- Kanga Tryon claimed that she understood Charles like no other lover
- She also designed patterned dresses for Sloane Rangers…
If the rivalry between Diana and Camilla became part of royal folklore, they weren’t the only women to become entangled with the heir to the throne.
According to author Tina Brown, there was a time in the 1970s when Charles had two married women “on call for the prince while their husbands looked the other way.”
One of them was Camilla Shand, now married to the glamorous army officer Andrew Parker-Bowles.
The other was a bubbly Australian named Dale ‘Kanga’ Tryon, whom Charles had met when, aged 17, he had spent six months at Geelong Grammar School.
Diana appears next to David Bowie at Live Aid in light blue polyester!
Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, holds his 9-week-old godson, Charles George Barrington Tryon, after his baptism in 1976. With them is the child’s mother, Dale Tryon.
“After moving to London and marrying Lord Tryon, she became a trusted confidante,” Brown writes in her best-selling book The Palace Papers.
‘Dale’s directness, warmth and talent for country entertainment were exactly the kind of qualities Charles admired in Camilla.
‘It didn’t make Camilla happy when Dale said Charles declared Dale “the only woman who ever understood me.”
At one point Dale designed a range of dresses known as the Kanga line which were popular with Sloane Rangers.
According to Brown, this is why, in July 1985 – when her jealousy of Camilla was at its peak – Diana chose to wear a rather curious polyester polka dot and stripe dress to one of the events of the decade, Live Aid, with its worldwide TV show. audience runs into the millions.
“Princess Diana wore one of her curious multi-patterned dresses… just to drive Camilla crazy,” she wrote.
Whether or not that was the case is another matter, as according to The Palace Papers, Camilla viewed Kanga with a degree of singing froid and said to the author:
Lady Tryon bows to the Prince of Wales at a charity gala in 1990
Lord and Lady Dale ‘Kanga’ Tryon at a Royal Charity premiere of Wall Street
Lady Diana Spencer and Camilla Parker Bowles in 1980. They were photographed side by side during the Ludlow Races in which Prince Charles took part. Charles would marry Diana the following year
“All this talk about Lady Tryon being such a friend of Lady Diana… She’s never met Diana Spencer.”
The romance with Charles, such as it was, ended sadly for Lady Tryon.
According to Brown, Dale had believed that as his marriage to Diana fell apart, the Prince of Wales would turn to her instead. He didn’t, and Kanga fell apart.
Sadly, she died of blood poisoning in 1997 at the age of 49.