At the time, she dubbed the trip “a tremendous success,” but future reports suggest it was anything but that.

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Though Princess Diana and King Charles had what can only be described as a tumultuous relationship, letters from Diana’s private collection—which are set to be auctioned off soon, the Daily Mail reports—indicate that was optimistic about their future in the days following their wedding. In fact, she spoke positively about their honeymoon in a correspondence sent to one of her family’s former housekeepers.

According to InStyle, a 1981 letter that Diana wrote to Maud Pendry, a former housekeeper at the Spencer family home, focused heavily on her honeymoon, which she called “a tremendous success” and a “glorious time.” She also used the letter as an opportunity to graciously thank Pendry for her help, presumably with the wedding.

“I do hope you weren’t too tired after all the wedding activities, and that you were able to see a lot from where your seats were,” Diana wrote in the letter. “The honeymoon was a tremendous success, and we had a glorious time catching up on our lost energy and sleep. I just wanted you both to know how deeply touched I am by your thoughtfulness and, again, a million thanks. Endless love and affection—Diana.”

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The Daily Mail reports that the letter was dated August 14, 1981, which means it was written two days after she and Charles returned from their two-week honeymoon cruise on the Royal Yacht Britannia. Though she spoke positively about their trip in her letter, later interviews with Diana indicate that their honeymoon wasn’t all that sunny after all. In the Channel 4 documentary on the late princess’s life, the Daily Mail notes, pieces of Diana’s conversation with her voice coach were shared that shed light on what the honeymoon was really like. “On our honeymoon, cufflinks arrive on his wrists,” Diana said in the documentary. “Two Cs entwined like the Chanel ‘C.’ Got it. One knew exactly. So, I said: ‘Camilla gave you those, didn’t she?’ He said ‘Yes, so what’s wrong? They’re a present from a friend.’ And boy, did we have a row. Jealousy, total jealousy. And it was such a good idea—the two Cs—but it wasn’t that clever.”

In her book The Duchess, author Penny Junor noted that the pair fought throughout their honeymoon, the Daily Mail reports. “He’d taken along his watercolours, some canvases and a pile of books by the Afrikaner mystic and writer Laurens van der Post, which he’d hoped he and Diana might share and then discuss in the evenings,” she wrote. “Diana, however, was no great reader. She hated his wretched books and was offended that he might prefer to bury his head in one of them rather than sit and talk to her… She resented him sitting for hours at his easel, too, and they had many blazing rows… One day, when Charles was painting on the veranda deck of Britannia, he went off to look at something for half an hour. He came back to find she’d destroyed his painting and all his materials.”

So, what should we make of the discrepancy between her letter and what she said of the honeymoon in later years? There are two possible answers: First, Diana may have been putting on a positive front in the letter for her former housekeeper and confidant, making the trip seem better than it actually was. The alternative? She really did return home from the honeymoon feeling like it was a success, but later retrospection about the trip was colored in a different light following the dissolution of their marriage.