Why Princess Diana spent Christmas alone with reheated meal

Despite her leaving her official role within the Royal Family when she divorced then-Prince Charles, Princess Diana remained the “people’s princess.” While she focused on raising her two sons, her life was sometimes very lonely. Former royal chef Darren McGrady has revealed she spent her last Christmas alone, eating preheated food.

Princess Diana’s death shocked the entire world. The beloved princess passed away in August of 1997 after a car accident in Paris, and her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, were left without a mother.

On September 6, 1997, Princess Diana was laid to her final rest. An estimated 2.5 billion people watched the funeral, and viewers saw how the two young children, William and Harry, walked behind their mother’s coffin in the cortége.

Charles and Diana’s marriage was complicated. They both had affairs while still married, and the fact that royal life meant sticking to traditions and doing things a certain way never attracted Diana. She wanted to do things her own way, and in the end, it was not popular among the royals, including Queen Elizabeth.

In the end, they decided to go their separate ways. Their separation was a fact in December 1992, and the divorce was finalized some years later. Diana leaving Charles meant she was no longer a part of the royal family, even though her children were, and William was the future king.

Some reports have insisted that Diana feared the Queen and Charles were plotting to separate her from Harry and William. That, according to biographer Howard Hodgson, author of the 2007 book Charles: The Man Who Will Be King.

Princess Diana

“She was well aware that the Queen had the constitutional right and authority under common law to take control of both boys’ care and education,” Hodgson wrote. “As such she could become the boys’ guardian or even appoint one: this would probably be their father and that might lead to Diana’s exclusion if she finally burned all her bridges with the Royal Family.”

After the split from Prince Charles, royal expert and author Richard Kay said that Diana was in “quite a good place”. She was starting a new chapter in her life, when suddenly everything was taken away from her and her children.

“She was desperate to try and make a fresh start and do something different, to explore a different kind of Royalty,” Kay said. “And she wanted to come back and see her boys.”

At the same time, Diana wasn’t really interested in remaining part of the Royal Family, not even at Christmas. Speaking to Yahoo, former royal chef Darren McGrady revealed that Princess Diana would spend Christmas Day alone.

Princess Diana spent her last Christmas’ alone

In an interview with royal reporter Omid Scobie, Mcgrady said Diana would send William and Harry to Sandringham for Christmas while she told her staff to leave her home and spend time with their loved ones.

“It was always quite sad when you were working with the princess the day before Christmas,” McGrady said. “William and Harry would go off to Sandringham and Princess Diana was there on her own. And she insisted the staff spending their time with their families over Christmas, so we would leave food in the refrigerator. So there was the princess, on her own, on Christmas Day.”

Carolyn Robb, who worked for Diana and Charles during their marriage, said the princess would ask her to leave food in the fridge rather than have it freshly prepared. As mentioned, Diana and royal life didn’t go hand in hand, and the same went for her being at Sandringham, where the Royal Family spent Christmas every year and still do.

“Sandringham was so tight, so compact. There were so many people there, all the families,” McGrady explained. “You just couldn’t get away. You came out of the dining room, and you couldn’t go into the sitting room because there were three or four people in there playing charades or Scrabble or something.”

“Diana didn’t feel welcome at all”

The former royal chef added, “She would go off for a walk on her own and often I would bump into her when she was out walking. So, I think that’s probably what she wasn’t keen on.”

Exactly how Princess Diana felt about not being with the royals at Christmas, tragically, she thought the royal family didn’t want her there, despite Prince William and Prince Harry being her children. However, in 1993, a year after her separation from Charles, she did spend Christmas Eve at Sandringham, “stayed overnight, and went with everyone to church.

“But she didn’t stay for lunch,” Kay continued. “Instead, she went home alone to Kensington Palace and spent the rest of the day there before flying to Washington to stay with friends. The same thing happened in 1994, but Diana felt she was given a ‘frosty’ reception by the other royals.”

A source further told Kay: “Diana didn’t feel welcome at all. She could see how her being there just made everyone so tense and uneasy. She’d joined them for the boys’ sake, but it wasn’t working.”

Royal expert and author Andrew Morton wrote the bestselling biography Diana: Her True Story. In tape recordings he received, Diana stated that she felt like an “outsider” at Sandringham, which was “terrifying and so disappointing.”

“No boisterous behaviour, lots of tension, silly behaviour, silly jokes that outsiders would find odd but insiders understood. I sure was [an outsider].”

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