Princess Diana was beloved by millions of people around the world. But that doesn't mean she always
reciprocated those feelings. Here are a few famous people Princess Diana reportedly couldn't stand.
It would seem that Princess Diana possibly endured the classic mother-in-law struggle.
Royals are just like us after all. Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Diana did have
their issues, though it's not known if they ever directly confronted one another about them.
According to Ingrid Seward, a British author who
followed the royal family for close to 20 years, Diana said in the beginning,
"I have the best mother-in-law in the world."
At the time, Diana was just entering the royal family and
was still feeling the growing pains of princess-hood. Diana often sought out
Elizabeth for comfort and to cry on the Queen's shoulder, often about Charles.
Seward revealed that Diana's relationship with Queen Elizabeth went downhill in 1992,
when the princess secretly collaborated with Andrew Morton on the instantly sensational
book Diana, Her True Story — In Her Own Words. The work thoroughly slammed Prince Charles and
established the royal family as completely uncaring when it came to the Princess of
Wales and her numerous struggles. But things had been getting rocky before then as well.
Diana recorded a series of tapes for the book, in which she revealed that Prince Charles had
divulged her issues with bulimia to his mother, the Queen, who reportedly passed
that information around the palace. Diana said Queen Elizabeth even approached her about it,
and allegedly suggested that the princess was responsible for her failing marriage to Charles.
Of course, Charles was openly neglecting his wife and seeing Camilla Parker Bowles,
so Diana became somewhat frigid toward her mother-in-law.
It's safe to say that Camilla Parker Bowles and Princess Diana were never friends.
According to the documentary Diana: In Her Own Words, Camilla was Prince Charles' first real
love when they met in the early '70s. However, the royal family dismissed her as an ineligible wife
for the prince, who was bound to the tradition of marrying a virgin with a fabulous pedigree. But
Camilla and Charles never stopped seeing each other, even when Diana came into the picture.
The Princess of Wales said in her 1992 interview that she had been aware of Charles and Camilla's
relationship before she'd married the prince, and had actually wanted to call off the wedding. But,
she was discouraged by her sisters, who reportedly told her that it was too late.
A few years into the marriage, Diana decided to confront Camilla.
The princess revealed in her secret 1992 interview with Andrew
Morton that she tagged along with Charles to a party he had planned to attend solo.
The People's Princess reportedly got her competition alone and told the mistress,
"I know exactly what's going on."
However, Camilla never backed down, and eventually married Prince Charles in 2005,
eight years after Diana's death.
In the secret tapes recorded in 1992, Princess Diana said,
"My husband made me feel so, um, inadequate in every possible way."
It's hard to know where to start when it comes to how the Princess of Wales couldn't stand Charles.
From her claims of how he kick-started her bulimia after calling her chubby
when she was just 19 years old to repeatedly ignoring her pleas for help,
it's clear that the couple's marriage was far from perfect.
Charles and Diana did manage to stay married for 15 years, which was
actually the Queen's decision. The most famous example of Charles' allegedly awful behavior is
perhaps the interview the couple gave after announcing their engagement to the public.
When asked if they were in love, Diana said, "Of course," while Charles chose to reply,
"Whatever love means."
Diana said this completely traumatized her. But the worst, Diana said, was when
Prince Harry was born. Charles allegedly wanted a girl, and one without red hair.
Princess Anne apparently made no attempt to disguise her feelings toward Diana early on.
Ingrid Seward, the British royalty expert, told Vanity Fair that Diana actively avoided Anne,
who disliked the young woman immediately on account of their differing interests and
approaches to royalty. Anne was more traditional and liked country life and shooting, while Diana
was 11 years younger and preferred the city. Royal reporter Richard Kay also told Vanity Fair,
"I remember Diana saying 'if Anne's there I'm off,'
because Anne would usually say something rather cutting to her."
Ken Lennox is a well-known British photographer who participated in
the paparazzi machine that transformed Diana's life, and not for the better.
Lennox was responsible for taking a photo,
which was obtained in what many might describe as an excessive, or even crazy, manner.
Lennox told PBS that he had trekked through the jungle to catch sight of the royals on vacation.
Using a long lens, Lennox managed to photograph Diana on a private beach on another island.
What he couldn't see at the time was a small, newly announced baby bump. Diana said,
"I was horrified because I would never walk 'round looking like that in a bikini."
Later, Lennox admitted in an NBC interview,
"I had totally overstepped the line by the standards at that time."
However, Lennox seems to have tried to make amends with Diana. He told PBS that he helped
her lose the paparazzi one day when she was trying to visit her grandmother. He also said
that he would ask her for photographs rather than chase her down to get what he wanted.
"I understood that the media might be interested in what I did."
In 2017, TIME proclaimed,
"The Princess of Wales steadily became the most photographed person in the world."
The princess' popularity undoubtedly had a tremendous impact on her. From
the beginning of her budding relationship with Charles, photographers were snapping
at the teenager anywhere possible, even through her bedroom window.
According to TIME, paparazzi photographers Mark Saunders and Glenn Harvey followed Diana for 13
years. In their book, Dicing with Di, they recounted the extreme measures they took to
supply tabloids all over Europe with Diana's daily happenings. Sometimes these excursions
turned into more adventurous endeavors, like when they climbed mountains to catch
her skiing and stalked her in the middle of the night after her separation from Charles.
Quite unapologetically, they wrote about how they hounded her so incessantly that
she would occasionally burst into tears right in front of them. While
Diana never outwardly said that she hated Mark Saunders and Glenn Harvey, having an
instant meltdown from their intrusions is pretty self-explanatory of her feelings toward them.
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