Sisters at heart of Harry’s wedding
By inviting his late mother’s siblings to his wedding, Prince Harry may unite two families divided for decades, says royal biographer Christopher Wilson.
Memory, wrote Guy de Maupassant, gives back life to those who no longer exist. Just for a moment, then, may we see the blithe spirit of Diana, Princess of Wales, illuminate the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle?
Certainly, the choice of Lady Fellowes, Diana’s older sister by four years, to give the reading during the service on May 19 is a deliberate move to remind people that the young man standing at the altar is as much a Spencer as he is a Windsor.
The presence of Diana’s other siblings, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and the 9th Earl Spencer, is further reinforcement of Harry’s shared heritage. And, unlike the Westminster Abbey wedding of Prince William seven years ago – a state occasion – this less public ceremony in Windsor will allow the family of the late princess the chance to shine again.
It’s what Harry wants, according to his biographer, Angela Levin. ‘‘He will want to honour his mother – it’s very, very important to him,’’ says Levin, who has had unprecedented access to the prince over the course of a year. ‘‘He believes she is watching, looking down on him, helping him to move forward.
‘‘I expect that he feels she will be there at the wedding. Having her sister give the reading will make her happy.’’
But there’s more to it than that: the wedding will provide a moment of reunification for the Windsors and Spencers, two families driven apart by the harsh judgment of Lord Spencer at his sister’s funeral nearly 21 years ago. Speaking directly to Prince William and Prince Harry, Lord Spencer said: ‘‘I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can, so that [your] souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition.’’
It was a direct challenge and not taken lightly by Buckingham Palace. Whether Spencer, 53, ever lived up to his promise or was prevented from doing so, we shall never know – but his words were not the affront they seemed in cold print; they were the lamentations of a man who had lost a loving older sister who, in his words, ‘‘mothered’’ him.
There were, after all, happy days in the Spencers’ lives as well as the bleaker moments we know too well. Diana’s childhood at Park House on the Sandringham estate, while her parents remained married, was blissful, sun-drenched, picture-book. At the ages of four and six, Jane and her elder sister Sarah were overjoyed by the arrival of their young sibling.
The baby was christened Diana – not after a distinguished Spencer ancestor but rather the 1957 pop hit by Paul Anka; it was Diana’s mother’s favourite tune.
Growing up, Diana shared a pony called Romany with Jane and Sarah, and the sisters happily fostered a succession of dogs and hamsters. On sunny days, they would be driven to the beach at Brancaster where the family had a beach hut. But by the time of Charles Spencer’s arrival, when Diana was nearly three, her parents’ marriage was almost over. By the time she was six, Diana had been separated from the comforting embrace of her two sisters, who had been packed off to boarding school. A ferocious custody battle, which Diana’s mother lost, triggered the torments which were to last the rest of her life.
The three sisters were united in their hatred of the new woman in Lord Spencer’s life, the fabled Raine, daughter of novelist Barbara Cartland. Each coped in their different way: Jane walking past as if she weren’t there; Sarah developing anorexia and angrily countermanding Raine’s instructions to staff; Diana slapping her father’s face when she discovered he’d secretly remarried without telling the children.
Under such duress, the family understandably fragmented as the sisters entered adult life. Sarah’s brief walk-out with Prince Charles in 1978 was useful in informing her youngest sister of the intricacies of being romanced by a future king; from her marriage to Robert (now Lord) Fellowes, the Queen’s assistant private secretary, Jane provided deep intelligence to Diana about life at court.
‘‘And so to an outsider it might appear as though these three sisters – Sarah, Jane, Diana – cooked up the royal romance between them,’’ I was told years ago. ‘‘Though Charles Spencer was never part of that.’’
Whether this is so, Jane and Sarah certainly pushed Diana forward when she declared she couldn’t go through with the July 1981 royal wedding, warning: ‘‘Too late, Duch [their nickname for her] – your face is on the tea towels.’’ The rest, we know.
The sisters returned to prominence after Diana’s death when Sarah, self-appointed custodian of the family reputation, moved swiftly to oversee the shredding of her private correspondence at Kensington Palace. Later, as executor of her sister’s will, she would come under fire from the princess’s godchildren over the distribution of bequests, become embroiled in an unseemly row over the use of Diana’s signature on a margarine pack, and give evidence against the princess’s butler, Paul Burrell, at his Old Bailey trial.
Lord Spencer, meanwhile, was criticised for permitting Diana’s wedding dress and other personal effects that were returned to Althorp, the family’s ancestral home in Northamptonshire, after her death to become part of a regrettable royal roadshow that toured a variety of inauspicious venues in North America. Recently, these possessions were quietly handed back to Prince William and Prince Harry.
Further, in 2015, Lord Spencer was criticised for allowing Diana’s burial place, on an island within the Althorp estate, to become neglected and overgrown. An algae-clogged lake and a mosscovered memorial stone prompted Diana’s former chef to accuse the peer of callous neglect. A restoration scheme was swiftly put in place, and last summer an extended family group attended a private service of rededication conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
If it had one benefit, this service reunified two sides of a family whose relationship, like Diana’s resting place, had fallen into disrepair. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, Prince Harry, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Fellowes were all present. But while the event was deemed to be private, it was flagged up well in advance by Kensington Palace spokesmen, who were keen for people to know it had taken place – that Windsors and Spencers had said prayers together.
The royal wedding next week may show us more. The event will hold few surprises for the Spencer clan, for, despite any differences, they remain closely linked to the Royal family. The late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was Lady Sarah’s godmother, the Duke of Kent is Lady Fellowes’ godfather. The Queen is Lord Spencer’s godmother, while Lady Fellowes’ daughter, Laura Pettman, is one of Princess Charlotte’s godparents.
On the face of it, this shows two families as closely intertwined as can be imagined. If there has been a schism, as some believe, it has been well concealed. Prince Harry, the more sensitive of Diana’s two sons, in seeking to please his mother, in hoping for her smile on his wedding day, may well have pulled off something far more important: a family reconciliation.
How proud she would be of him for that.
‘‘He will want to honour his mother – it’s very, very important to him. He believes she is watching, looking down on him, helping him to move forward.’’ Angela Levin, Prince Harry’s biographer