15
and as a result the children would treat them badly (p. 36). The prettier the nanny, the more
suspicious Diana was of her (Morton, 2010, p. 80).
On 9 June 1975 Diana’s grandfather, the 7
th
Earl Spencer, died, and Diana became Lady Diana
Spencer, as her father, who had previously been Viscount Althorp, became 8
th
Earl Spencer (Morton,
2010, p. 89). Because of this, the family moved from Diana’s childhood home Park House to the
Spencer family home, Althorp, located in Northampton (Smith, 2007, p. 49). According to Bradford
(2007), to Diana leaving her childhood home was like another abandonment, another stage in her
life like the departure of her mother. They had rarely visited Althorp and their feared grandfather
and, when they had, they had not liked him or the estate (p. 29). The Spencers were one of the most
aristocratic families of England (Bradford, 2007, p. 1), and while the Spencer family home, Althorp,
was never to be home to Diana in the same sense as Park House had been, it did reconnect her to
her ancestors in a way which made her able to stand up to and even look down on the Royal Family
because it imparted in her a sense of the historic importance of her blood lines (Bradford, 2007, p.
30). When Diana at times reminded herself that she was a Spencer, it was no idle reminder, because
being a Spencer was a vital element of her character (Smith, 2007, p. 20). After all, Parliament made
George I monarch under the direction of the Whig oligarchy of which Diana’s family was a very
important constituent founding member and, in that way, she was a descendant of one of the Whig
families that had put the House of Hannover on the throne (Bradford, 2007, p. 30).
Despite of all the changes taking place, at first, life at Althorp seemed to be a continuation of the
life they had had while living at Park House, although on a grand scale (Bradford, 2007, p. 32).
However, the presence of their father’s new girlfriend, Raine, whom the children did not like,
radically changed the atmosphere (Bradford, 2007, p. 33). The two married on 14 July 1976 without
informing the children about their plans (Morton, 2010, p. 92). According to Bradford (2007), when
Raine truly became the mistress of Althorp after the wedding, things became even worse as the
children felt excluded from their father’s life and their attitude towards her did not change. Diana
felt a kind of estrangement from her father: she did still love him but she saw him less often.
Although he remained a loving father, in her view she now belonged to Raine and not to her (pp.
34-35).
16
Diana’s education was undemanding, which was the norm those days for girls of her age and class
(Bradford, 2007, p. 21). Diana came from the last group of privileged British girls for whom the aim
of their formal education was not to expect too much of them academically, but to give them the
means to find a suitable husband (Brown, 2008, p. 25). According to Brown (2008), Diana’s formal
education followed a template that had been established long before her time and it was routine
for the rich daughters of the aristocracy to leave school at sixteen to work at some menial job with
no academic qualifications at all. Diana’s schooling followed the same pattern of education that her
sisters and her mother had received before her. The only difference was that Diana did not seem to
learn much of the little she was taught, even though her mother and her sisters had been
academically bright (pp. 53-54). During their schooling, the girls were to learn the basics of English,
maths, language, history, and science, but the schools primarily taught them how to cohabit with
one another and developed habits of responsibility, good manners, neatness, discipline, and
tolerance (Smith, 2007, p. 44). Of the four Spencer children, only Charles went to first-rate schools
(Brown, 2008, p. 53). Diana took her O levels in English literature, English language, history, art, and
geography first in June 1977 and then again the following autumn, but she failed all five both times,
which was highly unusual (Smith, 2007, p. 54).
Diana loved being at school (Morton, 2010, p. 26), although at first she did not like being sent to a
boarding school, because she interpreted her father’s decision to send her away from home and
away from her brother into the alien world of boarding schools as rejection and it made her feel
betrayed and resentful of her father (Morton, 2010, p. 84). Diana’s dislike might also have been due
to her anxiety about abandonment whenever she was away from the people who were close to her.
The other Spencer children were all academically bright and Diana’s failure to keep up with her
siblings in this area gave her an inferiority complex which she balanced by her belief in her own
instinct (Bradford, 2007, p. 16). However, she was constantly worried about her average academic
abilities and saw herself as a failure that was not good at anything (Morton, 2010, p. 87).
Nevertheless, it has been said that she excelled in the things she liked doing, but, when it came to
academic work, she simply gave up even before she started (Bradford, 2007, pp. 35-36). According
to Smith (2007), with the benefit of hindsight, the magnitude of Diana’s academic failure could be
viewed as a warning sign because it was the one moment in her youth during which she was
subjected to the kind of stressful demands she would come to encounter as Princess of Wales and
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