The Secret Feud Between Princess Diana And The Queen Mother Explained

Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, might have been a doting grandmother in the eyes of the public, but behind closed doors, she could be a rather obdurate lady who kept a meticulous record of everyone's wrongdoings. In his book "Do Let's Have Another Drink!" Gareth Russell, who The Times described as someone who "bends over backwards to be fair," noted that the Queen Mother had "an Olympian ability to hold a grudge." If Princess Diana had still been alive today, she would likely concur, for the two women never quite saw eye to eye.

Things started off alright. The Queen Mother adored King Charles III, so when he announced his intentions to ask for Diana's hand in marriage, the matriarch gave the union her seal of approval. She even attempted to welcome Diana into the family, gifting her with a brooch adorned with diamonds and sapphires after she accepted Charles' proposal in 1981, according to William Shawcross' book, "Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: The Official Biography." This tome carried weight since it was commissioned by the matriarch. In its pages, Shawcross noted (via The Telegraph) how pleased Diana was by the gift, telling her future grandmother-in-law, "One of the nicest things of being married to Charles is that I will be able to see more of you!" 

Alas, that's not exactly how things panned out. According to Shawcross, the Queen Mother quickly grew concerned over Diana's ability to handle the royal pressure. She brought this up in a conversation with the comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain's Office, Sir John Jonston, telling him, "I think she's having difficulty finding her way." We now know that she was right.

Princess Diana's relationship with the royal family has been analyzed for decades. When it comes to how she got along with the Queen Mother, however, it's pretty clear from various insider accounts that things between the two women were complicated at best, and that they were silently feuding for as long as Diana was a member of the royal family. Part of why the two women shared a strained relationship might have been because Diana believed that the Queen Mother disliked her, according to Gareth Russell's book, "Do Let's Have Another Drink!" Diana was also convinced that her own grandmother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, had poisoned the matriarch against her while she served as the Queen Mother's lady-in-waiting. 

The former Princess of Wales once disclosed these feelings to her friend and alleged lover, James Gilbey, in a 1989 phone call that was recorded without their knowledge. "His grandmother is always looking at me with a strange look in her eyes," Diana told Gilbey (via Newsweek). "It's sort of interest and pity mixed in one. I am not quite sure. I don't understand it. Every time I look, she's looking at me, then looks away and smiles," the princess recounted. 

In his famous biography, "Diana: Her True Story — In Her Own Words," Andrew Morton wrote that the princess had a hard time forming a close relationship with the Queen Mother and, therefore, kept her distance. Similarly, royal author and journalist Christopher Wilson once noted in an interview just how much Diana and the Queen Mother disliked each other. "In the end, it's my belief that Diana absolutely hated the Queen Mother," he surmised (via RealRoyaltyDocs). "Perhaps unfairly, perhaps unfortunately, but it's true that that was the case."

No mother wants to see her children treated unfairly, and in Princess Diana's eyes, the Queen Mother did just that with her two sons, William, Prince of Wales, and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex. Diana believed that she favored William over her youngest son, and looking back, it's clear that the Queen Mother did pay more special attention to the future king. In the Channel 5 documentary "Prince Harry: The Troubled Prince," journalist Richard Kay explained that Diana and then-Prince Charles were trying their best to raise their kids as equals, but he surmised that some of the higher ups in the family saw things differently and believed William needed to be trained for his future role as soon as possible — Harry's feelings be damned. The Queen Mother was reportedly one of them. "It was William the Queen would invite for lessons in kingship when he was at Eton and she was at Windsor Castle," Kay said, per the Mirror. 

This wasn't the only way in which the matriarch made her preference for William crystal clear. Kay added, "The Queen Mother always made sure Prince William was seated in a prominent seat next to her and Harry never was." Diana was not having this, and she had a word with the Queen Mother over this preferential treatment, Gareth Russell wrote in "Let's Have Another Drink!" This reportedly did not go over well and soured the two women's relationship even more. The Queen Mother did, however, leave Harry a larger part of her inheritance because she knew William would inherit more than his brother when he became the Prince of Wales, and eventually, the king.

There was a long list of things Princess Diana could no longer do after she married King Charles III, and one of them was speaking her mind in public. She stopped adhering to this strict royal rule amid their messy separation and eventual divorce, however, telling the whole world exactly what went down between them. Her tell-all interview with Panorama was the first time a member of the royal family openly spilled piping hot royal tea without any reservations. One line from the interview still echoes on today: "There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded," Diana said unabashedly, per The Telegraph. The Queen Mother was horrified when she saw the interview. "The washing of dirty linen in public was utterly abhorrent to Queen Elizabeth," William Shawcroft penned in "Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: The Official Biography."

In interviews the matriarch did with Sir Eric Anderson, which were published in Shawcroft's book, she pointedly said, "It is always a mistake to talk about your marriage." And while she had sympathy for the media circus Diana and Charles were subjected to, she could not fathom how either of them could have brought themselves to bring it all out into the open. "Her entire life was based upon obligation, discretion and restraint," Shawcroft wrote. Diana didn't uphold any of these values in her interview, and it left the Queen Mother aghast. When, after Diana's death, it came to light that she'd been Andrew Morton's primary source for her biography, the matriarch was "deeply shocked," Shawcroft wrote. Diana's friend, Rosa Monckton, told People in 2025 that the princess later regretted granting the bombshell interview because of how the subsequent fallout affected her two sons.

The Queen Mother was a stickler for royal protocol, so it makes perfect sense that Princess Diana's penchant for breaking strict royal rules irked the princess' grandmother-in-law more than anything else. Royal author and journalist Christopher Wilson once said in an interview that Diana's rebellious ways infuriated the Queen Mother, but what enraged her even more was the princess' ability to do whatever she wanted without facing any consequences whatsoever. "Diana decided to do her own thing," Wilson said in the Channel 5 documentary. "The Queen Mother could never really work out how Diana could do it and get away with it. And, of course, the more Diana did, and the more Diana got away with it, the bigger the breach between the two of them. And it was never going to be resolved." 

Something else that irked the Queen Mother was Diana's decision to forfeit most of her charity work after her divorce from Charles. Speaking to Sir Eric Anderson at the time, the former made it clear that she thought Diana was still very much expected to execute her duties like a royal, despite no longer being an official member of the family. "I can't believe she won't come out and do some things," she told Anderson, per Gareth Russell's book, "Do Let's Have Another Drink!" She flirted with the idea of forcing Diana to continue her charitable works. "I may perhaps bully her into doing things. It's no good sitting back. Your devoir, your duty," she reasoned. Diana, for her part, said she'd reduced her patronages from 100 to a mere six because she simply didn't have the bandwidth to give them all the attention they deserved.

It's no secret that the Queen Mother's influence on the royal family was felt all around during her lifetime, so it's not that hard to believe that she had the power to sway her family members' opinion on Princess Diana. And, according to some reports, that's exactly what she did. In his book, "Diana: Her True Story — In Her Own Words," Andrew Morton revealed that the Princess of Wales had a rocky relationship with the Queen Mother, in part, because she believed the matriarch was deliberately trying to turn members of the royal family against her. Morton alleged that the Queen Mother didn't like Diana or her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, even before Diana and Charles got married. Diana marrying the future king reportedly did little to change her stance. "At the same time the Queen Mother, unfavorably predisposed to Diana and her mother, exercises an enormous influence over the Prince of Wales," Morton penned (via GoodtoKnow), adding that a friend told him, "The Queen Mother drives a wedge between Diana and the others. As a result she makes every excuse to avoid her."

The Queen Mother might not have liked Diana, but the feeling appeared to have been very mutual, and some of Diana's distaste for her grandmother-in-law came from how much Charles revered her. In fact, she often felt as if her husband was neglecting her in favor of the Queen Mother. In her book, "Diana," Sarah Bradford wrote that Charles would always make sure to provide his grandmother with a drink at events before taking care of Diana's. This reportedly offended the princess, despite it being the custom. Bradford echoed Morton's assertion that the Queen Mother was anything but fond of Diana.

When Princess Diana became a member of the royal family, it quickly became clear that she was a bit of a wild card, and her willingness to stir the pot had the Queen Mother worried that the new Princess of Wales could cause irreparable damage to The Firm. And indeed, Diana was responsible for a fair share of some of the royal family's biggest PR disasters. The Queen Mother had already lived through the whole Wallis Simpson fiasco in 1936. She and her husband, King George VI, found themselves instated as the heads of the monarchy after King Edward VIII abdicated so he could marry Simpson, who was a divorcee from America. Royal biographers have since claimed that the Queen Mother never quite forgave Simpson for putting her and George in that position. She even blamed Simpson for her husband's death at only 56 years old, certain that the pressures of the throne had sent him to an early grave.

In Channel 5's documentary, "When the Spencers Met the Monarchy," historian Piers Brendon surmised, "I think the Queen Mother probably saw Diana as another Mrs. Simpson. Somebody who might conceivably pull the monarchy down," per Express. BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond also weighed in, noting that Diana once admitted to her that she didn't have a traditional grandmother-granddaughter relationship with the Queen Mother. "I remember Diana told me that she found the Queen Mother intimidating. She was rather wary of her," Bond recalled. She added that Diana's marital problems with Charles also wasn't something the matriarch thought warranted a divorce. "The Queen Mother probably would have felt that Diana should just put up with it and get on with it," she reasoned.

Princess Diana and the Queen Mother were two very different people. According to Garreth Russell's book, "Do Let's Have Another Drink!" Diana never particularly enjoyed attending parties hosted by her grandmother-in-law, finding them much too stuffy. She also believed that the Queen Mother was using these events to badmouth her to the guests. "Diana did not enjoy herself at the Queen Mother's 90th birthday party in August 1990, calling it 'grim and stilted,'" Russell penned. "'They are all anti-me. My grandmother has done another good hatchet job on me,'" the princess said. She also referred to the matriarch as "the chief leper in the leper colony," per Russell. The Queen Mother, for her part, dubbed Diana a "liar." Diana's biographer, Andrew Morton, also touched on this in her biography, "Diana: Her True Story — In Her Own Words," writing, "She keeps a distrustful distance from this matriarchal figure, describing social occasions hosted by the Queen Mother as stiff and overly formal."

In a reported conversation Diana once had with royal expert Richard Kay, she disclosed that the Queen Mother's hostility towards her at family events only worsened after her divorce from Charles. When she returned to Sandringham for Christmas after she and the future king separated, the Queen Mother reportedly gave her an icy welcome. "I remember her telling me the first occasion she went, the Queen Mother had sort of looked at her, raised her eyebrow and said, 'I didn't think we'd see you again,'" Kay recalled in the "Diana, In Her Own Words," documentary, per Express. To Morton, Diana described the holidays at Sandringham as "terrifying and so disappointing" after the breakdown of her and Charles' marriage.

Back when Princess Diana was alive, texting had yet to become the primary form of communication, so exchanging letters was the norm. And, despite all the accounts of Diana and the Queen Mother's fraught relationship, she reportedly wrote her grandmother-in-law plenty of letters. Thanks to a certain royal, however, we'll never know their contents. If you ever wondered what Princess Margaret's final years were like, well, she spent some of that time cleaning out the Queen Mother's house and destroying every letter Diana ever wrote to the matriarch. In his biography, "Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother," William Shawcross revealed (via Today) that Margaret sent all the letters straight to the landfill because they were "highly personal." Shawcross noted, "No doubt Princess Margaret felt that she was protecting her mother and other members of the family. It was understandable, although regrettable from a historical viewpoint." 

Margaret reportedly decided it was time to clean house in 1993 after Diana and then-Prince Charles formally announced their separation at the end of 1992. According to Shawcross, the letters Margaret destroyed pertained to the breakdown of Diana and Charles' marriage. Again, it's odd that Diana wrote so many letters to someone she reportedly despised. One can only assume that the contents were riveting, and therefore Margaret ensured no unroyal eyes would ever get a glimpse of it. During a conversation on the "To Di For Daily" podcast in 2022, royal author Gareth Russell noted that royals had a habit of burning all their correspondence in their old age for fear of it being published after their death. "[It] used to be the equivalent of aristocrats wandering off like elephants to the graveyard. It's what they did," Russell said, per Express.

Princess Diana and King Charles III's divorce was a royal mess, and the Queen Mother wasn't about to let Diana off the hook easily. Her penchant for holding a grudge kicked in in full, and those close to her quickly realized that Diana's name was not to be spoken in her presence. "Once Diana split from Charles, she was very much persona non grata, and I never again heard her name mentioned by, or in front of, the Queen Mum, not even when I saw her a couple of months after Diana's death, by which time I had left her employ," Major Colin Burgess, who used to be the Queen Mother's equerry, penned in his book, "Behind Palace Doors" (via the Daily Mail). He added, "There was a streak of steel in the Queen Mother." 

While the matriarch held Diana responsible for her sins, she did not quite give Charles the same treatment, refusing to discuss the candid interview he granted Jonathan Dimbleby about the breakdown of his marriage. Burgess recalled that he made the mistake of asking her whether she'd seen it. "The look the Queen Mother gave me that day could have frozen fire," he recalled. Former royal butler Paul Burrell confirmed Burgess' account in the documentary "The Diana Story." He noted that he'd seen the Queen Mother's hostility toward Diana while she was still alive. He once caught her turning over a magazine with Diana's face on the front page, as if she could remove the princess from her life by smacking the magazine face first onto the table. He added that, even after Diana's death, the Queen Mother's stance never seemed to soften, and uttering the princess' name in her presence remained taboo.