The life and death of Lady Dee – everything you wanted to know about the Princess of Wales

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Diana Francis Spencer was born on July 1, 1961 in Sandringham. She was not destined to become the queen of Britain, but she became the “queen of people’s hearts.” Despite being gone for almost 25 years, Princess Diana remains the most popular member of the British royal family to this day. Her life passed before the eyes of millions of people, but there are facts that are not known to everyone.

• Diana’s maternal grandmother, Ruth Roche, Baroness Fermoy, was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. In addition, she was a close friend of the Queen and organized various events for her.
• Diana was born at Park House, that is, in the park house, on the grounds of Sandringham Palace in Norfolk, which is the private property of the royal family. In the same place, in 1936, the mother of Princess Diana Francis was born. The building now houses a hotel.
• Diana had two sisters, Sarah (now Lady Sarah McCorquodale) and Jane (now Lady Jane Fellows), and a younger brother, Charles (now Earl Spencer). But there was another brother, John Spencer, who died a few hours after his birth in January 1960. This happened a year and a half before the birth of Diana.
• As a child, Diana studied ballet and dreamed of a stage, but at some point it became clear that she had grown too tall for a ballerina.
• She became Lady Diana Spencer in 1975 when her father inherited her grandfather’s earldom. She was called Lady Dee even after she married Prince Charles and became a princess.
• Before Diana met Prince Charles, she worked odd jobs, including babysitting. She was paid $5 an hour for playing with the kids, doing laundry and cleaning. She also worked as a part-time kindergarten teacher in the London Borough of Pimlico. Thus, after her engagement to the Prince of Wales, Diana became the first bride of the heir to the throne, who had previously had a paid job.
• Diana met her future husband, thanks to the fact that in the late 70s he met with her older sister Sarah. Later, this gave Sarah a reason to say: “I introduced them. I am Cupid.” The sisters were very close, and Diana said of her: “This is the only person I can trust.”

• Diana and Charles were in, albeit distant, but related. They were each other’s 16th cousins ​​and sisters. And both are descendants of King Henry VII of the Tudor dynasty.
• Prior to their engagement in 1981, Diana and the Prince of Wales met about 13 times. But Charles’s father, Prince Philip, advised him to “do the right thing.” And although royal wedding rings are usually made to order, Diana chose a ring for herself from the catalog of the Garrard jewelry collection. The 18k gold piece, set with 14 diamonds set around a large oval Ceylon sapphire, is now owned by her sister-in-law, Kate Middleton. Prince William gave it to her when he proposed marriage.
• Lady Dee’s wedding dress broke records on several counts: it was adorned with over ten thousand pearls, and the train was 25 feet (7.62 m) long, making it one of the longest royal trains the world has ever seen.
• Diana broke with the tradition of promising at the altar to “obey” her husband. Instead, she promised to “love him, support him, honor him and protect him in sickness and in health.” Subsequently, Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle, marrying her sons, Princes William and Harry, followed her example.

• According to centuries-old tradition, the heirs to the British throne have always been born in the royal palace. But Diana decided that she would give birth to her children in a private department of the state hospital of St. Mary. So Prince William became the first future monarch who was born in a hospital, as mere mortals. And in her approach to upbringing, Lady Dee was not like other royal mothers. As far as can be judged, she was the first nursing mother of the heir to the throne. And overall, Diana was determined to raise William and Harry as “normally” as possible in her situation. Princess Diana’s head of staff Patrick Jephson recalled, “She made sure they tried things like going to the movies, queuing at McDonald’s, going to amusement parks, so they had something to talk about with their peers.” She sent her children to a regular school because she wanted to socialize them, and this, according to many experts in the field of the monarchy, is her main legacy to her sons.

• Lady Di always thanked those who gave her gifts. According to media reports, she wrote letters of thanks to thousands of people who sent toys to the newborn Prince William. In recent years, some of her handwritten postcards have been auctioned for between $2,000 and $20,000, depending on their content and uniqueness.
• Princess Diana had many celebrity friends, including Elton John, George Michael, Tilda Swinton and Liza Minnelli. She was also friends with actors Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn and, along with William and Harry, spent ten days at their Colorado ranch escaping the paparazzi.

• Speaking of paparazzi. How “most photographed woman in the world”, she knew how to pose for the cameras and, more importantly, how not to. At any formal event, she carried a small satin clutch in her hand that matched her dress. These tiny purses only held lipstick, but she wore them for a different purpose. Since the cameras followed Diana everywhere, she had to watch out for what might be in the frame, such as when she gets out of the car. The handbag was needed in order to cover the neckline. In most of the photos taken at the moment when Diana gets out of the car, you can see that she uses a clutch as a “shield”. According to the designer Anna Hindmarch, who often worked with Diana, the princess called them so: “handbags for the neckline.”

• After her divorce from Prince Charles in 1996, Diana was stripped of her royal highness at the urging of her ex-husband. According to the terms of their divorce, “she must renounce the right to become Queen of England and be called her royal pussies,” the New York Times reported. According to this publication, “Queen Elizabeth II was ready to allow Diana to keep the honorary title, but Prince Charles was adamant.”
• After the divorce of Diana and Prince Charles became public and, above all, the tabloids, she decided to tape her version of the story. Her friend delivered the footage to British journalist Andrew Morton, who has been writing about the royal family for years. The princess talked about being unhappy, feeling betrayed, about suicide attempts, and about two circumstances that I had never heard of before: an eating disorder called bulimia, and a woman named Camilla, ”said Morton, in 1992, who published the book Diana. Her true story.” This book became a bestseller and forever changed the idea of ​​the life of a princess.
• Following the tragic death of Princess Diana in a car accident in 1997, she was buried at Althorp Manor in Northampton. This estate has been owned by the Spencer family for over 500 years. The burial place of Princess Diana – a small island with a chapel on the Oval Lake – was named after her.