The fairytale marriages that couldn't survive real life

When Prince William marries Kate Middleton next summer, it will be exactly 30 years since his own mother and father starred in the fairytale wedding which was supposed to top them all.

It didn't of course work out that way and, in the intervening decades, the Royal Family has witnessed three very public divorces and one wedding where more attention was paid to constitutional experts than what the bride wore.

While once unhappy royal couples were content to lead separate lives while presenting a united public front, now few are prepared to go so quietly. It's what's become known as the Fergie Factor.

The Duchess of York was not cut from the same mould as other royal brides. Outspoken and unwilling to toe the usual demure party line, she swept into Buckingham Palace like a breath of fresh air. The atmosphere, however, soon soured.

Six years after her wedding to Prince Andrew at Westminster Abbey, a ceremony watched by a global audience of 500m, the cracks had begun to show. They were blown wide open amid allegations of Fergie's extravagant lifestyle and when the infamous toe-sucking photos appeared in a Sunday tabloid in 1992, the couple's decision to separate looked like a wise one.

However, it was not just Fergie's talent for creating headlines which caused the Queen to describe 1992 as her own personal "annus horribilis". The year had begun with the divorce of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips and while it ended with her marriage to Commander Tim Laurence, the only thing anyone wanted to talk about was Charles and Di.

It was left to then Prime Minister John Major to make the official announcement, but after months of speculation, the simple statement the couple were "separating amicably" was never going to be enough for those who'd bought the tea towels and souvenir mugs ahead of their wedding in 1981. Rumours of Charles' involvement with Camilla Parker Bowles were soon doing the rounds and when the Camillagate tape surfaced in 1994, it was toe-curling stuff.

Charles later admitted in an interview with Jonathan Dimbleby that he had been unfaithful to Diana after their relationship had broken down, but it was the People's Princess who had the final word. Her doe-eyed interview for Panorama was mesmerising stuff and when she quietly explained, "there were three of us in this marriage", Charles was immediately cast as the villain of the piece.

The furore which ensued following Diana's untimely death in a Paris car crash and Charles' blossoming relationship with Camilla was a salutary tale for the perils of royal romances. However, Charles did eventually remarry and it was a ceremony far removed from his first.

Neither the Queen nor the Duke of Edinburgh attended the civil ceremony at the Guildhall in 2005 and, in the weeks leading up to the service, constitutional experts poured over the ramifications of the heir to the throne taking a second wife.

The ongoing row over whether Camilla would ever have the right to become Queen and whether the marriage itself would be legal led to statements in the House of Commons and the involvement of the Registrar General.

When the wedding had to be postponed with just days to go it seemed that Charles may never get the happy ending he had clearly so longed for. However, when on April 9 he and Camilla emerged from the blessing at St George's Chapel, with the minimum of fuss, a line was finally drawn under 15 years of Royal heartache and unedifying scandal.

They married on the same day as the Grand National and while the Queen may have been absent from the ceremony, she did attend the reception, remarking: "They have come through and I am very proud and wish them well. My son is home and dry with the woman he loves.

"They have overcome Beecher's Brook and The Chair and all kind of other terrible obstacles."

It might have been said with tongue firmly in cheek, but with the world poised to spend the next six months picking over every last detail of William and Kate's forthcoming marriage, they know better than most that even fairytales have difficult chapters.