Princess Grace and Princess Diana
In the late '50s, Grace Kelly left Hollywood to become the Princess of Monaco and held the world captive with her style and glamour for 25 years until another young, glamorous woman arrived on the scene. Today, 42 years on from when she became Princess of Wale and Queen of Hearts, let's look at the friendship between Princess Grace and Princess Diana!
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Lady Diana Spencer's engagement to Prince Charles, then the Prince of Wales (now King Charles III), was announced in February 1981. Though she'd been a known girlfriend for a while, snapped outside the nursery she worked at and a favourite amongst betting houses as the future queen, when she became officially engaged to Charles, all bets were off: she became the most famous in the world overnight.
And there was only one other woman in the world who knew what it felt like to go from regular life to that of a royal bride: Princess Grace of Monaco.
To say that by the '80s, Princess Grace had hit her stride is an understatement. Two of her children were grown, she'd found her passions in breastfeeding awareness, poetry readings and flower pressing and travelled the world advocating for all of these, and her marriage to Rainier had settled into a new groove after a quarter-century together.
Shortly after Charles and Diana were engaged, they carried out their first official engagement together, a music recital at Goldsmiths' Hall in London. Princess Grace was also in attendance, and greeted her British counterparts. Diana, fresh and unsure of what this all entailed, wore a pretty, poufy black dress that unfortunately had a plunging neckline and didn't really fit her. She reportedly went to the ladies room, upset, and was comforted by Grace, who told her, "Don’t worry, dear—it’ll only get worse."
In Andrew Morton's 1992 biography of Diana, Diana: Her True Story, Diana remembered meeting Grace: "I remember meeting Princess Grace and how wonderful and serene she was—but there was troubled water under her, I saw that."
Princess Grace would later attend Diana's wedding, representing Monaco alongside her son, Prince Albert, at the July 29 wedding at Westminster Abbey. The gift from Rainier and Grace was a simple silver picture frame.
Sadly, what could've been a fruitful friendship for the women, both royal outsiders, ended too soon with the death of Princess Grace in September 1982.
Diana insisted on representing the British Royal Family at Grace's funeral; and when Charles didn't want her to attend, she went above his head and asked Queen Elizabeth II directly.
As she told Morton, she told Charles, "I think it's important, because she was an outsider who married into a big family, and I've done the same, so it would feel right." When he disagreed, she went to The Queen and "I said: 'You know, I'd like to do this,' and she said: 'I don't see why not. If you want to do this, you can.'"
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It was to be Diana's first official engagement of this kind as the Princess of Wales. At the funeral, held on September 18, Diana was seated next to US First Lady Nancy Reagan. Grace's funeral service was held at the Cathedral of Our Lady Immaculate in Monaco-Ville and she was interred at Saint Nicholas Cathedral, her tomb marked 'Gratia Patricia.'
When she returned to London, Diana was praised for how she'd handled herself. As she told Morton, "I went there, I did my bit, came back everyone was all over me like a bad rash: ‘Oh, you did so well! And I thought: 'Well, interesting.'"
Sadly, Diana would die a tragically early death as well, perishing in 1997 following a car accident in Paris, France.
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What are your memories of Diana, Princess of Wales? It's too bad that she lost a mentor in Grace, they probably would've been thick as thieves had she lived.
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