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Princess Diana’s mother, Frances Shand Kydd, had longstanding connections to the British royal family, including a link to Queen Elizabeth II. Frances’ mother served in the Queen Mother’s household and was part of her inner circle, according to The Guardian. But that shared aristocratic background did not translate into a close relationship between Frances and the late queen. Frances’ complicated personal history—including leaving Diana’s father, John Spencer, for Peter Shand Kydd in the late 1960s and losing custody of her children after her 1969 divorce—was followed by a willingness to discuss private family matters publicly.
Her outspoken relationship with the press reportedly displeased the famously private monarch. In 1980, Frances wrote to The Times to criticize reporters for pursuing Diana. Two years later, she spoke with Gordon Honeycombe for his book “The Year of the Princess,” discussing the custody dispute involving Diana and her former husband. UPI reported that Diana was deeply embarrassed by the revelations and by her father’s reaction. “It can only hurt Diana. Why did she do such a thing?” he reportedly asked.
Given Queen Elizabeth II’s well-known commitment to discretion, her reported discomfort with Frances’ public statements is perhaps understandable. Royal author Ingrid Seward wrote in “Catherine & Diana” that the queen valued Carole Middleton’s restraint, particularly when Carole faced harsh portrayals in the media or watched her daughter endure difficult treatment. “The queen liked Carole very much; she didn’t like Frances,” Seward wrote, according to Marie Claire.
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The queen reportedly felt Frances was governed by her emotions
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Queen Elizabeth’s reserved nature and fierce protection of her privacy stood in sharp contrast to Frances’ emotional and direct approach. Seward noted in “Catherine & Diana” that the queen admired the way Carole Middleton “used her head, not her heart, when dealing with the phenomenon of becoming mother-in-law to the Prince of Wales,” as quoted by Marie Claire. Royal commentators have also said that Elizabeth was often unsettled by Diana’s emotional openness, making Frances’ similarly expressive personality even less appealing to her.
Diana herself was not always comfortable with her mother’s candor or visible emotion. In material provided to Andrew Morton for “Diana: Her True Story — In Her Own Words,” she recalled Frances crying repeatedly in the days surrounding her 1981 wedding to Prince Charles. “She kept crying and being all valiant and saying that she couldn’t cope with the pressure,” Diana said, according to InStyle. Diana felt that she, as the bride, was the one facing the greatest pressure and later said she was deeply hurt when her mother cried during the ceremony.
Frances continued to speak publicly even after Diana’s death in 1997. In 2002, she criticized a memorial water feature created in her daughter’s honor, telling French magazine VSD, “No one’s ever taken the trouble to ask me my thoughts, either when Diana died or now,” as reported by The Guardian. Frances was clearly determined to express her views, but her openness and the queen’s guarded style were fundamentally different—one reason the two women were never known to share a particularly warm bond.