40+ Things You Never Knew About the Late Princess Diana

Princess Diana was a trailblazer, activist, style icon, and one of the most influential people of the 20th century. Although she lived much of her life in the spotlight, under oppressive scrutiny, there's much you probably don't know about the beloved late royal. From her favorite fashion designer and pre-royal working life to her taste in music and her parenting style, here are 42 things to remember about the People's Princess.

She was the fourth of five children.

Princess Diana had two sisters, Sarah (now Lady Sarah McCorquodale) and Jane (now Lady Jane Fellowes), and a younger brother, Charles Spencer (now the Earl Spencer). Her other brother, John Spencer, died hours after his birth in January 1960, a year and a half before Diana was born.

Her parents divorced when she was 7.

Diana's parents, Frances Shand Kydd and Edward John Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer, divorced when she was just seven years old. Diana's parents had a tumultuous relationship, and she cited cheating and physical abuse as some of the reasons for their separation.

Her grandmother was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother.

Diana's maternal grandmother, Ruth Roche, Baroness Fermoy, was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. This meant she acted as a personal assistant and a companion. She was a close friend to the Queen and organized many of her parties.

She grew up on the Sandringham estate leased from Queen Elizabeth.

Sandringham House is located in Norfolk and is owned by the royal family. On the grounds is Park House, where Princess Diana's mother Frances was born in in 1936 and Diana was born in 1961. The estate is a royal family staple and Sandringham House hosts many of the family holidays.

She wanted to be a ballerina, but was too tall.

Diana studied ballet and wanted to become a professional dancer, but grew too tall to continue. Diana's ballet teacher Anne Allan opened up about her time with the princess in 2017, saying “she had dance in her soul. I realized the pure enjoyment that it gave her. She loved the freeness of being able to move and dance... I could see it helped to alleviate her emotional life."

She became Lady Diana after her father inherited a title.

Diana became Lady Diana Spencer in 1975, after her father inherited the title of Earl Spencer. "Lady Di" became her nickname, even after she got the title of Princess of Wales when she married Prince Charles, Now King Charles.

School was not her strong suit.

Up until she was 9 years old, Diana was homeschooled before attending boarding school for the rest of her education. She failed her O-Level exams twice and dropped out of school when she was 16. She attended school in Switzerland for one semester before she met King Charles.

She worked as a nanny and a teacher.

Before she met Charles III and became a princess, Diana worked many odd jobs, including as a nanny and a school teacher. She was paid only $5 an hour to play with children, do laundry, and clean. She also worked as a kindergarten teacher part-time in London's Pimlico area.

She was the first royal bride to have a paying job.

When she married King Charles in 1981, Diana became the first-ever royal bride to have had a paying job ahead of her engagement to an heir. (The Duchess of Cambridge was the first royal bride to have earned a university degree.)

Prince Charles dated her older sister first.

Diana met her future husband through her older sister, Sarah. King Charles and Sarah had a fling in in the late '70s, which is how Diana first met the prince. "I introduced them. I'm Cupid," Sarah said.

King Charles dated her older sister first.

Sarah and Diana were very close and often traveled together until the end of Diana's life. Diana said that Sarah was “the only person I know I can trust."

She was a distant cousin of King Charles.

Diana and King Charles were actually distantly related. They were 16th cousins once removed, both descendants of Tudor King Henry VII.

Prince William is also related to his wife Kate Middleton. They are 12th cousins once removed, related through Sir Thomas Leighton. Leighton is Prince William's 12th generation great-grandfather, and Kate's 11th.

She only met King Charles 13 times before they got married.

Before they were engaged in 1981, Charles and Diana had only met about a dozen times. At the time, Diana was just 19, and King Charles was 32. "They had only been together 12 times and at one point Prince Phillip pressured his son and said, 'You have to do the right thing.'" said Susan Zirinsky, senior executive producer of Princess Diana: Her Life, Her Death, The Truth.

Her wedding dress was record-breaking.

Diana's ivory taffeta wedding dress was made by husband-and-wife design team David and Elizabeth Emanuel. The gown boasted over 10,000 pearls and a 25-foot-long train, one of the longest royal trains the world had ever seen.

She was the first to give birth in a hospital.

It was royal tradition for heirs of the throne to be born at home. However, Prince William was the first future monarch born in a hospital, as Diana gave birth to both William and Harry at the Lido Wing at St. Mary's Hospital.

Her parenting style was very unconventional for a royal.

Diana was no ordinary royal mom. She was determined to raise Prince William and Prince Harry as "normally" as possible, including sending them to public school, taking them on public transportation, and bringing them fast food restaurants, on public transportation.

Her parenting style was very unconventional for a royal.

"She made sure that they experienced things like going to the cinema, queuing up to buy a McDonald's, going to amusement parks, those sorts of things that were experiences that they could share with their friends," said Patrick Jephson, Princess Diana's chief of staff for six years.

Catherine Walker was her favorite designer.

Diana's private couturier Catherine Walker had a "quasi-sisterly bond"with the princess. Walker designed many of Diana's most iconic looks and is given credit for her signature style.

Catherine Walker was her favorite designer.

On wearing a white halter dress designed by Walker in 1996, Diana wrote to the designer, "I was so proud and felt very confident to stride out there and deliver my first speech since the divorce. The compliments about your design and expertise would have made your ears burn."

She always wrote a "thank you" card.

Diana was famous for writing thank you cards to anyone that gave her a gift. She reportedly wrote thank you notes to the thousands of people who brought gifts to Prince William after he was born. Today, some of her handwritten letters have been auctioned off for anywhere from $2,000 to $2o,000, depending on the content and uniqueness of the note.

She was a breakthrough activist for HIV awareness.

Diana made history in April 1987 when she was photographed shaking an HIV patient's hand without wearing gloves. The photo helped spread the message of HIV awareness and educate the public's perception of the illness. That day, the Princess opened the UK's first HIV/Aids unit at London Middlesex Hospital that specifically treated patients infected with the virus.

She had a lot of famous friends.

Diana had many A-list friends, including Elton John, George Michael, Tilda Swinton, and Liza Minelli. Diana was also friends with Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, and stayed at their ranch in Colorado with William and Harry for ten days to escape the paparazzi.

ABBA was her favorite band.

Diana was known to be a huge fan of Swedish pop group ABBA. The Duchess of Cambridge and and Prince William honored Diana in a subtle way by playing some of ABBA's music at their wedding party in 2011.

She coined the term "cleavage bags."

With cameras following her everywhere, Diana had to be careful of what was photographed. She used her small clutch bags as a guard for her cleavage, to make sure cameras didn't catch a glimpse down her top.

Most photos of Diana getting out of a car to enter an event show her using her clutch as a shield. Designer Anya Hindmarch, who worked with Diana often, said, "We used to laugh when we designed what she called her 'cleavage bags,' little satin clutches which she would cover her cleavage with when she stepped out of cars."

She recorded her honest thoughts on tape.

After Diana's messy public divorce caused a tabloid craze, she decided to record her thoughts on tape to tell her side of the story. She starting documenting them in May 1991, and had a friend deliver them to British royal journalist Andrew Morton.

"The Princess was talking about her unhappiness, her sense of betrayal, her suicide attempts—and two things I’d never previously heard of: an eating disorder called bulimia nervosa and a woman called Camilla," Morton said about the tapes. In 1992, Andrew Morton wrote Diana: Her True Story—In Her Own Words based on the tapes he had received from Diana. The book was a bestseller, and forever changed the narrative about the princess.

She had an affair with her bodyguard.

Barry Mannakee was with the police in the Royal Protection Squad before becoming Diana's bodyguard in 1985. After a year on her service, Mannakee was transferred off of royal duties because of an "unusually close relationship between the pair."

In a tape from a therapy session, Diana said that she was "deeply in love" and was "quite happy to give all this up and to just go off and live with him." While she does not directly name Mannakee, it is widely believed she was talking about him. Mannakee died in a motorcycle crash in 1987, and there are many theories that his death was not an accident.

Her engagement ring was chosen from a catalogue.

The ring is a 12-carat oval sapphire surrounded by 14 solitaire diamonds. Diana chose the ring out of a Garrard's catalogue, which was unusual as most royals had their jewels custom designed specifically for them.

The wedding ring now belongs to Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge. Prince William proposed to Kate with the ring in 2010 and viewed it as a perpetual symbol of his mother's presence. "Obviously she's not going to be around to share all the fun and excitement, so this is my way of sort of keeping her close to it all," Prince William said.

Her title was revoked after her divorce.

Diana's title of "her royal highness" was officially removed from her name after she divorced King Charles in 1996. But Queen Elizabeth II was not the one insisting—Charles was. Per the terms of their divorce, "She is to give up her right to be Queen of England and to be called 'Her Royal Highness,'" The New York Timesreported. "Queen Elizabeth II was reported to have been ready to allow Diana to retain the honorific, but Prince Charles was said to be adamant that she give it up."

Her dresses raised millions for charity.

In addition to being an official royal patron to many charity organizations dedicated to medical funding, she used her royal fashion icon status to leverage donations.

Just a few months before she passed away, Diana held a Christie's auction of 79 of her most iconic dresses to raise money for AIDS and cancer charities. One of the most well-known dresses sold was the "Travolta dress,"a velvet blue gown that Princess Diana wore at a gala at the White House, where she danced with John Travolta.

She called Prince William "Wombat."

Diana called her eldest son William "wombat" starting from the time he was just two years old. After a trip to Australia where they saw the cute native creature, Diana began lovingly referring to the young prince as "wombat." In a 2007 interview, Prince William said "When we went to Australia with our parents, and the wombat, you know, that's the local animal. So I just basically got called that. Not because I look like a wombat. Or maybe I do."

She was buried on her family's island.

After her tragic death by car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997, Diana was buried on Althorp Estate in Northampton. The estate has belonged to the Spencer family for over 500 years. A small island has been dedicated to her memory, with a temple on Oval Lake, where well-wishers can pay their respects.

She left a big inheritance for Prince Harry.

Diana left an estate of 21 million euros for both William and Harry. While the assets were split evenly among the two princes following her death, Harry would later use a significant portion of his share to make a start for himself with wife Meghan Markle in the United States after he was financially cut off from the royal family.

“I have what my mum left me and without that we wouldn’t have been able to do this,” Harry said of his leave from the royal family with duchess Meghan in their bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey. “It’s like she saw it coming and she’s been with us through this whole process.”

She has a statue in her memory.

To honor their late royal mother, Princes William and Harry commissioned a statue in her memory that was unveiled on what would have been Diana's 60th birthday, on July 1, 2021, at her favorite royal spot: the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace. The occasion marked the reunion of the two estranged princes, who were not on speaking terms as of 2020 following Harry's exit from the royal family.

She may have anticipated her own death.

The late princess seemed to have had prescient inklings about her own death, fueling conspiracy theories that her fatal car crash in Paris had been orchestrated by the royal family. In a chilling handwritten note addressed to her butler, Paul Burrell, in October 1993, Diana wrote, "My husband is planning 'an accident' in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry [Camilla]."

She struggled with an eating disorder.

In her famous 1995 Panorama interview with Martin Bashir for BBC, the late princess confirmed that she had been suffering from bulimia for a number of years. On what sourced the eating disorder, she eloquently explained, "[Bulimia is] like a secret disease. You inflict it upon yourself because your self-esteem is at a low ebb, and you don't think you're worthy or valuable. You fill your stomach up four or five times a day—some do it more—and it gives you a feeling of comfort. It's like having a pair of arms around you. But it's temporary."

She never wanted to be the Queen.

Despite being in line to eventually become the Queen, Diana had not been interested in taking on the role, nor did she think it would happen. "I'd like to be queen of people's hearts—in people's hearts—but I don't see myself being Queen of this country," she told Bashir during her 1995 BBC interview. "I don't think many people would want me to be queen, actually. When I say many people I mean the establishment that I'm married into, because they've decided that I'm a non-starter... because I do things differently."

She refused one royal wedding vow.

Diana broke barriers and started a tradition for royal brides when she omitted the vow to "obey" her husband as prescribed from the Book of Common Prayer dating back to 1662. Instead, she promised to ''love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health.'' Both Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle followed suit and kept "obey" out of their vows during their wedding ceremonies.

She confronted Camilla face-to-face.

At the height of King Charles's not-so-secret affair with Camilla, Diana reportedly confronted Camilla directly at a party to let her know that she was aware that she and Charles III were sneaking off behind her back. According to Diana's then protection officer Ken Wharfe, who reportedly witnessed this interaction, Diana said to Camilla, "Please don’t treat me like an idiot. I know what’s going on.'"

"Camilla sort of said something, to which still to this day I have never really understood what she meant by that, is ‘Well, you know, you have two wonderful boys,’" Wharfe also said. "That was a defining moment in their life because I think at that point … this was an indicator the end was nigh.”

Queen Elizabeth II disliked her for a time.

The late Queen was not entirely pleased upon meeting a young 20-year-old Lady Diana ahead of marrying King Charles. "She’s not like the rest of us,” Her Majesty reportedly said of Diana to the editors of Fleet Street. “She’s very young.”

She was also not a fan of Diana's pursuits in fundraising opportunities for people with HIV and AIDS, deeming the issues too morbid. Her Majesty reportedly expressed a preference for Diana to get philanthropically involved with "something more pleasant."

She was a royal rebel.

The people's princess was famous for breaking royal protocol. Many of these infractions involved her more modern fashion choices, such as not wearing gloves (Diana reportedly liked to hold hands while visiting people), as well as dressing in black—including the time she wore her famous figure-hugging "revenge dress" in 1994 in London, the same day that Charles III also publicly admitted to his affair. And despite prohibitions against an education outside royal walls, Diana also opted to send her two sons to public school, where, for a "sports day," she raced barefoot alongside other parents—another royal infraction.

She visited Meghan Markle's alma mater.

The two royals were connected in more ways than one. In June of 1996, Princess Diana took a five-day trip to the Chicago area, where she visited Northwestern University—the school that duchess Meghan would attend just several years later—to help raise money for the university's Robert H. Lurie Cancer Center.

In what became an iconic paparazzi shot of the newly-divorced princess, Diana was captured on campus wearing a lounge fit featuring a Northwestern sweatshirt paired white bike shorts during her visit.

She was a popular cover model.

A style icon who often broke royal protocols with her dress, she was unsurprisingly also frequently featured on the cover of numerous magazines—including People over 50 times, Time eight times, as well as Good Housekeeping, Life, Hello! Tutler, and of course, Harper's BAZAAR.

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