According to Andrew Morton's 1992 biography, Diana: Her True Story—In Her Own Words, Diana's relationship with the queen was friendly—at least in comparison to her relationship with the Queen Mother, who kept her at arm's length.
"She was very supportive of Diana," Morton tells PEOPLE. "Diana always felt that the Queen was a kind of marital referee and that the Queen should really intervene over her husband's relationship with Mrs. Parker Bowles. But the Queen's policy was to hope for the best."
The two influential women remained close through the years, with the queen calling Diana 'an exceptional and gifted human being' in a speech at Buckingham Palace after the princess' tragic death.
Russell recounts that between the call in 1989 and a recording of it being sold to a newspaper in 1992, the relationship between Diana and the Queen Mother had soured. He wrote: "Diana did not enjoy herself at the Queen Mother's ninetieth birthday party in August 1990, calling it 'grim and stilted.
The Queen thought Diana quite suitable for Charles. “She was very much a hit with the royal family—they really warmed to her,” Chernock says. “Diana worked very, very hard to ingratiate herself and to model what she thought being a princess would entail, and she did it very successfully.”
"It was indeed dreadfully sad, and she is a huge loss to the country," the queen wrote. "But the public reaction to her death, and the service in the Abbey, seem to have united people round the world in a rather inspiring way.
TheTalko website revealed how Margaret took her disdain for Diana to the late Princess' funeral, refusing to bow her head as the hearse drove past. The publication claimed: "Even though the story was true, Margaret could never forgive Diana for making the family look bad.
The Queen bowed her head as a sign of respect to her late daughter-in-law, Princess Diana. As the Head of State, Her Majesty was under no obligation to bow to anyone, making the gesture even more poignant.
The Queen has had a good relationship with Kate, her granddaughter-in-law, and sees her as "supporting William and getting on with her duties," said Prof Williams. However, she was reportedly concerned in the early days that Kate didn't have an identity of her own before marrying into the Royal Family.
Camilla may have been at Diana's wedding but she was not welcome at her funeral, which was watched by an estimated 2.5 billion people around the world. Still, to many her absence echoed around the ancient hall. The Queen made it clear to Charles that he could not take his paramour to the service.
Princess Diana once tried to hug Queen Elizabeth II to find comfort- an act that awkwardly ended due to Her Majesty's long practice to conceal emotions.
“He then let out a cry of pain was that so spontaneous and came from the heart,” Andersen further shared, also citing one witness describing it as a 'howl of anguish'. “Palace staff rushed over to Charles' room and found him collapsed in an armchair, weeping uncontrollably,” the royal author also shared.
Despite the ups and downs in their relationship, William and Kate are still very much in love and committed to each other. As the future king and queen consort of England, their relationship has been under public scrutiny, but they have managed to maintain a strong bond.
"I don't think she believes too heavily in instruction," he told the BBC. William has ostensibly been training to become King for his entire life, but what will Kate's role be once William ascends to the throne? As the wife of a reigning monarch, she will become what's known as the Queen consort.
While Kate inherited $110 million in jewelry from the Queen, that collection did not include the Spencer tiara, a diamond-encrusted crown inherited by William's late mother, Princess Diana, in the mid-1970s.
The queen stood with her family, and as Diana's funeral cortege passed by, she bowed her head. It was not a quick bow, nor a shallow one. The woman accustomed to being bowed by the world now lowered her head and humbly honored the princess.
One notable royal who refused to bow at Princess Diana's funeral in 1997 was Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth II. Prince Philip was a close family friend to Diana and the two were known to have a close and complicated relationship.
What were Princess Diana's last words? The firefighter on the scene of Princess Diana's accident revealed the last words she spoke before her death in an interview with The Independent. According to the firefighter, Xavier Gourmelon, the Princess of Wales asked: “My God, what has happened?”
Although she did attend Diana's wedding, she was not able to attend the funeral. This decision was made at the request of the Queen, who insisted that then Prince Charles could not bring his paramour to the service, likely due to the affair the two had in 1986.
After Princess Diana died in 1997, Charles, then the Prince of Wales, wore a navy suit to her funeral. At the time, royal watchers read his outfit choice as a tribute to the late princess; Diana was said to have preferred men in navy.
“The sight of Diana's coffin, pulled along by horses, cause many onlookers to cry, as their grief poured out after the funeral,” I added, after seeing entire families sobbing as they walked away from the funeral route.
She's spotted crying at Heathrow airport upon his departure—not because she is sad, but because before he left, he had taken a phone call with Camilla Parker Bowles. “It just broke my heart,” she later recalled, according to Diana: In Her Own Words.
However, many Britons also felt anger towards the Royal Family at this time, for two reasons. The Queen was first criticised for not immediately travelling to London following the car crash in Paris, which also killed her partner, Dodi Fayed, and the driver, Henri Paul.
"One of the most shocking things that Diana told me was that the night before the wedding, Charles told her that he didn't love her," Thornton said. "I think Charles didn't want to go into the wedding on a false premise. He wanted to square it with her, and it was devastating for Diana."
Also following the happy news of their engagement, Kate shut down reports that she had photos of William on her walls back home and had been crushing on him as a teenager.