TL;DR:
- Princess Diana declined Queen Elizabeth’s invitation to spend Christmas at Sandringham in 1995.
- A royal biographer says Queen Elizabeth became “more business-like” with Princess Diana as a result.
- A former royal staffer called Christmas a lonely time for Princess Diana.
Saying no to Queen Elizabeth II. Princess Diana reportedly declined an invitation to spend Christmas at Sandringham from her mother-in-law. According to a royal biographer, RSVPing no proved to be an “affront too many” for the queen. It led to a major change in Diana’s relationship with Queen Elizabeth.
Princess Diana rejected Queen Elizabeth’s invitation for Christmas at Sandringham, author says
Andrew Morton, the journalist behind Diana: Her True Story, detailed how a Christmas invitation impacted Queen Elizabeth and Diana’s relationship in his latest book, The Queen: Her Life.
The queen, he wrote (via Marie Claire), invited Diana to spend Christmas at Sandringham in 1995. Diana, separated from King Charles III for three years at the time, opted out of royal family festivities.
“Diana declined, telling friends that she would ‘[go] up in my BMW car and come out in a coffin,’” Morton wrote.
Rather, the holiday became a much more solitary experience for Diana. She stayed at Kensington Palace alone before setting off for the Caribbean. While it may have seemed harmless to decline an invite, there were consequences.
Queen Elizabeth became ‘more business-like’ with Princess Diana after Christmas invite, author claims
“The princess’s decision to decline the sovereign’s invitation, normally viewed as a command, marked the nadir of her relationship with the queen,” Morton wrote. “It was an affront too many.”
“From now on, the queen was not always available to take her phone calls or ready to invite her to afternoon tea,” he continued. “Their dealings were necessarily more business-like than before, as the queen was one of the interested parties in divorce negotiations.”
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A week before the queen invited Diana for Christmas at Sandringham, she’d sent a very different type of note to her daughter-in-law.
Morton wrote just days earlier, on Dec. 18, 1995, Diana got a note from the queen. It was a handwritten letter telling her and the king to divorce.
“It was, Diana noted ruefully, the first letter she had ever received from her mother-in-law,” he wrote.
So, when Diana didn’t take the queen up on her offer to stay at Sandringham for Christmas, enough was enough.
A former royal chef called working with Princess Diana on Christmas Eve ‘always quite sad’
The holidays proved to be a lonely time for Diana, according to her former royal chef Darren McGrady.
“It was always quite sad when you were working with the princess the day before Christmas,” he said (via Yahoo Style). “William and Harry would go off to Sandringham and Princess Diana was there on her own.”
“She insisted the staff spending their time with their families over Christmas, so we would leave food in the refrigerator,” he added. “So there was the princess, on her own, on Christmas Day.”
