There's an idea that Princess Diana was one of the most mercurial, private, and mysterious personalities in royal family history. And that's true—to a point. In 1991, ten years into her marriage to Prince Charles and five years from their eventual divorce, journalist Andrew Morton tapped Diana's close personal friend, Dr. James Colthurst, to interview her at Kensington Palace. The material from the interviews became the basis for Morton's bestselling 1992 biography Diana: Her True Story—and most of it had never been broadcast.
Now it forms the basis of a two-hour documentary, Diana: In Her Own Words, which aired on the National Geographic Channel on Monday night. The recordings are presented against the backdrop of news footage and photographs from the time, offering an unflinching portrait of a woman in pain. The Princess of Wales is not secretive, standoffish, or deluded. Instead, she's honest, unafraid, and reflective on her triumphs, mistakes, and hardships.
It's a rare and generous opportunity to know a public figure: One gets to hear her laugh giddily. One gets to hear her tone warm when she remembers the birth of her sons. One gets to hear the cadence, lilt, and tension in her voice as she recalls the facts of her life. And, of course, one gets to hear some fascinating admissions straight from Diana herself. Here are five of the most moving, arresting things we learned from the documentary.
Prince Charles was interested in her sister first.
Back when she was a 16-year-old Lady Diana Spencer, Charles would come visit the family's residence at Althorp. "My sister [Sarah Spencer] was all over him like a bad rash. I thought, 'God, he must really hate that.' I kept out of the way. I remember being a fat, podgy, non-makeup, non-smart lady. But I made a lot of noise, and he liked that." A few years later, Diana was invited along with Sarah to his 30th birthday party. The rest, the say, is history.
She made fashion snafus.
For her first engagement as Charles' fiancée, Diana selected a black, off-the-shoulder taffeta gown. "I thought it was okay, because girls my age wore this. I hadn't appreciated that I was now seen as a royal lady. I remember going into my husband-to-be's study and him saying, 'You're not going in that, are you?' And I said, 'Yes, I am.'" Charles went on to explain that black was a color royals only wore for mourning; Diana thought it was simply chic. "I learned a lesson that night," she reflects.
Her relationship triggered her bulimia.
Diana was aware of Charles' involvement with Camilla Bowles' before she was wed—she once overheard her fiancé on the phone professing his love to another woman—but, perhaps out of self-described naiveté, decided to move forward anyway. That decision wasn't without consequences. "The bulimia started the week after we got engaged. My husband put his hand on my waistline and said something like, 'Oh, a bit chubby here, aren't we?' And that triggered off something in me. I remember the first time I made myself sick, I was so thrilled." At her first wedding dress fitting, she had a size 29 waist. At the last? Size 23.5. "I'd shrunk into nothing," she says. The princess admits she was bulimic through both pregnancies, and that Queen Elizabeth II blamed marriage problems on the disorder.
She struggled with suicidal thoughts.
By October of the year she was wed, "I was about to cut my wrists. I was in a very bad way. I came [back to London] to seek treatment. I was in such a bad way. Couldn't sleep, didn't eat, the whole world was collapsing around me. All the analysts and psychiatrists you can ever dream of came plodding in. Tried to sort me out. Put me on high doses of Valium." But of course, that didn't solve the problem. "It was me telling them what I needed. They were telling me, 'Pills.' But the Diana that was still very much there decided that it was just time, patience, and adapting that was all that was needed."
A haircut changed her life.
In the summer of 1990, Diana's hairstylist Sam McKnight gave the princess a new shorter cut. "It let out something quite different." She also conquered bulimia: "I suddenly felt so much stronger, mentally and physically, so I was able to soldier on." It's during this time that Diana dedicated her life to philanthropy as a way to cope with her dysfunctional marriage.
