A new report has revealed Princess Diana’s first appearance with the royal family following her engagement announcement to Prince Charles in 1981 ended in disaster – and it was all Princess Anne’s fault.
WATCH Princess Diana discuss Charles and Camilla’s affair in 1995 documentary:
The Express reveals royal biographer Ingrid Seward claimed that the Queen’s only daughter made her “withering disdain” for Diana extremely obvious when the family attended Royal Ascot just one month before Charles and Diana’s wedding.
In her 1995 book Prince Edward, Seward writes: “Anne was indifferent to Diana from the very beginning.
“She treated the woman, who by marriage to her elder brother might have become her Queen, with withering disdain.
“She called her ‘a silly girl.’”
“The situation came to an early head at the end of Ascot week in June 1981, barely a month before Diana’s marriage.”
Seward then details how Diana stayed at Windsor Castle ahead of the race meeting.
“Sensing Anne’s apathy towards her and wanting to ingratiate herself, she ventured up to the nursery in the Queen’s Tower where Anne was settling in with her son Peter, who was three, and her four-week-old daughter, Zara.
“Diana, still only a Lady, gave the Princess the benefit of a full curtsey and declared: ‘Ma’am, how wonderful to see you.’
“Anne is contemptuous of pretension at the best of times.
“When she was struggling with two small children she had no time for it at all.
“She looked up at Diana – and looked straight through her.
“Diana, confronted by the searing force of Anne’s scorn, fled the room.”
Royal reporter Richard Kay also claimed that Anne was not a fan of Diana.
“Princess Anne, she had no time for Diana,” he said in the Channel 5 documentary Paxman on the Queen’s Children.
“She didn’t like the way she went about her duty and the way she used the cameras and the media to promote herself, in her eyes.
“Anne had a much more traditional approach to monarchy and royal duty.”
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