Pushing a parent down the stairs, tap dancing through the house, and refusing to wear dresses
doesn't sound very royal — but they didn't call Diana the "People's Princess" for nothing.
Born into an aristocratic, upper-class English family with roots stretching back to the 15th
century, Diana was no stranger to status and luxury.
As a young child, Diana lived at the Park House, which was on the grounds of the Queen's
Sandringham Estate, before moving to the Althorp House Estate with her family as a teenager.
Both homes are enormous mansions with many acres of immaculately kept grounds.
So even though Diana wasn't officially a member of the British aristocracy, her childhood
was certainly "royal adjacent" — her father, John Spencer, actually worked for Queen Elizabeth
as an "equerry," a sort of personal assistant.
And, as explained in the Netflix series "The Crown," the future Princess was given a certain
royal nickname as a child:
"Oh, everyone in the family calls her 'Duch,' because ever since childhood she's behaved
as if she were destined for greater things."
Mary Clarke, Princess Diana's childhood nanny, wrote a book about Diana called "Little Girl
Lost: The Troubled Childhood of Princess Diana by the Woman Who Raised Her."
But despite the title, Clarke does clarify that for the most part, Diana was a happy child, writing:
"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 by both her parents, and the apple of her father's eye."
In another interview with the Express, Clarke described Diana as, quote, "a real English
rose with rosy cheeks and that downward glance everyone got to know."
In terms of Diana's interests during childhood, her favorite thing to do was spend time outdoors.
As her nanny, Mary Clarke, said in the documentary "Diana at Sixty,"
"She was happiest in trousers and an old top.
She wasn't in the least bit interested in clothes.
She absolutely hated dressing up."
Clarke also recalled how making Diana wear a dress or skirt was no easy task, and how
Diana would say:
''I don't see what it matters what I'm wearing, no one's going to look at me."
In another interview, Clarke revealed that Diana also loved animals, especially her guinea pigs and dog.
She also liked sports, and could often be found running and playing outside.
In addition to her love of the outdoors, Princess Diana was also passionate about dancing when she was young.
When asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she often replied that she wanted to be a dancer.
Her former ballet teacher, Anne Allan, said:
"She had dance in her soul.
She loved the freeness of being able to move and dance."
Allan went on to explain that Diana's passion for dance was perhaps a way for her to deal
with emotional trauma in her life.
In the documentary "Diana," another former dance teacher said that ballet class was somewhere
she could shine.
Unfortunately, Diana was unable to pursue a career in ballet because of her height — at
5 feet ten inches, she was simply too tall to become a professional.
After a relatively happy childhood, Princess Diana's life changed at age 7, when her parents split up.
As her nanny, Mary Clarke, said in "Diana At Sixty":
"Out of all the children, she had been the most disturbed at the break-up."
"You know, it's scary the way nobody stays together these days.
Pretty soon there's going to be more divorces than marriages."
Diana began to act up, pulling pranks such as locking nannies in the bathroom, or putting
their clothing on the roof.
Diana's brother, Charles, recalled his sister's reaction to their parents' separation in an
interview with the Sunday Times:
"Our father was a quiet and constant source of love, but our mother wasn't cut out for maternity.
[...] she promised Diana she'd come back to see her.
Diana used to wait on the doorstep for her, but she never came."
After her grandfather's death, Princess Diana and her family moved into Althorp House in 1975.
In the Spencer family since 1508, the estate boasts a jaw-dropping 31 bedrooms, a ballroom,
numerous historical portraits, and a vast library.
As Charles Spencer said in the documentary "Secrets of Althorp: The Spencers":
"What a wonderfully spoiling place to grow up when you've got all of this beauty and
privacy and safety."
"She was very keen on tap dancing, and that's what she wanted to be when she was older is
a tap dancer.
[...] All I can remember, the clacking of the tap dancing as she practiced."
Years later, Althorp House became Diana's final resting place.
In 1976, Diana's father remarried the socialite Raine Legge.
Apparently, the children weren't even told about the wedding or invited to the party.
And according to the documentary "Princess Diana's 'Wicked' Stepmother," Diana and Legge
did not get along.
According to Tatler Magazine, Diana and her siblings gave their stepmother the nickname
"Acid Raine," and they would sing "Raine, Raine, go away" to taunt her.
Raine didn't help matters, either, redecorating many of the historic rooms and placing a large
painting of herself in a prominent location.
However, after her father fell ill and Legge helped to nurse him back to health, Diana
began to appreciate her stepmother.
According to the Daily Mail, Diana even wrote Legge a letter that read,
"Daddy is so lucky to have you."
In 1989, years after marrying then-Prince Charles, Diana told biographer Andrew Morton
that she actually pushed Legge down the stairs, an event that she reported gave her enormous satisfaction.
As a teenager, Princess Diana didn't have any serious ambitions to marry the future
King Charles — but she did harbor a big crush on him.
As a teenager at boarding school, Diana supposedly told her friends that she wanted to be a dancer,
quote, "or the Princess of Wales."
And one of Diana's cousins, Diana Macfarlane, reported on an ITV documentary that Diana
had actually liked Charles since she was 14 years old:
"We all used to have pictures of various pop stars that we liked.
[...] I can tell you she used to have photographs of Prince Charles around her bed…
With Diana, it was always pictures of Prince Charles.
She had a schoolgirl crush on him for a very long time."
It's quite easy to see how the young Diana would have been swept off her feet when she met him at 16.
While Princess Diana may have been clever, she didn't exactly excel when it came to school.
According to The Sun, she failed her high school exams twice and was often a bit of a troublemaker.
As her music teacher, Penny Walker, told the Mirror:
"She was often slightly in the background with a smile on her face, as though she was
just going to be very naughty, which she usually was."
At age 16, after failing her exams, Diana actually ended up dropping out of school.
In later life, this may have led to some of her insecurities.
Royal author Mary Kenny said in an interview with Woman and Home,
"I think one of the problems with Diana was that she never got a proper education.
She had a terrible inferiority complex about that, and said that she was as 'thick as two planks.'"
On perhaps a more positive note, Diana's former headmistress told the Mirror that Diana stood
out for kindness and helpfulness, rather than for her academic intelligence.
Shortly after Diana dropped out, she was sent to a finishing school in Switzerland, something
considered a suitable alternative to university at the time.
However, the school was taught entirely in French, which Diana struggled to speak and understand.
"Oui?"
"Oui."
During Diana's time at the finishing school, her shyness increased, as did her fear of
engaging with classmates and teachers.
Clearly, Diana was miserable, as Howard Hodgson wrote in his 2007 biography, "Charles: The
Man Who Will Be King."
In the book, he described how Diana not only had difficulty fitting in socially, but her
class work — which was difficult enough in her native tongue – had become even more challenging.
Diana begged her father to let her come home, allegedly writing:
"If you love me, you won't leave me here."
After just one term, she dropped out of the finishing school and returned to England.
After returning from Switzerland in 1978, Princess Diana moved to London in an apartment
with three friends, and for a year or so, her life was incredibly relatable.
In the princess' book "Diana: Her True Story — In Her Own Words," Diana recalled returning
to her flat after getting engaged to Prince Charles, writing:
"I came back [to the flat] and sat on my bed.
'Girls, guess what?'
They said: 'He asked you.
What did you say?'
'Yes please.'
They screamed and howled and we went for a drive around London with our secret."
Diana's flatmates were also interviewed by Cosmopolitan Magazine at the time, giving
some insight into the event.
Apparently, one of her friends, Carolyn, had been "on the loo" when Diana returned with
the news, and another friend, Virginia, had run in and "grabbed her."
The women described having champagne for breakfast the next day.
While living in London, Princess Diana worked full time, including a stint working as both
a kindergarten assistant and as a nanny.
As a nursery assistant, Diana worked at Young England Kindergarten in Pimlico, London part
of the week, filling out the other days by being a nanny, caring for an American baby
boy, who she said was very special to her.
Mary Robertson, the boy's mother, looks back fondly on that time, maintaining a friendship
with Diana for many years.
Robertson also wrote a book about the experience, telling Time Magazine:
"She came to us just as Diana Spencer.
She did not tell me that she was seeing Charles."
"I knew this was the right nanny for my son."
When Prince Charles first met Princess Diana, she was only 16 — a little too young for
him to take out on a date.
In fact, at the time, Diana wasn't dating anyone.
Herbert Harry, an old friend of Diana's, once said, via Time Magazine:
"She never dated; she used to go out with friends in groups.
[...] Prince Charles was the first man she dated.
She was very much head over heels in love."
But before Diana dated Charles, he had dated her older sister, Sarah, in 1977.
"It was 1977, when Charles came to stay.
He was a friend of my sister Sarah's."
Charles and Sarah were a pretty good match, but their relationship ended when Sarah reportedly
said she'd never marry Charles, quote, "if he were the dustman or the King of England."
However, Sarah does consider herself responsible for introducing Charles to her sister.
She once told The Guardian:
"I introduced them; I'm Cupid."
When Princess Diana and Prince Charles got engaged, she was just 19 years old — he
was 12 years her senior.
"What do you think you've got in common?"
"Grace, what a difficult question."
"What do you think we've got in common?"
"Sense of humor?
Every outdoor activity."
But apparently Diana wasn't worried about their age gap, telling the Guardian newspaper:
"It's only 12 years and lots of people have got married with that sort of age difference…I
just feel you are as old as you think you are."
"I'm looking forward to being a good wife."
As Diana later explained in her controversial BBC Panorama interview, she was initially
confident she could make her marriage work, saying:
"I think like any marriage, especially when you've had divorced parents like myself, you'd
want to try even harder to make it work and you don't want to fall back into a pattern
that you've seen happen in your own family."
She went on to say how desperately she wanted it to work, how desperately she loved her
husband, and how she wanted to share everything together:
"I thought that we were a very good team."
Her only concern at the time, she noted, was the press.
Few people have made a more significant impact on Royal life than Princess Diana.
As one of the most popular celebrities of her generation and a cherished figure, her
tragic death brought a premature end to an eventful life.