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The Queen, Diana, and a friendship that froze
Royal biographer Ingrid Seward on how warmth between the Queen and Diana turned into dread, distance and fear.
In brief
Royal biographer Ingrid Seward on how warmth between the Queen and Diana turned into dread, distance and fear. Seward's account reframes the Queen and Diana not as open enemies but as two women whose early warmth curdled into wariness, ending with a joke nobody found funny later. Originally reported by Dailymail.
A biographer opens the file
Ingrid Seward, a long-time chronicler of the royal family, sets out what Elizabeth II actually made of her daughter-in-law rather than what the palace let the public see.
It started warm
The relationship between the monarch and the young Princess of Wales began on friendly terms, Seward says, before anything soured.
“the once 'warm' relationship”
Then it crumbled
That early ease did not survive. Seward traces the collapse of the bond between the two most watched women in Britain.
Dreading the visits
By the end, time with Diana was something the Queen braced for rather than looked forward to, according to Seward's account.
The one woman she feared
A monarch who outlasted fifteen prime ministers is described as genuinely wary of one person, and that person had married her eldest son.
“the one woman the monarch feared”
The joke that came true
Seward closes on a remark the Queen made in jest about her own death, one that reads very differently now.
“the dark prophetic 'joke' predicting her own death”
What to remember
Seward's account reframes the Queen and Diana not as open enemies but as two women whose early warmth curdled into wariness, ending with a joke nobody found funny later.
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