Prince William Had Diana Love Rival's Picture on His Dartboard—Book

A story of Prince William having a photograph of one of Princess Diana's love rivals pinned to a dartboard in his school dormitory, has been recounted in a new book.

In an extract from her upcoming title The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor-The Truth and Turmoil, published online by Vanity Fair, Tina Brown recounted a private lunch given in 1996 by Diana at Kensington Palace to which she invited British newspaper editor Piers Morgan and a teenage William.

Brown examined an account of the lunch given by Morgan in his diaries which he described as an open invitation from the princess to ask "literally anything."

At the time Morgan was the editor of the Daily Mirror newspaper. which broke many stories on Diana and the royal family during the 1990s. Brown used this as an example of Diana privately courting newspaper editors, journalists and photographers to illustrate her "canny" agency over her public appearance.

Morgan, who is now known for his outspoken criticism of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, revealed that the lunch he had with the princess and William was enlightening over just how much the princess' eldest son knew about her personal—and her love— life. He wrote after the event, according to Brown: "He is clearly in the loop on most of her bizarre world and, in particular, the various men who come into it from time to time."

At the time the lunch took place Diana had received a deluge of negative press after being romantically linked to England rugby captain Will Carling.

Carling was married to broadcaster Julia Carling at the time the allegations were made and he has since denied any inappropriate relationship existed. He told the Sunday Mirror in 2004: "How many times do I have to say it? We were friends."

Despite this, the sports star and Diana were undeniably close for a period in the mid-1990s with visits being made to Kensington Palace and meetings with William and Prince Harry taking place.

Brown wrote: "[Diana and Carling] met in 1995 working out at the Chelsea Harbour Club gym. William hero-worshiped Carling and met him several times with Diana. When Carling visited Kensington Palace for a romantic rendezvous, he gave both the boys a rugby shirt."

She wrote that when cracks in the Carling marriage appeared, Julia Carling made it clear to William—and the rest of the public—that his hero's relationship with his mother was at least partially to blame. She told a reporter: "This has happened [to Diana] before... you hope she won't do these things again, but obviously she does."

The couple divorced in 1996.

Following the publication of Julia Carling's interview, Diana, according to Morgan still cited by Brown, said at their private lunch in front of William: "She's milking it for all she's worth, that woman... Honestly, I haven't seen Will since June '95."

Brown then relayed a quote by Morgan that shows just how the adolescent William felt the need to be his mother's protector. According to Morgan, William added to Diana's attack on Carling's wife saying:

"I keep a photo of Julia Carling on my dartboard at Eton."

Brown believed that the exchange—and the fact that the lunch between the princess, the heir to the throne and a newspaper editor took place at all—reveals that Diana was beginning to blur the boundaries between what she kept private and what was made public in a way she would be accused of losing control over after her death in 1997.

Brown is the former editor-in-chief of Tatler magazine in Britain in which she covered the Charles and Diana's engagement as well as her emergence on the world stage. Brown then continued to cover the princess as editor of Vanity Fair in New York during the 1990s.

Having covered so much of Diana's life with the media, Brown did not subscribe to the now established narrative that she was a manipulated innocent with no agency of her own.

She wrote that to present the princess as such, particularly in relation to a 1995 BBC Panorama interview she gave to Martin Bashir, is "offensive" adding that the "canny, resourceful Diana" was neither "foolish," a "duped child or the hapless casualty of malevolent muckrakers."

A 2021 independent investigation conducted by Lord Dyson for the BBC found that Martin Bashir had been "deceitful" and had breached BBC editorial guidelines in his attempts to secure his Panorama interview. Following the publication of the investigation's findings it was William who once again stepped in to defend his mother saying that he hoped the program would "never be aired again."

2022 will mark the 25th anniversary of Princess Diana's tragic death in a Paris car crash at the age of 36.