# 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.
- Title: The Queen, Diana, and a friendship that froze · Dailymail
- Summary: 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…
- Keywords: royals, queen elizabeth ii, princess diana, ingrid seward, monarchy, news, entertainment, Queen, Diana, friendship, froze, Dailymail
- Source: Dailymail — https://dailymail.com/news/royals/article-16120085/queen-tolerate-diana-dread-visits-ingrid-seward.html?ito=1490&ns_campaign=1490&ns_mchannel=rss
- Read time: 1 min
- Topics: royals, queen elizabeth ii, princess diana, ingrid seward, monarchy, news, entertainment
## 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
## Key takeaway

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.