Diana Trivia | 100 facts about the Princess of Wales

Princess Diana was the first wife of King Charles III, and the mother of Princes William and Harry. She became an international icon, before her death in 1997.

Let’s find out more about her!

Diana, Princess of Wales was born on 1st of July in 1961.
Her first name, before she got married to Prince Charles, was Diana Frances Spencer.
She was the fourth of five children of John Spencer, Viscount Althorp (1924–1992), and Frances Spencer, Viscountess Althorp.
The Spencer family had been closely allied with the British royal family for several generations.
Her parents were hoping for a boy to carry on the family line, and no name was chosen for a week until they settled on Diana Frances after her mother and Lady Diana Spencer, a many-times-great-aunt who was also a prospective Princess of Wales.
Within the family, she was also known informally as “Duch”, a reference to her duchess-like attitude in childhood.
She grew up with three siblings: Sarah, Jane, and Charles. Her infant brother, John, died shortly after his birth one year before Diana was born.
The royal family frequently holidayed at the neighbouring Sandringham House, and Diana played with the Queen’s sons Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.
Diana was seven years old when her parents divorced.
Her mother later began a relationship with Peter Shand Kydd and married him in 1969.
She lived with her mother in London during her parents’ separation in 1967, but during that year’s Christmas holidays, Lord Althorp refused to let his daughter return to London with Lady Althorp. Shortly afterwards, he won custody of Diana with support from his former mother-in-law, Lady Fermoy.
In 1976, Lord Althorp married Raine, Countess of Dartmouth. Diana’s relationship with her stepmother was particularly bad. She resented Raine, whom she called a “bully”. On one occasion Diana “pushed her down the stairs”. She later described her childhood as “very unhappy” and “very unstable, the whole thing”.
She became known as Lady Diana after her father later inherited the title of Earl Spencer in 1975, at which point her father moved the entire family from Park House to Althorp, the Spencer seat in Northamptonshire.
Diana was initially home-schooled under the supervision of her governess, Gertrude Allen.
She began her formal education at Silfield Private School in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, and moved to Riddlesworth Hall School, an all-girls boarding school near Thetford, when she was nine.
She joined her sisters at West Heath Girls’ School in Sevenoaks, Kent, in 1973.
She didn’t perform well academically, failing her O-levels twice.
Her outstanding community spirit was recognised with an award from West Heath.She left West Heath when she was sixteen.
She showed a talent for music as an accomplished pianist. She also excelled in swimming and diving, and studied ballet and tap dance.
In 1978, Diana worked for three months as a nanny for Philippa and Jeremy Whitaker in Hampshire
Diana returned to London, where she shared her mother’s flat with two school friends.
In London, she took an advanced cooking course, but seldom cooked for her roommates.
She took a series of low-paying jobs; she worked as a dance instructor for youth until a skiing accident caused her to miss three months of work. She then found employment as a playgroup pre-school assistant, did some cleaning work for her sister Sarah and several of her friends, and acted as a hostess at parties.
She spent time working as a nanny for the Robertsons, an American family living in London, and worked as a nursery teacher’s assistant at the Young England School in Pimlico.
In July 1979, her mother bought her a flat at Coleherne Court in Earl’s Court as an 18th birthday present.
She lived there with three flatmates until 25 February 1981.
Prince Charles met Diana in November 1977, while dating her sister.
While her big sister may not have been head-over-heels, 16-year-old Diana evidently had a different impression, telling her friends that one day she was going to marry Prince Charles and laughing that he was, «The one man on the planet who is not allowed to divorce me,» according to The Diana Chronicles.
Between Charles and Diana there was a 12 year age difference.
In her later years, she recalled the incident somewhat differently, telling author Andrew Morton for his book Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words that her first thought upon meeting the Prince of Wales was, «God what a sad man.»
Charles, meanwhile, recalled that first meeting in a 1981 interview with The Telegraph: «I remember thinking what a very jolly and amusing and attractive 16-year-old she was. I mean, great fun, and bouncy and full of life and everything.»
Diana selected her own engagement ring.
Following the engagement, she left her occupation as a nursery teacher’s assistant and lived for a short period at Clarence House, which was the home of the Queen Mother. She then lived at Buckingham Palace until the wedding, where, according to biographer Ingrid Seward, her life was incredibly lonely.
Diana was the first Englishwoman to marry the first in line to the throne since Anne Hyde married the future James II over 300 years earlier.
She was also the first royal bride to have a paying job before her engagement.
She made her first public appearance with Prince Charles in a charity ball in March 1981 at Goldsmiths’ Hall, where she met Grace, Princess of Monaco.
In 1981, while working as a nursery teacher’s assistant, she became engaged to Prince Charles, the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II.
Their wedding took place at St Paul’s Cathedral in 1981.
The service was widely described as a “fairytale wedding” and was watched by a global television audience of 750 million people while 600,000 spectators lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the couple en route to the ceremony.
At the altar, Diana inadvertently reversed the order of his first two names, saying “Philip Charles” Arthur George instead.
She did not say she would “obey” him. That traditional vow was left out at the couple’s request, which caused some comment at the time.
Diana wore a dress valued at £9,000 (equivalent to £36,700 in 2021) with a 25-foot (7.62-metre) train.
Within a few years of the wedding, the Queen extended Diana visible tokens of membership in the royal family.
She lent her the Queen Mary’s Lover’s Knot Tiara, and granted her the badge of the Royal Family Order of Elizabeth II.
After their wedding she officially became the Princess of Wales, a role in which she was enthusiastically received by the public.
Diana’s marriage to Charles suffered due to their incompatibility and extramarital affairs.
In 1986 Diana began a relationship with Major James Hewitt, the family’s former riding instructor and in the same year, Charles resumed his relationship with his former girlfriend Camilla Parker Bowles.
In 1989, Diana was at a birthday party for Camilla’s sister, Annabel Elliot, when she confronted Camilla about her and Charles’s extramarital affair.
One of the most famous quotes Princess Diana has ever said was during an interview in 1995. She said «There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded».
These affairs were later exposed in May 1992 with the publication of Andrew Morton’s book, Diana: Her True Story. The book, which also revealed Diana’s allegedly suicidal unhappiness, caused a media storm.
In 1991, James Colthurst conducted secret interviews with Diana in which she had talked about her marital issues and difficulties. These recordings were later used as a source for Morton’s book. During her lifetime, both Diana and Morton denied her direct involvement in the writing process and maintained that family and friends were the book’s main source, however, after her death Morton acknowledged Diana’s role in writing the tell-all in the book’s updated edition, «Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words».
Speaking on an ITV documentary called «The Diana Interview: Revenge of a Princess», Diana’s astrologer Penny Thornton says that Diana confessed this to her. “One of the most shocking things that Diana told me was that the night before the wedding, Charles told her that he didn’t love her,” Thornton says.
During 1992 and 1993, leaked tapes of telephone conversations reflected negatively on both Charles and Diana.
Tape recordings of Diana and James Gilbey were made public in August 1992, and transcripts were published the same month
In a videotape recorded by Settelen in 1992, Diana said that in 1984 through to 1986, she had been «deeply in love with someone who worked in this environment».
It is thought she was referring to Barry Mannakee, who was transferred to the Diplomatic Protection Squad in 1986 after his managers had determined that his relationship with Diana had been inappropriate.
Although she blamed Camilla Parker Bowles for her marital troubles, Diana began to believe her husband had also been involved in other affairs.
In October 1993, Diana wrote to her butler Paul Burrell, telling him that she believed her husband was now in love with his personal assistant Tiggy Legge-Bourke—who was also his sons’ former nanny—and was planning to have her killed «to make the path clear for him to marry Tiggy».
Her life turned into a movie in 2021 under the title «Spencer».
She was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales (later King Charles III).
She was the mother of Princes William and Harry.
Diana’s activism and glamour made her an international icon and earned her enduring popularity as well as unprecedented public scrutiny, exacerbated by her tumultuous private life.
Diana was born into the British nobility and grew up close to the royal family on their Sandringham estate.
They separated in 1992, soon after the breakdown of their relationship became public knowledge.
Their marital difficulties were widely publicised, and they divorced in 1996.
As Princess of Wales, Diana undertook royal duties on behalf of the Queen and represented her at functions across the Commonwealth realms.
She was celebrated in the media for her unconventional approach to charity work.
Her patronages initially centred on children and the elderly, but she later became known for her involvement in two particular campaigns: one involved the social attitudes towards and the acceptance of AIDS patients, and the other for the removal of landmines, promoted through the International Red Cross.
She also raised awareness and advocated for ways to help people affected by cancer and mental illness.
Diana was initially noted for her shyness, but her charisma and friendliness endeared her to the public and helped her reputation survive the acrimonious collapse of her marriage.
Considered photogenic, she was a leader of fashion in the 1980s and 1990s.
After her 1996 divorce, Diana retained the double apartment on the north side of Kensington Palace that she had shared with Charles since the first year of their marriage. The apartment remained her home until her death the following year. She also moved her offices to Kensington Palace but was permitted “to use the state apartments at St James’s Palace”
In a book published in 2003, Paul Burrell claimed Diana’s private letters had revealed that her brother, Lord Spencer, had refused to allow her to live at Althorp, despite her request.
Furthermore, she continued to have access to the jewellery that she had received during her marriage, and was allowed to use the air transport of the British royal family and government.
Diana was also offered security by Metropolitan Police’s Royalty Protection Group, which she benefitted from while travelling with her sons, but had refused it in the final years of her life, in an attempt to distance herself from the royal family.
Diana dated the British-Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, who was called “the love of her life” by many of her closest friends after her death, and she is said to have described him as «Mr Wonderful».
According to Khan’s testimony at the inquest into her death, it was Diana who ended their relationship in the summer of 1997. Burrell also said the relationship was ended by Diana in July 1997.
Burrell also claimed that Diana’s mother, Frances Shand Kydd, disapproved of her daughter’s relationship with a Muslim man. By the time of Diana’s death in 1997, she had not spoken to her mother in four months.
By contrast, her relationship with her estranged stepmother had reportedly improved.
Within a month, Diana began a relationship with Dodi Fayed, the son of her summer host, Mohamed Al-Fayed. That summer, Diana had considered taking her sons on a holiday to the Hamptons on Long Island, New York, but security officials had prevented it.
After deciding against a trip to Thailand, she accepted Fayed’s invitation to join his family in the south of France, where his compound and large security detail would not cause concern to the Royal Protection squad.
Mohamed Al-Fayed bought the Jonikal, a 60-metre multimillion-pound yacht on which to entertain Diana and her sons
Tina Brown later claimed that Diana’s romance with Fayed and her four-month relationship with Gulu Lalvani were a ploy “to inflame the true object of her affections, Hasnat Khan”.
In the years after her death, Burrell, journalist Richard Kay, and voice coach Stewart Pierce have claimed that Diana was also thinking about buying a property in the United States.
On 31 August 1997, Diana died in a car crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris while the driver was fleeing the paparazzi.
The crash also resulted in the deaths of her companion Dodi Fayed and the driver, Henri Paul, who was the acting security manager of the Hôtel Ritz Paris. Trevor Rees-Jones, who was employed as a bodyguard by Dodi’s father, survived the crash, but he suffered a serious head injury.
The televised funeral, on 6 September, was watched by a British television audience that peaked at 32.10 million, which was one of the United Kingdom’s highest viewing figures ever. Millions more watched the event around the world.
Her coffin, draped with the royal flag, was brought to London from Paris by Prince Charles and Diana’s two sisters on 31 August 1997. The coffin was taken to a private mortuary and then placed in the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace.
Diana’s funeral took place in Westminster Abbey on 6 September. Her sons walked in the funeral procession behind her coffin, along with her ex-husband the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh, Diana’s brother Lord Spencer, and representatives of some of her charities.
Re-written in tribute to Diana, “Candle in the Wind 1997” was performed by Elton John at the funeral service (the only occasion the song has been performed live).
It was released as a single in 1997, the global proceeds from the song have gone to Diana’s charities.
Diana’s former husband, sons, mother, siblings, a close friend, and a clergyman were present.
Diana’s body was clothed in a black long-sleeved dress designed by Catherine Walker, which she had chosen some weeks before. A set of rosary beads that she had received from Mother Teresa was placed in her hands.
Diana’s grave is on an island within the grounds of Althorp Park, the Spencer family home for centuries.
The initial French judicial investigation concluded that the crash was caused by Paul’s intoxication, reckless driving, speeding, and effects of prescription drugs.
In February 1998, Mohamed Al-Fayed, father of Dodi Fayed, publicly said the crash, which killed his son, had been planned, and accused MI6 and the Duke of Edinburgh.
An inquest that started in London in 2004 and continued in 2007–08 attributed the crash to grossly negligent driving by Paul and to the pursuing paparazzi, who forced Paul to speed into the tunnel.
On 7 April 2008, the jury returned a verdict of “unlawful killing”.
On the day after the final verdict of the inquest, Al-Fayed announced that he would end his 10-year campaign to establish that the tragedy was murder.
He said he did so for the sake of Diana’s children.