Many parents have learned firsthand that gender disappointment can be a real thing. Even if it only lasts a minute, it can be hard to adjust to having a baby boy or girl if we were so sure it would be the opposite. It stands to reason that not even members of the royal family would be immune to this kind of disappointment, but apparently, it wasn't exactly fleeting for King Charles (then a prince) when his second child, Prince Harry was born. According to Princess Diana herself, her family simply wasn't having it.
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It's no secret that Charles was hoping for a daughter.
Because Prince William was born first, Charles already had a son, so when Princess Diana was pregnant with her second child, he was gunning for it to be a girl.
In interviews that were recorded for Andrew Morton's 1992 biography Diana: Her True Story, Diana said she knew while she was pregnant that she was having a boy but didn't tell Charles, knowing he was so convinced it would be a girl.
Charles didn't try to hide his feelings when Harry was born.
When he gathered with Diana's family, the Spencers, he got an unexpected reaction when he spoke openly about his disappointment, as Diana said in the tapes.
"At Harry's christening, Charles went up to Mummy and said 'we're so disappointed, we wanted a girl' and Mummy snapped his head off and said 'you should realize you are lucky to have a child that's normal,'" Diana said.
Charles' relationship with Diana's mom, Frances Shand Kydd, was never the same after that.
From what Diana shared on the tapes, it sounds like Charles never liked being scolded, even back then.
"Ever since that day, the shutters have come down. That's what he does when he gets somebody answering back at him," Diana added.
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This turned out to be a big obstacle in Charles and Diana's marriage.
According to what royal expert Christopher Andersen told Fox News last year, Diana was "devastated" at Charles' reaction to Harry just after his birth (via Good To Know).
On the tapes, Diana said that upon seeing Harry for the first time, Charles said, "Oh, God. It’s a boy. And he even has red hair!"
At this point, when it came to her relationship with Charles, Diana said "something inside me closed off."
As we know now, this is just one reason Diana and Charles' marriage didn't last.
The royal couple would separate in 1992, when Harry was just 8 years old and William was 10, though they wouldn't formally divorce until 1996 — just a year before Diana's tragic death.
It's hard to know if Charles and Harry would have a different relationship today if things had not played out as they did, but if his dad was truly disappointed that he didn't turn out to be a girl, maybe we should be less surprised that their bond is as fractured as it is today.
