When Diana Frances Spencer was born on July 1, 1961, she was an immediate disappointment. Her parents, John and Frances Spencer, the Viscount and Viscountess of Althorp, had been hoping that after two daughters, they would finally produce a male heir. The Spencer family had long been one of the most influential in England—tracing its association with the royal family back to the 1600s—and some of her early playmates included the queen’s sons, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.
Read Tina Brown's cover story in this week's Newsweek about what Princess' Diana's life would look like if not for that tragic night.
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When Diana was 8, her parents divorced following her mother’s affair with Peter Shand Kydd. After a tumultuous custody battle, Diana (seen here at 10) went to live with her father, who inherited his earldom in 1975, giving Diana the title of Lady. A year later, Earl Spencer married Raine Legge—the daughter of Diana’s favorite romance novelist, Barbara Cartland—with whom Diana had a very contentious relationship.
Not a particularly gifted student, Diana left boarding school at 16 and attended a finishing school in Switzerland. She then moved to London and became a kindergarten assistant and a regular in the nightclub scene. When some friends jokingly asked her if she might one day marry Prince Charles (who had briefly dated Diana’s older sister, Sarah), Diana replied that she was “going to.” Asked how she could be so sure, Diana said, “He’s the one man on the planet who’s not allowed to divorce me.”
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Thirty-two-year-old Prince Charles had three criteria for a bride: She had to be from an aristocratic family, a member of the Church of England, and she had to be a virgin. Diana Spencer was all three. In fact, she once told friends, “I had to keep myself tidy for what lay ahead.” Charles and Diana had known one another for several years, but reconnected one weekend in the summer of 1980 when she went to watch him play polo. A few weeks later, she was invited to Balmoral Castle in Scotland to meet the royal family, and on February 3, 1981, during a dinner at Buckingham Palace, the Prince of Wales proposed. Their engagement was kept secret for three weeks, by which point Diana had received a sapphire and diamond ring, which Kate Middleton now wears.
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On July 29, 1981, an estimated global audience of 750 million people watched Diana marry Prince Charles at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Diana’s dress, which had a 25-foot train and 10,000 pearls, cost an estimated £9,000 ($14,000), and she caused a minor controversy because her vows did not include the word “obey.” On their honeymoon in the Mediterranean, Prince Charles read science books, wore cufflinks given to him by his then-mistress Camilla Parker-Bowles, and even brought along photographs of Camilla.
Less than a year after the wedding, on June 21, 1982, Diana gave birth to Prince William, heir to the British throne, and two years later, Prince Harry was born on September 15, 1984. Diana tried to give the boys a relatively normal childhood—compared to the Prince of Wales—and rarely deferred to the royal family in matters of parenting. She later became jealous of Tiggy Legge-Bourke, her sons’ beloved nanny, whom she feared was having an affair with Prince Charles.
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In November 1985, Diana attended a dinner at the Reagan White House, and was seated between the president and the guest of honor, Mikhail Baryshnikov. But he would not be the featured dancer that night. Midway through the evening, John Travolta, who was seated at another table, received a tap on his shoulder from the first lady. Nancy Reagan informed the Saturday Night Fever star that the princess had only one wish—to dance with him. At midnight, he received another shoulder tap and was escorted to Diana’s table, where the two soon had the dance floor to themselves. “You could feel the awe in the moment from the people in the audience,” Travolta admitted decades later to Diana’s biographer Tina Brown. “At the end she curtsied, and I bowed, and—well, I guess I turned back into a pumpkin.”
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By the early 1990s, Charles and Diana’s marriage had been torn apart by affairs on both sides—she began a relationship with Major James Hewitt and Charles rekindled his romance with Camilla Parker-Bowles. Depressed, bulimic, and even suicidal, Diana wanted out of the marriage, and in December 1992, Prime Minister John Major announced the couple’s separation in the House of Commons.
Following her separation and 1996 divorce from Prince Charles, Diana was frequently seen taking the boys on ski trips, to Disney World, or to William’s first day of school at Eton. But the images weren’t completely spontaneous. She often tipped off the paparazzi so the British public would see images of her as a good mother.
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In the infamous “Squidgygate” tapes recorded between Diana and James Gilbey, she recounted a conversation she once had with a bishop about her charity work. “I understand people's pain, people's suffering, more than you will ever know,” she explained, “And he said: 'That's obvious by what you are doing for the AIDS.' I said: 'It's not only AIDS, it's anyone who suffers; I can smell them a mile away.'" In the final year of her life, Diana discovered a new cause—victims of landmines, particularly children, an issue her sons still champion to this day.
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In July 1997, having just ended a two-year relationship with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan (the man her friends considered the love of her life), Diana began an affair with Dodi Fayed, son of billionaire Mohammed Fayed. Though Dodi had recently been engaged to a Calvin Klein model that summer, he started dating Diana at the insistence of his father. That month, the couple (along with William and Harry) took a vacation to the South of France aboard his yacht.
On August 31, 1997, 36-year-old Diana and Dodi Fayed were killed in a car crash in Paris. One week later, her funeral at Westminster Abbey was watched by an estimated 2 billion people around the world.
