Unlike modern royal brides like Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle, or Sophie Rhys-Jones, Princess Diana came into the Royal Family already holding a prestigious pedigree. As a Spencer of "special ancient stock and rarefied upbringing" and the daughter of an earl, Lady Diana wasn't quite a princess growing up, but she might as well have been. The new book Dianaworld: An Obsession by Edward White dives into the late royal's life through the lens of the public and those who knew her—and she was "exceptionally proud" of her Spencer background.
While Middleton might've been mocked for having a former flight attendant mother, Lady Diana Spencer was born into one of the oldest and most aristocratic families in Britain. White wrote that some have told "tales of Diana waving away her background," but that couldn't have been further from the truth.
The princess "was exceptionally proud of her heritage," he penned, adding that it wasn't necessarily the closeness to her family, "but everything entailed in being a Spencer." Diana appreciated "centuries of inherited specialness which supposedly was the very thing that allowed her to relate to everyone."
Marrying into the Royal Family wasn't as wild of a concept to someone like Diana as it would've been to Middleton or Markle—after all, Lady Di was well acquainted with the royals, and Queen Elizabeth even served as Diana's brother Charles's godmother. But although Princess Diana proudly wore her family's Spencer Tiara on her 1981 wedding day, the fairytale ended soon afterward.
The then-Prince and Princess of Wales struggled with their marriage from the start, and according to White, Diana "was far prouder" of her Spencer title "than of being royal."
In fact, Diana's friend Rosa Monckton told White, "Whenever things got too much for her, she would say to herself: 'Diana, remember you're a Spencer.'"
Her Spencer pride extended to the way she raised her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. Instead of sending them to Gordonstoun, the same school as Prince Charles, or to a more down-to-earth option, she chose Eton College—the school where Spencer men were traditionally educated.
The author continued that another friend, Elsa Bowker, also confirmed "that the princess took great strength from her Spencer heritage."
"When I came here, I had my title. I don't need your title," Diana reportedly told Prince Charles during one argument about divorce.
At the end of the day, White wrote that Diana was a fascinating contradiction in many ways as she came from such a high-born background but claimed to be, "as she put it once, 'closer to people at the bottom than to people at the top.'"
However, he noted that today, "the Spencers are as close to being the people's aristocrats as it's possible to get—and Diana remains at the center of it all."
