Very much the one that got away, Prince Charles actually proposed to his distant relative, Lady Amanda Knatchbull, in 1980, and his father, Prince Philip, was reportedly very keen for the union to work. But the timing was off. Shortly before, Amanda had lost her younger brother Nicholas and her beloved grandfather (Charles’s godfather) Earl Mountbatten in an IRA assassination, so she recoiled from the idea of being put so firmly in the royal spotlight. She went on to marry novelist Charles Ellingworth and work as a social worker, firmly out of the media glare.
