The life of Princess Diana has been a topic of conversation since she first came on the scene and began dating Prince Charles all those years ago. Since her passing, the details about Princess Diana’s personal life have been scrutinized and one thing that could be overlooked is her relationship with her family, specifically her siblings.
The princess was born Diana Frances Spencer on July 1, 1961 at Park House, Sandringham, Norfolk. Her parents are John and Frances Spencer, the Viscount and Viscountess of the family estate Althorp. Diana has two older sisters, Jane and Sarah, and her younger brother is named Charles. A year before Diana was born, her infant brother John passed away.
The strain of losing a son and not having a male heir was challenging for the Spencer family and John and Frances decided to divorce when Princess Diana was seven years old. In 1975, John Spencer inherited the title Earl Spencer and from then on Diana was known as Lady Diana, until she married Prince Charles in 1981 and became a princess.
Diana was homeschooled until age nine when she left for boarding school. She said that her childhood was very unhappy and unstable, which is also the way her brother Charles describes it in an interview with the Times in 2020. Being close in age, Diana had a great relationship with her younger brother and became closer with her sisters as she got older, although there were rough patches along the way. Keep reading to find out more about Princess Diana’s relationship with her siblings.
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Princess Diana, Lady Sarah Mccorquodale (1987), (Tim Graham Photo Library/Getty Images)
In an interview with The Times from September 2020, Charles Spencer opened up about his difficult childhood and what it was like growing up with Diana. Charles shared:
“Diana and I had two older sisters who were away at school, so she and I were very much in it together and I did talk to her about it. Our father was a quiet and constant source of love, but our mother wasn’t cut out for maternity. Not her fault, she couldn’t do it. She was in love with someone else — infatuated, really. While she was packing her stuff to leave, she promised Diana (then aged five) she’d come back to see her. Diana used to wait on the doorstep for her, but she never came.”
After their mother left, Charles and Diana struggled with their ruptured childhoods. “She could hear me crying down the corridor but was too scared of the dark to come to me. I don’t blame anyone. It was ignorance rather than malice. The thing I’ve learnt through all the stuff I’ve tackled is that very few people set out to be destructive,” Charles said.
As children, Princess Diana and Charles were bonded by their difficulties at home and they remained close to each other as adults. For their older sister Sarah, being away at boarding school when Diana and Charles were still young meant that they did not form as close of a relationship until later in life.
Sarah moved away after finishing school and made a life of her own. She said, “By the time I was nineteen I was living in London, holding down a very good job. My father owned a house which I ran and I had tenants. I took money from them.”
Lady Sarah McCorquodale, Lady Jane Fellows, Earl Spencer (2004), (Getty Images/Selection)
Royal fans will remember that Sarah dated Prince Charles in 1977, before Diana began a relationship with the prince. “Charles makes me laugh a lot,” Sarah shared in an interview from 1978. “I really enjoy being with him.”
The interview was very candid and Sarah even said, “There is no chance of me marrying him. I’m not in love with him.” She then added that she couldn’t marry someone she didn’t love even “if he were the dustman or the King of England.”
Because Sarah dated Prince Charles first, there was some tension between the sisters after Princess Diana started up a romance with the royal. At least that is how the princess felt her sister repsonsed. Diana said that Sarah “resented it terribly because (she) accepted to go out with Prince Charles.”
However, the tension between the sisters did not last and Sarah became quite close with Princess Diana during her time as a member of the royal family. As for her other sister, Jane, the relationship between them remained strained. Jane married Robert Fellowes, the assistant private secretary to the queen. As Diana grew to distrust the royal family and establishment her relationship with her sister was troubled and they barely spoke to one another.
After Diana passed away, Sarah along with the entire world mourned the loss. “I think I felt shock, but I don’t think I felt anything else. Just love and shock,” she recalled. “She was religious in putting on her seatbelt. Why didn’t she put it on that night? I’ll never know.”
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