• October 16, 1995
• Vol. 44
• No. 16

The Usual Suspect

Another Marriage Falters, and Di Takes the Heat

IT WAS A BATTLE THAT PRINCESS Diana seemed destined to lose. In the wake of reports of Di's flirtation with English national rugby team captain Will Carling, his wife, Julia, had fought back—announcing in August that Di had "picked the wrong couple" and that "[the friendship] is over." Although furious at being branded a home wrecker, Di seemed content to let it appear that Carling was still under her spell. On Sept. 4, Carling delivered rugby shirts for Princes William and Harry to Kensington Palace, and later, on Sept. 22, he and Di turned up at London's BiMAL sports clinic. On both occasions lensmen were lying in wait, and Fleet Street ran the story—reporting that Carling was a man besotted.

And so when Carling, 29, issued an announcement on Sept. 28 that he and Julia, 30, were separating, few believed his assertion that "nobody else was involved." Although the 16-month-old marriage was rumored to have been shaky from the first, Julia—a public relations veteran who anchors a TV magazine show—said, in a statement widely interpreted as placing blame on her royal rival, "It hurts me very much to face losing [Will] in a manner which has become outside my control."

As Carling was moving out of the couple's $400,000 southwest London home, much of the press was heaping scorn on Di, 34, depicting her as a loose cannon whose "passion for married and attached men," said the Sun, "has left her reputation in tatters." At least some newspaper readers seemed similarly judgmental: In a poll published in the Sunday Express on Oct. 1, 62 percent of the respondents said that Di and Charles should divorce.

Some palace watchers believe that Diana took pleasure in humiliating the attractive Julia, who before her marriage had lived with guitarist Jeff Beck. The meeting at BiMAL was a case in point: Although Carling claimed the encounter was accidental, insiders say Di summoned him to the club, alerted the press and, according to feisty royals writer Lady Colin Campbell, "couldn't wipe that smile off her face as she was arriving." (Di looked grim, however, when she was leaving—for reasons known only to herself.) Adds one veteran palace reporter: "There is a lot of personal vengeance in the scenario."

Ironically, Diana is said to have lost interest in Carling; according to the Daily Mirror, she received the news of the separation with "complete indifference." A close friend who spoke to reporters was more direct, saying that the princess "takes no responsibility for what happened...[and] thinks Will has behaved like a complete fool."

In the end, Carling seems to have been the biggest loser. On Oct. 1, an ex-girlfriend weighed in with a tabloid story describing him as a "sex-mad serial womanizer." And his teammates are said to be losing respect for their captain, who reportedly is desperate to save his marriage. But salvaging his public image may be his biggest challenge. As the Sunday Mirror noted, "He looks less like the rugby dynamo than a battered and deflated...ball, kicked back and forth between two much more expert women players."