Princess Diana's Relationship with her Stepmother, Raine Spencer

[Osipi]

A lot of our habits and our character is formed in our childhood years and I do think its because of the sense of being abandoned by her mother, her father shipping her off to boarding school and her father's subsequent marriage to Raine practically without involving his family at all kind of made Diana build a protective wall around her to shield herself from the hurts of life. Even up until the day she died, she was well known for "freezing" people out totally and completely should they in any way cross her. Once you were on the outs with Diana, its like you didn't exist with her. It was primarily a defense mechanism that Diana built in over her lifetime.

There were occasions where the fences were mended with both her mother and Raine but I don't think she ever felt extraordinarily close with either woman as an adult.

 

[veronicalambertis]

I'm not making excuses for diana i don't care if she was the princess or not. Like Marg said she was no baby, but I say too it was her mental illnes and she needed to be put somewhere they could have treated her the right way. Her fame did not do her a bit of good: look where it got her in the grave.

 

[Osipi]

Can I recommend a good book that really delves into the psychological makeup of Diana? Its Sally Bedell Smith's "Diana: Portrait Of A Troubled Princess". I do believe that Diana had many issues that she needed to confront and learn to live with but then again, don't we all at one time or another?

I found the book really cheap at https://www.abebooks.com. Its a godsend for those of us that love to read a lot.

 

[Lady Nimue]

Raine married John in 1976, the selling was in 1991.

John Spencer approved of the sales.

In 1991, he specifically made of point of naming Diana as not understanding about money when the sale of items became public.

Diana never had a real job. She would only work a few months, usually a few days a week, before quitting and going on vacation for a few months.

If she had paid her own way rather than expect her mother to pay for her flat and her father to foot the bills she would have appreciated what Raine was doing.

In 1997, Diana claimed she could not afford to remove the Laura Ashley wall covering even with a very large divorce settlement and with Charles still paying for all her household expenses.

This is probably when Diana finally appreciated and realized what Raine had been trying to do.

Thank you, Queen Camilla, for bringing clarity to very muddy waters.

Oh, how I love revisionist history where the victims become the villains. Raine was not given custody of her children for the same reason as Frances didn't. It is essential that history is discussed in its time and place and not viewed through the lens of 2018!

They lived in a patriarchal society at a time where women were still forced to remain in an abusive marriage because they could not afford to support themselves and, in aristocratic families, the father would have had to be a convicted axe murderer to not win custody of his children.

Thank you, MARG, too, for bringing clarity to very muddy waters.

How dare Diane slap her father's face. What an arrogant action and believing that she got to dictate her father's life. It's right up there with shoving Raine down the stairs and shoving her clothes and possessions in rubbish bags and throwing them out the door.

Too right she needed discipline as a child and self-discipline as an adult because she had neither.

Yes, it needs to be said!

 

[Lady Nimue]

This perspective is very one sided in favor of the Spencers who were adults and teens when their father remarried. They never gave Raine a chance. The words used to describe Raine should be applied and are better suited to describe Diana, Jane, Charles Spencer and Sarah.

The Spencers stepchildren were ungrateful. If it was not for Raine, John Spencer would have died in 1978. The woman married a sickly man and took care of him. She placed the welfare of her new husband and his ungrateful children above her own children.

And those words: "arrogant, pushy, selfish, snobby, full of herself." Ouch! But perilously close to the truth, not so? How easily people are willing to be deceived by their heroes/heroines!

 

[Tsaritsa]

Diana's mother did not abandon her.
Her mother moved to London and took the Diana & Charles with her.
At Christmas time Diana & Charles went to live with their father and were enrolled in school in Norfolk.
It was joint custody not abandonment. The joint custody continued after the divorce. She saw more of her mother than her father. This is according to her step sister.




This perspective is very one sided in favor of the Spencers who were adults and teens when their father remarried. They never gave Raine a chance. The words used to describe Raine should be applied and are better suited to describe Diana, Jane, Charles Spencer and Sarah.


The Spencers stepchildren were ungrateful. If it was not for Raine, John Spencer would have died in 1978. The woman married a sickly man and took care of him. She placed the welfare of her new husband and his ungrateful children above her own children.
I believe Raine later had joint custody of her children.


Interesting view. Adultery is usually defined if either or both party is married.

It always seems to be the children's fault doesn't it? But from whom do these nasty ungrateful children learn? Children yearn for parental approval. Mimicry being the sincerest form of flattery, they copy parental behaviour. If parents put their own needs before the children's, the children are likely to feel unworthy of parental affection and approval. They're very likely to carry thin sense of unworthiness with them into adulthood. Even more likely will they be to pick a partner who makes them feel unworthy because it's what they understand.
So if we go back to the Spencer children -almost two separate families of Sarah and Jane, and Diana and Charles- who had lived through the turmoil of their parent's car crash of a marriage and had received little by way of emotional stability, at a time, in their teens, a time of HUGE emotional upheaval anyway, when things may have become as stable for them as they'd ever been, they're faced with the shock of the whirlwind which was Raine -NOT renown for her motherliness but given her own role-model, hardly surprising- as a fait accomplis. As is they way in MANY families -not just the aristocratic- I'm willing to bet that their father's remarriage had never been discussed with them. It wouldn't have been deemed necessary. We see this model played out in Georgian and Victorian England when aristocratic offspring were children until they left the schoolroom, from where the girls were married within the year and boys went on the Grand Tour. They weren't required to 'feel' -they probably wouldn't have known how to- they were simply required to 'do' whatever they were instructed or were told was their duty.
It takes enormous strength and courage to break away from this ingrained model. It's not possible to shrug off, overnight, a life-time's indoctrination, especially when it means questioning a role model. Often there are mutterings of "ungrateful children" but why is it necessary for children to show gratitude when the decisions taken by their parents have been more for their own benefit than their children's?

 

[veronicalambertis]

Hey Tsaritsa: I understand that children pick up things from there parents whether it's good or bad. But if that's the case, they should of hated the fathet as well for not telling them about raine. He didn't do much justice either for them.

 

[Tsaritsa]

Hey Tsaritsa: I understand that children pick up things from there parents whether it's good or bad. But if that's the case, they should of hated the fathet as well for not telling them about raine. He didn't do much justice either for them.

Mmm That very much depends on what they picked up as children. Diana appeared to adore her father, who allegedly had been cruel both physically and psychologically, to her mother. As it was her mother who left -and we have no way of knowing what the children were told, indeed, IF they were told anything at all- it's possible that they came to their own conclusions and it was she who they blamed. They could have transferred their resentment, against her, to Raine. It must also be acknowledged, that in the interim, after their mother left, perhaps out of guilt? perhaps by way of compensation? Johnny Spencer had probably spoilt them rotten and they'd subsequently been able to twist him round their little fingers, all of which would have come to a full stop with the advent of Raine who, incidentally, MAY, if she wasn't blessed with the skin of a rhinoceros, have deserved a medal for what she took on.
There is no "should" about how they -or anyone of us- felt/feels. We feel what we feel. It's the result of how we/they experience our/their own worlds.

 

[veronicalambertis]

I never really though of it way. I guess you have to be strong as a ox to put up with what she did. I believe later on diana respected and admired raine's strength because at first she (Diana)couldn't handle it.I could be wrong.

 

[veronicalambertis]

This is for you Tsaritsa

 

[Tsaritsa]

I never really though of it way. I guess you have to be strong as a ox to put up with what she did. I believe later on diana respected and admired raine's strength because at first she (Diana)couldn't handle it.I could be wrong.

You could very well be right, Veronicalambertis. It's also possible that Diana, who had a reputation for discarding people, found herself short of women who could be a mother-figure. Despite having huge empathy with Diana, I'm not blind to her numerous shortcomings. However, I wonder how many of us, if we'd had her, less than stable, background, would have made a better fist of it.

 

[veronicalambertis]

Yes Tsaritsa: Not many to be quite honest, not everyone can tolerate that kind of behavior. She discarded people i think because she felt everyone was against her and no one really understood her but at the same time, she always was complaining about being lonely. So she was confused about how she was feeling. Deep down inside she wanted to be loved and hugged, she just didn't know how to come about that't all.

 

[Osipi]

Basically, from all I've read on Diana, I see a pattern in her life where she never truly learned how to have an intimate relationship. By intimate, I mean a psychological closeness and intimacy like one would have with a best friend. A relationship that has its ups and downs and good times and bad times. The unconditional "no matter what" love kind of a deep relationship.

We see this in the statement made earlier "if you leave me now you don't love me." With this in mind, I think she really saw her father's marriage to Raine as a betrayal as in her father "replacing" Diana with Raine in his affections. The solution was that Raine had to go away.

She never really learned that its possible to love more than one person at a time and that its possible to love people on different emotional levels. A best friend, a husband, a stepmother or even the love of an adoring public. With Diana, this became evident when it became fact that in order to ensure her husband's complete devotion, what was needed was to eliminate anyone else in his circle that detracted from his attention to Diana. She was notorious for sacking staff that were too close to Charles. She culled his circle of friends that had more in common with Charles than she did. Basically, she felt threatened by anyone and anything that detracted from someone "loving" her and when there was conflicts, she eliminated the source of the conflict rather than work out the conflict itself by reasoning, compromises and mature cooperation. It was a lifetime of "If you love me, you will (fill in the blank). Her relationships with people were great and glorious until, for some reason, it didn't suit Diana any longer.

Just as Diana tried to manipulate Raine Spencer out of her father's life, so did the same pattern of behavior emerge with many of Diana's relationships over her adult years. We saw this manipulation of a relationship to the extreme with Oliver Hoare. We saw this manipulation in her relationship with Haznat Khan as Diana tried to manipulate the relationship towards how she perceived it should be. This, I believe, also affected her manipulating stories to sway the press and the public. She became good at it. It was her defense mechanism against perceived betrayals and hurt.

I do believe it was the emotional turmoil that Diana experienced with her father's remarriage to Raine when Diana was 15 that deeply affected her relationships for the rest of her adult life.

 

[Gawin]

I agree and I would also add that the breakup of her parents' marriage was another factor. Although Frances intended to keep the children it didn't work out that way. When viewed from a child's eyes she "left" the family. Her father won custody but may have sunk into a depression over the situation, leaving the children's emotional needs unmet. There were a lot of unresolved issues in that family and Raine's appearance only made things worse, at least from the children's point of view.

 

[Tsaritsa]

Basically, from all I've read on Diana, I see a pattern in her life where she never truly learned how to have an intimate relationship. By intimate, I mean a psychological closeness and intimacy like one would have with a best friend. A relationship that has its ups and downs and good times and bad times. The unconditional "no matter what" love kind of a deep relationship.

We see this in the statement made earlier "if you leave me now you don't love me." With this in mind, I think she really saw her father's marriage to Raine as a betrayal as in her father "replacing" Diana with Raine in his affections. The solution was that Raine had to go away.

She never really learned that its possible to love more than one person at a time and that its possible to love people on different emotional levels. A best friend, a husband, a stepmother or even the love of an adoring public. With Diana, this became evident when it became fact that in order to ensure her husband's complete devotion, what was needed was to eliminate anyone else in his circle that detracted from his attention to Diana. She was notorious for sacking staff that were too close to Charles. She culled his circle of friends that had more in common with Charles than she did. Basically, she felt threatened by anyone and anything that detracted from someone "loving" her and when there was conflicts, she eliminated the source of the conflict rather than work out the conflict itself by reasoning, compromises and mature cooperation. It was a lifetime of "If you love me, you will (fill in the blank). Her relationships with people were great and glorious until, for some reason, it didn't suit Diana any longer.

Just as Diana tried to manipulate Raine Spencer out of her father's life, so did the same pattern of behavior emerge with many of Diana's relationships over her adult years. We saw this manipulation of a relationship to the extreme with Oliver Hoare. We saw this manipulation in her relationship with Haznat Khan as Diana tried to manipulate the relationship towards how she perceived it should be. This, I believe, also affected her manipulating stories to sway the press and the public. She became good at it. It was her defense mechanism against perceived betrayals and hurt.

I do believe it was the emotional turmoil that Diana experienced with her father's remarriage to Raine when Diana was 15 that deeply affected her relationships for the rest of her adult life.

Exactly so, Osipi, but you missed out the reason. She didn't know how to have an "intimate" relationship -and as a counselor I understand precisely what you mean by "intimate"- because she'd never experienced one being demonstrated between her role models. I believe she'd enjoyed her position of being "Daddy's little girl" and probably felt rejected when Raine was introduced. I don't see an adult woman screaming at her husband "If you leave me now you don't love me". What I do see is a small child who is watching her mother leaving without her. I think Diana 'fell in love' with each new person -male or female- who came into her life appearing to adore her. Such was her neediness and desire to be loved exclusively that it probably put too great a strain on the relationship. They may have started to pull away -something, having experienced it, she'd have been very sensitive to- causing her to reject them, lessening her own pain. The emotional damage was done long before her father married Raine.

 

[Gawin]

I can understand why Diana did the things I dislike her for. Marrying Charles was the worst thing she could have done and the marriage brought out the worst in both of them.

What a pity, she had so many good qualities and perhaps her "bad" side would have disappeared if only she had married the right person and put her insecurities to rest.

 

[Osipi]

You're absolutely right. We do need to look at Diana's entire childhood and not just the appearance of Raine into the picture. Raine's appearance in the mix was a catalyst that shook the family dynamics even more than it was already shaken. Both Sarah and Diana exhibited "acting out" and developed eating disorders.

Sadly, all this resulted the need to control her relationships with anyone to assure that it continued as she perceived it should be. She never learned that this kind of behavior is actually what can cause someone to back away from the relationship or even end it and if anything seemed to be amiss in a relationship, she would be the one to eliminate the problem first rather than be "left out in the cold".

 

[veronicalambertis]

What she also didn't understand was i think is probably people did try to love her and care for her. Maybe if she would of understood that, she probably would of givin it a chance. Then again she never learned how.

 

[veronicalambertis]

Also she (Diana) never made peace within herself. She died a very disturb and a unhappy young women. So sad.

 

[Osipi]

I think that as she grew older, she did mature somewhat and after the divorce, she did find her own niche and developed her own passions that she worked avidly for and was finding herself as her own person. It was an ongoing process.

Its also very possible that should Diana have lived, she would have found a stable and rewarding relationship with Dr. Khan or perhaps someone else. Sadly, she never had that chance.

 

[Ista]

To me it seems as though by the time she died Diana was, if not in a good place, at least getting there. Aside from the questionable judgment involved in her relationship with Dodi, she seemed more centred and sure of herself, less reactive and needy. That may have been an illusion, but on the surface she appeared to be in a better place than she had been around the time of the Panorama interview. Who knows if that would have lasted, but it's very sad that she never got a chance to create and settle in to a fulfilling life for herself outside her royal role.

 

[Jacknch]

Posts that were totally unrelated to the topic of the thread (and subsequent responses) have been deleted. There are numerous threads on various topics related to Diana and forum members are invited to view those in order to decided which one best suits the subject they wish to discuss.

 

[Blog Real]

The "Daily Mail" published an article on Raine Spencer, the stepmother of princess Diana.

Was Raine Spencer really Princess Diana's 'wicked' stepmother?

On September 9, 1929 - 95 years ago today - Raine Spencer was born to romantic novelist Barbara Cartland and printing heir Alexander McCorquodale.

www.dailymail.co.uk