With the demise of Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday, the done and dusted buzz over the complicated relationship that the Queen shared with Princess Diana has again ignited. Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Diana shared a complex relationship which was associated with Prince Charles's extra-marital affair. Princess Diana met the Queen in 1980 when Prince Charles was dating her and soon after a year in July 1981, they got married in a Globally televisioned ceremony watched by millions.
The Princess expeditiously became an icon of grace, glamour and elegance. The relationship between Queen Elizabeth and Princess goes quite a way back. Princess Diana's brother Charles Spencer is Queen's Godson and her maternal grandmother, Lady Fermoy, was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen's late mother. After the marriage, Diana maintained her distance from the Queen because she found her terrifying. However, after some time, the marital difficulties between the Prince and the Princess heightened.
The royal biographer Andrew Morton, in his book Diana: Her True Story-In Her Own Words, states that the connection between Diana and the Queen started formally, having been "governed by the fact that she was married to her elder son and the future monarch". In the early days, Diana was quite terrified of her mother-in-law. She kept the formal obsequies dropping a deep curtsy each time they met but otherwise kept her distance.
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After Prince William was born in 1982, Princess performed all the roles of the Royal family therefore, the bond between the Queen and the Princess took its form. According to the Royal expert Ingrid Seward's book The Queen and Di (2002), Diana once told Seward that she had "the best mother-in-law in the world."
Andrew Morton wrote in his book Diana: Her True Story-In Her Own Words that the relationship between Diana and the Queen started uneasily. It's nerve-wracking for anyone to meet their future in-laws and having her boyfriend's mother as a monarch added to the anxiety. However, the bond between both ladies changed over the years. But after Prince Charles's extra-marital affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles was in the public eye, Diana depended on her mother-in-law for help.
Due to marriage problems, she struggled with severe depression, low self-esteem and eating disorders and Princess massively relied on the Queen for advice and support. In the 2017 documentary, "Diana In Her Own Words", the Princess is heard saying how she went sobbing to ask the Queen for help with the marriage. "So I went to the Queen and said, 'I don't know what I should do," to which Queen said, "I don't know what you should do." And that was the help.
In 1995, in the Bombshell Panorama interview of Princess Diana, it was reported that the Queen formally arbitrated between the couple and encouraged them to end their marriage. The couple concluded to get a divorce in 1996.
With the shocking news of Princess Diana's passing away in a car accident in 1997, Queen said, "First, I want to pay tribute to Diana myself. She was an exceptional and gifted human being. In good times and bad, she never lost her capacity to smile and laugh, nor to inspire others with her warmth and kindness. I share in your determination to cherish her memory."