Kinlight · The British Royal Line

Diana, Princess of Wales

1961 – 1997 · Generation XXXVIII · Princess of Wales · House of Windsor

Portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales

Diana, Princess of Wales, was born Diana Frances Spencer on 1 July 1961 at Park House on the royal family’s Sandringham estate in Norfolk, the youngest daughter of Viscount Althorp, later the 8th Earl Spencer, and his wife, Frances. The Spencers had long been close to the royal family, and her father had been an equerry to George VI and to the young Queen Elizabeth II. Her parents separated in 1967 and divorced in 1969, and she later described her childhood as “very unhappy”. When her father inherited the earldom in 1975 she became Lady Diana Spencer, and the family moved to Althorp in Northamptonshire.

She was educated at Riddlesworth Hall and West Heath, where she did not shine academically but was recognised for her community spirit, and she spent a term at a finishing school in Switzerland. Back in London she took a series of modest jobs, including work as a nanny and as an assistant at the Young England School, a nursery in Pimlico. Prince Charles, whom she had first met in 1977 when he was seeing her sister Sarah, began to court her in 1980. Their engagement was announced on 24 February 1981, and they married at St Paul’s Cathedral on 29 July 1981 before a vast worldwide television audience. She was the first Englishwoman to marry an heir to the throne in three hundred years.

Their sons, William and Harry, were born in 1982 and 1984. Diana took charge of their upbringing, picking their schools, doing the school run herself when her diary allowed and showing them more of the world than royal children normally saw. Her first solo overseas engagement came in September 1982, when she represented the Queen at the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco, and in 1983 she toured Australia, New Zealand and Canada with Charles. The marriage, however, was failing, and each of them later spoke publicly of an affair. In December 1992 the prime minister announced their separation. In a BBC Panorama interview in November 1995, which an independent inquiry later found the journalist Martin Bashir had secured by deception, Diana spoke openly about her unhappiness and the breakdown of the marriage. The Queen then advised a divorce, which was finalised on 28 August 1996. Diana lost the style Her Royal Highness but was still regarded as a member of the royal family, as the mother of a future king.

She was patron or president of more than a hundred charities, and she used her fame to challenge prejudice. In 1987, when people with AIDS faced intense stigma, she held the hand of a patient, the first British royal to make that kind of contact. She also made a point of touching people with leprosy, which many then believed could be caught through casual contact. After the divorce she kept only six patronages, among them Centrepoint for young homeless people, the National AIDS Trust, the Leprosy Mission and Great Ormond Street Hospital. In January 1997 she toured a minefield in Angola with the HALO Trust, and in August she visited Bosnia. Her campaign has been described as influential in the adoption of the Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel mines, and the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, paid tribute to it when the Landmines Bill came before the Commons in 1998.

On the night of 30–31 August 1997 the car carrying Diana and her companion, Dodi Fayed, crashed in the Pont de l’Alma underpass in Paris while being pursued by photographers. Fayed and the driver, Henri Paul, were killed, and Diana died in hospital a few hours later, on 31 August, aged 36. Public mourning was widespread, and flowers were left outside Kensington Palace for months. Her funeral at Westminster Abbey on 6 September was watched by an estimated 2.5 billion people around the world, and she was buried privately later the same day on an island in the ornamental lake at Althorp. In 2008 a British inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing, caused by the grossly negligent driving of Henri Paul and of the pursuing photographers.

Place in the family

  • Diana, Princess of Wales married King Charles III, a son of Queen Elizabeth II.
  • The archive records 7 of her descendants, across 2 generations.

Images

One of 53 people of House of Windsor (from 1917) in this archive. The present house — it renamed itself Windsor in 1917, setting aside the German title Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Read more on Wikipedia

Partners

  • Married King Charles III (1948 – ) in 1981; the marriage was dissolved in 1996 — 2 children together

Children

Life

  • 1961 — Born
  • 1981 — Married Charles III
  • 1996 — Separated from Charles III
  • 1997 — Died

Sources

  1. Diana, Princess of Wales · Wikipedia
  2. Diana, Princess of Wales · The Royal Family (royal.uk)
  3. Diana, Princess of Wales · Westminster Abbey

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