “sexist.” One such user wrote, “One may/may not recall the lengths to which the couple – the crown? – went to disguise [Diana’s] height.” Interestingly, though, it seemed that there was still some societal expectation for men to be taller than their female suitors... until fairly recently.

According to research published by Rice University and the University of North Texas in 2014, women did care about the height of their partners. And it was suggested that those females with taller beaus felt protected and even more feminine. Even when the researchers looked at a modern dating phenomenon, they found that this expectation was still in place.

One part of the study focused on the online personal dating ads of 455 men and 470 women. And it found that 13.5 percent of males would only date women with a height lower than their own. On the other hand, though, 48.9 percent of women only wanted to be romantically involved with men taller than themselves.

The second part of the study involved 54 male and 131 female participants from a U.S. university. They took part in an online survey of open-ended questions. Interestingly, the results here determined that 37 percent of men wanted only to date women shorter than themselves, while 55 percent of women only considered taller men.

The study found that the primary reason women preferred a taller suitor was for femininity and protection. One participant explained, “As the girl, I like to feel delicate and secure at the same time. Something just feels weird in thinking about looking ‘down’ into my man’s eyes. There is also something to be said about being able to wear shoes with high heels and still being shorter.”

Sociology professor George Yancey from the University of North Texas was the lead author of the study. And commenting on the findings, he said, “The masculine ability to offer physical protection is clearly connected to the gender stereotype of men as protectors. And in a society that encourages men to be dominant and women to be submissive, having the image of tall men hovering over short women reinforces this value.”

So, the idea that men should be taller than their female partners might still persist to some extent. But the manipulated portrayal of Charles and Diana is still considered shocking. The royal couple’s official photos just go to show that, often, all is not what it seems. And the smiling pair we see before us were often not happy in their marriage at all.

Official photographs may have shown Charles and Diana putting on a united front. Yet cracks sometimes appeared behind the scenes. For instance, royal photographer Ken Lennox – who worked with the couple throughout their tumultuous relationship – recalled an incident in 1983 when they were on a tour of Australia and New Zealand.

According to his account, Ken had been snapping Charles and Diana sitting in their car in front of the Sydney Opera House. As he captured them, he noticed that the Princess of Wales had become visibly upset. The photographer would later describe what happened in a documentary called Inside The Crown: Secrets of the Royals, which aired on ITV in the U.K. in January 2020.

Ken explained, “I’m about 4 feet from the princess and I’m trying to get a bit of the Opera House in the background and some of the crowd, and Diana burst into tears and wept for a couple of minutes.” Speaking with hindsight, he added, “It was the first sign [that] something was wrong, and then we began to see other things happening later on.”