Prince Charles’s marriage proposal was rejected by his cousin before Diana

Prince Charles had popped up the question of marriage in front of Princess Diana out of sheer pressure from the British royal family instead of love.

And as it turns out, the Prince of Wales had been pressured to pursue another ‘perfect match’ who was his cousin, Amanda Knatchbull.

In his book, Battle of Brothers, Robert Lacey explains how Charles was asked to consider Amanda by his beloved great-uncle Lord Mountbatten, whose granddaughter she was.

"Over the years the two cousins did grow close, developing a mutual respect and friendship that has lasted to the present day,” wrote Lacey.

“But when the prince finally made his proposal in the summer of 1979—shortly before Lord Mountbatten's assassination by the IRA—the independent-minded Amanda politely turned him down,” he added.

"The surrender of self to a system, she explained, was so absolute when joining the royal family, it involved a loss of independence 'far greater than matrimony usually invites,'" Lacey wrote in the book.

The prince’s biographer Jonathan Dimbleby claims, the rejection "served only to confirm [Charles'] own belief that to marry into the House of Windsor was a sacrifice that no-one should be expected to make."