12
Throughout these legal disputes that were taking place between Diana’s parents, and even after
Diana’s mother had been rejected for the second time after reopening the custody
question in July
1971, Diana’s father freely permitted the children to visit their mother on weekends and during the
holidays first in London and later on the West Sussex coast, where she and, now her husband, Peter
Shand Kydd, bought a house not long after their wedding (Smith, 2007, p. 32), which had taken place
only a month after the divorce (Brown, 2008, p. 42). The children had met Peter on one of their
regular weekend visit to their mother shortly after their mother had remarried and they instantly
liked him (Morton, 2010, p. 83). However, in 1972, Diana’s mother moved to a hill farm located on
the remote Isle of Seil off the west coast of Scotland, which made routine weekend visits impossible
and effectively terminated regular maternal contact for the children when Diana was only eleven
(Smith, 2007, p. 42).
The legal battle that had surrounded the divorce and the custody case had a profound impact on
the children, no matter how much their parents and the rest of the family had tried to protect them
(Morton, 2010, p. 79). The children all reacted differently to the separation (Bradford, 2007, p. 17).
Because Sarah and Jane were already off at boarding school when the separation took place, the
aftereffects were the hardest on Diana and Charles, who, as a result, formed a close bond with each
other (Smith, 2007, p. 38). However, out of the four of them it was Diana who had been most
affected, which might have been because of her impressionable age, as she was only six, and
because out of the four children she was by far the most sensitive and least self-assured (Snell, 2013,
p. 16). According to Bradford (2007), the divorce and the fact that her mother left her and her
siblings when Diana was just six years old was an instance that greatly affected Diana’s later life and
her own perceptions of it, because her mother leaving led to Diana feeling like she had been
abandoned, which stayed with her throughout her life. It was this feeling of abandonment that later
caused Diana to often see herself as a victim. It also developed in her a strong desire for love, fear
of abandonment, and an intense dread of divorce. Diana was determined that she herself would not
let that happen to her nor to her children (pp. 11-12). This determination can be viewed as an
important factor in her future relationships and her marriage.