The Princess always felt the lack of a mother's love as she was just a child when her mother left home after the divorce.
Diana always wanted to be the "Princess of people's hearts" more than anything in the world. Her extensive charity work for the protection of animals, helping the homeless, drug addicts, and elderly, worldwide ban of landmines, all lead to her sitting deep in the hearts of the people, just like she wanted.
But Diana's heart was broken by not just her husband, Prince Charles' betrayal but also because of her troubled childhood. All that she did for the world was a way to make her forget about her troubles and feel whole again.
In a recent interview with The Sunday Times, her brother, Charles Spencer revealed a few things about the princess that will make your hearts break for Diana once again. The 56-year-old revealed that he and Diana endured a lot of pain when their parents, the 8th Earl Spencer, John Spencer, and his wife Frances Shand-Kydd went in two different paths in 1969, reported the People.
He said, “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." Talking about his parents he added, "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.” The couple had five children together, one of whom died within 10 hours of his birth.
Charles, who's the 9th Earl Spencer is a historian and author. He is waiting for the release of his new book, The White Ship, on September 17. He revealed that before their mother left, she made young Diana a promise that she never fulfilled. “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,” revealed Charles.
When Diana's parents separated, she was just a 5-year-old girl, reported the CheatSheet. The divorce wasn't finalized until she was eight. After Diana's mother lost the messy custody battle for the children, Frances went on to marry Peter Shand-Kydd and her father remarried a woman whom Diana didn't like.
Her non-existent relationship with her step-mom made Diana try hard to be a part of her new family, the royals. Recalling what Diana remembered about her childhood, in the Royal House of Windsor documentary, narrator Gwilym Lee said, “A witness to her parents’ acrimonious divorce, she and her siblings were the subjects of a bitter custody battle. As a result, Diana’s mother had to give up her children." She added, “Diana later admitted she had been haunted by the crunch of the gravel as her mother departed.”
Lee believes since Diana never received the love of a mother while growing up as she was raised by her father and nannies, it affected her life in later years. She claimed, “Diana’s neediness stemmed from a troubled childhood."
Echoing Lee, royal biographer Penny Junor said, “She was damaged, mentally, by her experiences. And then moving into the royal family was the worst possible scenario that she could have found for herself."
In the tape recordings with Dr. James Colthurst for Andrew Morton’s biography, Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words, Diana revealed that she never felt close to her own family. “I couldn’t understand why I was perhaps a nuisance to have around."
She continued, "In later years, I’ve perceived as being part of the [whole question of the] son, the child who died before me was a son and both parents were crazy to have a son and heir."
As a child, Diana always felt like she was supposed to be the boy that her parents expected before her birth. This made her feel guilty until the end of her days. Her parents' divorce was a cherry on top of her already guilty self and it changed her forever, reported CheatSheet.
Later, after tying the knot with Prince Charles, even though she knew that her marriage wasn't working, she desperately tried to hold on to it for as long as she could because she didn't want the same fate for both Prince William and Prince Harry that she had endured. But fate had different plans.
Prince Charles and Diana ultimately split in August 1996 after the Queen's intervention and a year later, she passed away in a tragic car crash. Even after all the efforts Diana made, she couldn't see the young, handsome, and powerful men that her kids have grown into.
References:
https://people.com/royals/charles-spencer-childhood-trauma-sister-princess-diana-new-interview/
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/princess-diana-childhood-affected-her.html/
