When Diana was 15, her father secretly married a glamorous, younger woman. The future princess and her stepmother became locked in a bitter rivalry. But it ended with a surprise friendship.
Countess Raine Spencer was standing in her grand English manor when the most famous woman in the world lunged forward and shoved her down the stairs.
Her new husband came with many treasures, including Althorp, a sprawling, 5,300 hectare estate that had been in his family since the 16th century. "It happened on the top of the saloon stairs," Raine's personal assistant, Sue Howe, recounted in the documentary, Princess Diana's Wicked Stepmother."She had a furious row with Raine because Diana was so upset that her own mother had been ignored in the ancestral home, and she pushed her, and Raine fell down the stairs.
Her mother, Barbara Cartland, was known as the Queen of Romance, an extraordinarily prolific novelist who wrote 723 bodice rippers that almost always put a young virgin in the path of a rakish duke or marquis.said in an interview with the BBC in 1991.Still, Cartland decided to plot out her daughter's future as if it was one of her own novels, delighting in Raine's beauty but encouraging her to perhaps not be so obviously brilliant.
By her early twenties, Raine had achieved every single one of her mother's ambitions for her: She was married to a nobleman, she had produced a raft of heirs, and she was the mistress of a grand home.And so at 23, Raine made a tilt for politics, campaigning to be a local councillor in a full face of make-up, long polished nails and her trademark dresses.
But, according to her biographer Tina Gaudion, by 1972, she had already fallen in love with someone else: Earl John Spencer. "I don't think Raine had any intention of falling in love with Johnnie Spencer — it just happened," her brother Ian McCorquodale told Gaudion for her book Three Times a Countess.
The wedding of Princess Diana's parents in 1954 was the social event of the year, but the marriage was tumultuous.She gave birth to three healthy girls, including the future Princess of Wales, but her marriage to Johnnie slowly unravelled under the stress of trying to produce a male heir, only compounded further by the death of their first-born son.The long-wished for heir, Charles Spencer, arrived five years later but it was too late for Frances and Johnnie's relationship.
Friends described him as rather miserable, driving guests sat next to him at parties away in search of better company, until fate dealt him a favourable hand in 1975.He was so enamoured with his would-be bride, he apparently forgot to tell his children he was getting married and left their names off the guest list."If I remember rightly, I slapped him across the face, and I said, 'That's from all of us, for hurting us' and walked out and slammed the door," she told Morton.
Her preference for bold colours and cosy furniture was regarded by some to be at odds with the stately history of the home. She would embark on a similar restoration project when her husband suffered a stroke just two years into their marriage. The holiday was considered vital given that rumours were swirling about the state of Prince Charles and Diana's marriage, and palace aides were keen for them to be the picture of familial bliss on the slopes for the waiting photographers."I'm afraid because we all thought he was fine, my stepmother was at home overseeing something and I was at home with my family," Charles Spencer told reporters outside the hospital on March 29, 1992.
In his will, Johnnie had left Raine a luxury townhouse in the London suburb of Mayfair, knowing that upon his death, Althorp would immediately be transferred to his son and heir, Charles. They married 33 days later. The bride wore a pink floral gown and a billowing headpiece of fuchsia netting and pearls.But Raine was only the Comtesse de Chambrun for two years. When she divorced Jean-François, she decided to revert back to her second title, Countess Spencer.
She was also no longer on speaking terms with her mother Frances, after she gave a paid interview to Hello! about her daughter's divorce and criticised her subsequent dating choices. The countess was close to Dodi's father, Harrods billionaire Mohammed Al-Fayed, and even worked on the shopfloor of the ritzy department store in the 90s, using her considerable charms to sell expensive items to male customers.In August 1997, Diana and Dodi went on a holiday to Paris, and news soon filtered through of a terrible car accident after paparazzi chased them at high speed into a tunnel.
Right up until her death in 2016, Raine remained the same: She was always glamorous, always social, and always fiercely defensive of her stepdaughter's legacy."She had incredibly heavy pressures put upon her, but we ended up huge friends. She used to come and sit on my sofa and tell me her troubles.
Raine Spencer Johnnie Wicked Stepmother Fairytale Relationship
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