Hindsight is 20/20. The things we know today are often things we couldn't have imagined in years past.
For example, when the world was presented with the Prince Charles and Princess Diana as royal newlyweds, many never could have imagined that the relationship was already in peril. Today, we know things between Charles and Diana were often complicated, with occasional periods of peace between them.
Looking back, the cracks in the foundation of the royal relationship could be seen early on. One of the first times it was truly evident was during the couple's first royal tour, which came soon after Diana welcomed their first child.
Prince Charles and Princess Diana were supposed to share their young love with the world during their first royal tour of New Zealand and Australia in 1983. Immediately, it became clear royal fans were enamored with the new Princess of Wales. At the time, however, it was overwhelming for 21-year-old Diana, who had recently given birth to her first child.
The tour was grueling for even a seasoned royal. The couple traveled 30,000 miles and made up to eight public appearances in one day for four weeks. Some sobering realities about their life moving forward as a couple became clear to both Diana and Charles.
Charles realized for the first time just how much the public was interested in his wife and how it surpassed their interest in him. Diana was stuck in an impossible spot. Not only was she not interested in or comfortable with the public's level of interest in her, but it seemed there was nothing she could do to convince Charles she wasn't into it.
The spiral of complicated emotions, coupled with being postpartum, led Diana to break down in tears in public during one of their many stops. The couple was appearing outside the Sydney Opera House. As one photographer set up his shot, he noticed Diana was in tears.
"I'm about four 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," photographer Ken Lennox recalled during ITV's Inside the Crown: Secrets of the Royals.
Charles wasn't aware that Diana was in such distress.
"Charles I don't think has noticed [Diana crying] at that stage," he continued.
"If he has, typical of Prince Charles to look the other way."
Charles' own struggles made it hard for him to sympathize with his wife.
"The prince was embarrassed the crowds so clearly favored her over him," wrote Sally Bedell Smith in her biography, Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life.
"For her part, Diana was upset by the disproportionate interest in her, especially when she realized that it was disturbing Charles. She collapsed under the strain, weeping to her lady-in-waiting and secretly succumbing to bulimia. In letters to friends, Charles described his anguish over the impact 'all this obsessed and crazed attention was having on his wife.'"
Diana even spoke about the incident herself in her infamous 1995 BBC interview.
"We'd be going around Australia, for instance, and all you could hear was, 'Oh, she's on the other side,'" Diana recalled.
"Now, if you're a man — like my husband — a proud man, you mind about that if you hear it every day for four weeks. You feel low about it instead of feeling happy and sharing it."
