• The fourth flavor of The Crown follows Diana Spencer and Charles's cyclone courtship, and its long-lasting ramifications.
  • Diana was born to an aristocratic family in England.
  • Here's what we know virtually Diana's upbringing—from her parents' divorce to her family's connections to the royal family unit.

Diana is frequently remembered for everything that happened after her meeting with Prince Charles: The cyclone courting (xiii whole dates!), the bear witness-stopping hymeneals, the dramatic divorce, and her death. But when Diana first appears in flavour 4 of The Crown, she's nonetheless in her schoolgirl days. What was her life similar before she became one of England's, if not the world'south, most beloved figures?

Born to two wealthy parents on July one, 1961, Lady Diana Spencer grew upward side by side to the aristocracy. Though she first met Prince Charles at the age of 16, she knew many people in his family: Queen Elizabeth II was her brother'southward godmother, and she played with Charles's brothers equally a kid. According to an anecdote from Tina Brown's, The Diana Chronicles, Charles, and then 17, one time interrupted five-year-former Diana's "tea party" with Andrew.

The Spencers have been a prominent family unit since the 15th and 16th century, according to a book near the family's history. They fabricated their initial fortune with sheep farming, and never lost said fortune. In 1975, Diana earned the title of "Lady" when her granddad died, and her father became the eighth Earl Spencer.

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Diana's relative Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.

Print Collector // Getty Images

The Spencer men have their earlship, but information technology's the Spencer women who have fabricated headlines over the years. While Diana is the nearly famous of the Spencers, she'south descended from other fascinating females: Sarah Marlborough was Queen Anne's controversial confidante (and was played by Rachel Weisz in The Favourite) and Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire became a celebrity in Georgian-era England for her unusual spousal relationship arrangement (she was portrayed by Keira Knightley in The Duchess) .

Clearly, Diana'south childhood was ane of privilege and esteem—but was information technology blithesome? I of her nannies weighed in with her opinion. "Diana had a happy secure childhood. From the moment I met her and worked with the family, I saw she was helpful, laughing, exuberant, loved past both her parents, and the apple tree of her father'due south eye," her former nanny, Mary Clarke, wrote.

Withal, Diana's blood brother, the current Earl Spencer, disagrees with that rosy picture. Hither'south what we know nigh the childhood of Princess Diana—and what The Crown skips over.

Diana had 4 siblings—including a sis who dated Prince Charles.

Diana's father, John Spencer, was the 8th Earl Spencer (though was a Viscount when he married). Her female parent, Frances Ruth Roche, was the daughter of Maurice Roche, 4th Baron Fermoy and Ruth Roche, Baroness Fermoy, and was even wealthier than the Spencers. Queen Elizabeth attended their wedding ceremony in 1954. Like Diana, Frances was a young helpmate—she was just 18 when she married John, who was 30.

The Spencers had five children, including Diana. Their third kid (and long-awaited son), John, died equally an infant, devastating Diana's mother. Diana grew upwards with her two sisters, Lady Sarah and Lady Jane, and her brother Charles. Before Diana became involved with Prince Charles, he dated her eldest sister, Sarah in 1977.

aristocratic wedding

The nuptials of Viscount Althorp and the Hon. Frances Roche at Westminster Abbey.

Terry Disney // Getty Images

Her parents divorced when she was vii, and it changed Diana forever.

In 1969, the family unit ruptured when Diana's mother reportedly abruptly left her male parent for Peter Shand Kydd, an Australian wallpaper tycoon (no known connexion to Camilla Shand). What ensued was a courtroom and custody battle, and resulted in what her brother called an "unhappy childhood."

"Diana and I had 2 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," Spencer explained in a revealing 2020 interview in The Sunday Times. "Our father was a quiet and constant source of love, but our mother wasn't cutting out for motherhood. Non her fault, she couldn't do it. She was in beloved with someone else—infatuated, really."

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Lady Diana Spencer and her brother, Charles.

Central Press // Getty Images

Following an intense custody battle (in which Frances'southward mother, Ruth, testified against her), the Spencer children lived with their male parent permanently. According to her brother, Diana felt abandoned by their female parent. "While she was packing her stuff to leave, she promised Diana she'd come up dorsum to see her. Diana used to await on the doorstep for her, just she never came," Charles, Diana's brother, told The Dominicus Times.

However, The Diana Chronicles paints a more complicated picture: According to the book, Frances was shut out of the children'due south lives, with the doors of Park House literally airtight on her. She never expected to lose her children, and would cry at the end of every Saturday visit: "'Oh, I don't desire you to leave tomorrow!'" Diana recalled, per the book.

Charles, who was 2 when their parents divorced, said Diana was similar a mother figure to him. She "was the big sis who mothered me as a baby… and endured those long railroad train journeys between our parents' homes with me at weekends," he told The Sunday Times.

Diana's mother and her husband eventually settled on a small Scottish island off the coast of Oban, where she opened a gift shop. Diana reportedly didn't get along well with her male parent's second wife, socialite Raine Legge. Charles's four children were non informed of their wedding, nor were they invited to the political party, according to The Diana Chronicles.

little princess diana

Fox Photos // Getty Images

As a girl, Diana played with her future blood brother-in-laws.

Diana was born in Park House, a nine-sleeping accommodation mansion located on the Queen's grounds at Sandringham. The house was congenital in 1863 by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward Seven) to accommodate "overflow" at his royal home, Sandringham Business firm. When Queen Elizabeth II and her family were staying at Sandringham, they socialized with the Spencers.

In 1987, Park Firm was converted into a 3-star hotel designed for travelers with disabilities. Co-ordinate to a review, guests are shown the sleeping room where Diana was born.

file 50 years since birth of diana, princess of wales on july 1

Central Press // Getty Images

She had other connections to the royal family—lots of them.

Fifty-fifty before Diana married into the regal family, she knew them intimately. Diana's family had multiple connections to the Crown. Her brother, Charles, is Queen Elizabeth II'due south godson. Her father, the eighth Earl Spencer, was Queen Mary's godson. And her grandmother, Lady Fermoy, was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother—she'southward depicted in The Crown.

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Queen Elizabeth Ii and the Queen Mother shake hands with Charles Spencer.

Tim Graham // Getty Images

The Crown introduces Diana at her 2nd childhood habitation, Althorp Park.

When Diana was 14, her life inverse abruptly. Her grandfather died, making her father the 8th Earl Spencer—and heir to the family's domicile. Simply Althorp was no ordinary abode. The mansion had belonged to the Spencer family unit for over 500 years, since Sir John Spencer purchased information technology in 1508.

"The children rarely visited the big firm every bit a family when the old Earl was live. Growing up they knew cipher well-nigh their heritage," Chocolate-brown writes in The Diana Chronicles.

The manor sits on 13,000 acres in the English language countryside, and contains 28 listed buildings and structures. The 100,000-square-foot, 90-room mansion is just the start. Althorp Park is occasionally open to the public. Today, her brother Charles lives there. It's besides the site of Diana's grave.

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Diana wasn't considered a student, and dropped out of boarding school at 16.

In 1970, when she was 9, Diana was sent to an all-girls boarding school called Riddlesworth. Afterward three years she went on to attend the West Heath Boarding School for Girls (which has plaques in her honor to this twenty-four hours). According to accounts, school wasn't Diana'southward strong suit. Diana failed her O-level exams twice before dropping out of boarding school entirely at the age of 16.

Afterwards, she attended Institut Alpin Videmanette, a Swiss finishing school known for its wealthy students (Sarah, her sis, likewise attended). It was 17-year-old Diana's first fourth dimension out of the country, or on an airplane. It was around this fourth dimension that she start met Prince Charles, who was then dating her sister, Sarah.

charles and lady sarah spencer

Prince Charles and Sarah Spencer.

Tim Graham // Getty Images

Diana wanted to become a dancer, to a higher place all.

Diana had a number of passions outside of school. She was a swimmer, a skier, a tennis player, a pianist. Above all, though, she wanted to become a ballerina. Nevertheless, at 5'ten," she struggled to pursue the career.

According to the book The Existent Diana, at the historic period of 17, she reached out to the Vacani Trip the light fantastic toe School to train equally a dancing teacher, even if she was unable to be a ballerina. Madame Vacani told the author of The Existent Diana that she only trained for a month. "She went skiing and never came back. I think that she felt that the grooming—three years and until half-dozen:30 in the evening—would exist as well across-the-board. She never gave a reason for non returning," the book says.

Simply put, becoming a trip the light fantastic instructor wasn't her passion—dancing was. Whenever she was feeling stressed, Diana would dance.

Before meeting Charles, she worked as a nanny and a cleaning lady.

When Charles meets Diana in The Crown, she's living with friends in London and cleaning her sis'southward firm for coin. In real life, Diana indeed had odd jobs like cleaning houses, serving appetizers at cocktail parties, and working as a kindergarten teacher—which, co-ordinate to Brown, was a normal role of life as a "Sloane Ranger," the term for Diana'southward clique of upper-crust young people. "Slumming it was part of the inverted cachet of the Sloane Ranger globe, since it as well announced that you didn't depend on your task for either coin or status," Brownish wrote.

Brown describes Diana between xviii and 19 as a "trust fund Cinderella, drifting through temporary work—low-stress, undemanding jobs that drew on her agreeable demeanor."

One of her most notable jobs was as babysitter for the child of an American businesswoman. "I merely roughshod in love with her. She was wonderful with my child," Mary Robertson, the adult female who hired her to watch her son, told Inside Edition in 2017.

Robertson didn't know that her babysitter was part of the landed gentry until she accidentally left a carte du jour behind that said "Lady Diana Spencer." She subsequently wrote about her friendship with Diana, which persisted past her fourth dimension every bit a bodyguard, in The Diana I Knew: Loving Memories of the Friendship Between an American Mother and Her Son's Nanny Who Became the Princess of Wales.

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Meet The Adult female Who Hired Princess Diana As A Nanny Before She Married Charles

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According to Robertson, she and Diana joked virtually her marrying Prince Charles. In her book, she wrote that she was "was worried that Diana'south infatuation with Charles was 'based on her romantic paradigm of him, not on the man himself." The Crown shows whether or not Robertson, in her suspicions, was correct.


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