Few people knew the truth about Princess Diana's marriage. In 1991, Prince Charles had rekindled his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles and Princess Diana was suffering from an eating disorder trying to cope with her life as a Royal.
In strict secret she decided to make her side of the story public by recording her thoughts for author Andrew Morton.
His book Diana: Her True Story, is being republished for the 20th anniversary of her death, along with the transcripts of those tapes she made in secret.
It all started just 2 days before their fairytale wedding that took place in front of a global audience of 750 million people.
"We got married on Wednesday. On the Monday (July 27, 1981), we had gone to St Paul's for our last rehearsal, and that's when the camera lights were on full and I got a sense of what the day was going to be.
And I sobbed my eyes out. I absolutely collapsed and it was because of all sorts of things. The Camilla thing rearing its head the whole way through our engagement," the transcript revealed.
Find out what the tapes revealed about the Royal wedding on the next page.
Diana and Charles met in 1977 when the Prince was dating her older sister Sarah McCorquodale. Charles ended his relationship with Sarah and began courting Diana in 1980 when she was just 19 years old.
Charles proposed to Diana in February of 1981 and they married on July 29 of that year.
"I was very, very calm, deathly calm. I felt I was a lamb to the slaughter. I knew it and couldn't do anything about it. My last night of freedom with Jane at Clarence House," she said.
Princess Diana expressed her struggles with bulimia during throughout the couple's engagement and after their wedding.
"I remember the first time I made myself sick. I was so thrilled because I thought this was the release of tension," Diana said. "The first time I was measured for my wedding dress, I was 29 inches around the waist. The day I got married, I was 23-and-a-half inches. I had shrunk into nothing from February to July."
"I remember being so in love with my husband that I couldn't take my eyes off him. I just absolutely thought I was the luckiest girl in the world. He was going to look after me. Well, was I wrong on that assumption!" she said.
"When we got out, it was a wonderful feeling: everybody hurraying, everybody happy because they thought we were happy. And there was the big question mark in my mind. I realised I had taken on an enormous role, but had no idea what I was going into "” but no idea," she said.
Find out what she secretly said about life after the wedding.
It didn't get any easier after the wedding. Diana's hope was slashed by day 2 of the honeymoon.
The went to Broadlands and on the second night Prince Charles brought out 7 van de Post books, a South African philosopher and adventurer that he admired, and he read them and they had to analyse them over lunch every day.
Aboard the royal yacht on the second leg of their honeymoon, they entertained during evening black-tie affairs.
"By then, the bulimia was appalling, absolutely appalling. It was rife: four times a day on the yacht.
Anything I could find, I would gobble up and be sick two minutes later "” very tired. So, of course, that slightly got the mood swings going, in the sense that one minute one would be happy, the next, blubbing one's eyes out.
I remember crying my eyes out on our honeymoon. I was so tired, for all the wrong reasons totally," she recalled.
"My dreams were appalling. At night, I dreamt of Camilla the whole time.
I was obsessed by Camilla totally. I didn't trust (Charles) "” thought every five minutes he was ringing her up, asking how to handle his marriage," she said.
See how becoming pregnant with William changed things on the next page.
The royal couple stayed at Balmoral from August until October where Diana continued to lose weight. People started commenting on how they could see her bones. By October she was extremely depressed.
"I was so depressed, and I was trying to cut my wrists with razor blades. It rained and rained and rained.
I came down early (to London) to seek treatment, not because I hated Balmoral, but because I was in such a bad way," she said.
Analysts and psychiatrists put her on high doses of Valium to try and help her cope.
Miraculously William was conceived in October and when she found out she was pregnant she became extremely excited!
Her health didn't get easier with her pregnancy, however.
"I couldn't sleep, didn't eat, whole world was collapsing around me. Very, very difficult pregnancy indeed. Sick the whole time, bulimia and morning sickness," she recalled. "With Harry the morning sickness wasn't so bad. With William, it was appalling: almost every time I stood up, I was sick."
Everyone was very excited when the royal Prince was born.
"We had found a date where Charles could get off his polo pony for me to give birth," she said.
But things didn't get easier for Diana's health.
"I came home, and then postnatal depression hit me hard. And it wasn't so much the baby that had produced it "” it was the baby that triggered off all else that was going on in my mind," she said.
William was christened on August 4, 1982 at just 6 weeks old.
"Nobody asked me when it was suitable for William "” 11 o'clock, couldn't have been worse," Diana said in the transcript. "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 "” William was only six weeks old. And it was all decided around me. Hence the ghastly pictures."
Diana and Charles officially divorced 1996 after his affair with Camilla became public. 1 year later the "People's Princess" was killed in a car accident in Paris.