How was the relationship of Queen Elizabeth II with Princess Diana?

Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Diana did not have a simple relationship, but rather a complex one with many ups and downs.

Diana met the queen in 1980 while dating her son, Prince Charles, before getting married to him just a year after, in July 1981. The relationship between the Princess and the queen started off uneasy, according to Royal biographer Andrew Morton. In his book Diana: Her True Story – In Her Own Words, Morton wrote that “in the early days, Diana was quite simply terrified of her mother-in-law. She kept the formal obsequies – dropping a deep curtsy each time they met – but otherwise kept her distance.”

After Prince Williams was born in early 1982, Diana started to gradually take on roles representing the Royal family, and the bond between the two started to take its form. According to what royal expert Ingrid Seward wrote in her 2002 book The Queen and Di, Elizabeth was more “understanding of Diana’s difficulties” and they developed a strong bond. Diana even once told Seward that she had “the best mother-in-law in the world.”

Five years later, rumors of Charles’s affair with Camila Parker-Bowles started, and things only got worse from there.

Diana seeked the Queen’s help amid Charles’ cheating

The Princess reportedly leaned on the queen, who expected her daughter-in-law to stand by her man. Morton explained that Diana found “perhaps a rather unlikely ally at the palace in the queen whose understanding and helpful attitude did much to encourage Diana to soldier on.”

But the years went on and Diana kept suffering in silence, without receiving the support she expected from the queen. Equally, the queen grew weary of Diana’s emotional responses after failing to know how to help her daughter-in-law.

In 1992, Charles and Diana separated publicly, and in 1995, the queen finally called for a divorce. At this point, Diana had gone “her own way” giving personal interviews, and becoming a “liability” for the royal family, as Seward noted.

One year after their divorce, Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris with her partner Dodi Fayed.

Related: How many presidents of the United States served during the reign of Queen Elizabeth II?

In 2005, Diana’s ex-husband went on to remarry Camilla, but the queen and Prince Philip did not attend the nuptials.

Queen Elizabeth II died on September 8, 2022 in Scotland, and the official statement from the palace referred to Camilla as “queen consort.”