Why Princess Diana Didn’t Speak to Her Mom for Years After the Royal Wedding
Princess Diana’s 1981 royal wedding to King Charles III marked the beginning of a years-long rift with her mother. Years later, Diana explained how her mom’s behavior on her wedding day drove her “mad” to the point where they didn’t speak.
Diana’s mom let her ‘down’ by failing to ‘cope’ with the royal wedding ‘pressure’
Diana and King Charles married on July 29, 1981, at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, England. Millions of people tuned in from around the world to watch the ceremony hailed as the wedding of the century live on TV.
Diana wore a now-iconic wedding dress designed by Elizabeth and David Emanuel. She completed her look with a 25-foot train and the Spencer family tiara. Through many memorable moments—kissing on the Buckingham Palace balcony, walking down the aisle—the fact that her mother couldn’t maintain her composure bothered Diana.
“My mother let me down terribly with the wedding,” she later told biographer Andrew Morton in secret tape recordings for Diana: In Her Own Words (via People). “She kept crying…saying that she couldn’t cope with the pressure.”
Diana explained it had bothered her so much she didn’t talk to her mom for years because of it. “I didn’t speak to her for three or four years afterward. She drove me mad. It was me that was being strong and her sobbing the whole time.”
Charles and Diana’s age gap ‘terrified’ her
The 12-year age difference between the couple concerned Diana’s mom, royal commentator Richard Kay said in the When the Spencers Met the Monarchy documentary. This, he argued, was shown in a BBC interview she gave ahead of the ceremony.
“It’s a very hard question to answer, isn’t it, because it’s an unknown world for her,” Kydd replied when asked what impact marrying into the British royal family would have on Diana.
Her response, Kay argued, showed she’d been “terrified” her daughter was “going to make the same mistake that she had made.”
Diana’s mom also “married very young.” She exchanged vows with John Spencer, the 8th Earl Spencer, at 18. Similar to King Charles and Diana, there’d been a “big age gap of about 12 years” between the two.
By the time of Diana’s royal wedding, her parents had already been divorced for years, splitting after a tumultuous 15-year marriage in 1969.
Diana wasn’t talking to her mother when she died in 1997
Diana’s relationship with her mom wasn’t void of any drama or friction after the royal wedding. On the contrary, the two’s strained relationship continued until Diana’s death. When Diana died on Aug. 31, 1997, following a car crash in Paris, France, the then-Princess of Wales and her mother weren’t speaking.
As Shand Kydd later revealed in 2002 court testimony, she wrote Diana letters in the last few months of her life (via Independent). However, they went unread, having been returned to her unopened.
Diana’s mother died on June 3, 2004, at her home in Scotland. She was 68.
