Upon marrying Prince Charles in 1981, Diana Frances Spencer became an official member of the British royal family. Upon receiving the title Princess of Wales, she began participating in family traditions, including the annual Christmas celebration at Sandringham House.
Every Christmas, the royal family gathers at Sandringham, one of the many properties where they usually spend their vacations. There, in December 1991, Diana is said to have made the decision to end her marriage to Prince Charles.
Diana’s last christmas at sandringham
In Andrew Morton’s book ‘Diana: Her True Story’, published in 1992, the mother of Prince William and Prince Harry revealed that Christmas with the royals was marked by “a lot of tension”.
In 1991 that tension between Diana and Charles were at their highest peak. In photos taken on December 25, 1991, as the royal family made their traditional walk to St. Mary Magdalene Church, Diana and Charles walked separately.
Walking to the 16th century church on the same property while onlookers take pictures and wave is a Christmas tradition for the royal family.
That Christmas was not so merry for the late People’s Princess. Diana didn’t like cramped quarters and used to go for walks on her own to escape the house. This was revealed by her former chef Darren McGrady in 2019.
“Sandringham was so tight, so compact. There were so many people there, all the families”… “You just couldn’t escape. You’d come out of the dining room and you couldn’t go into the living room because there were three or four people in there playing charades or Scrabble or something like that.” commented McGrady.
Was it really that Christmas that Diana decided to end her marriage?
It is said that that Christmas at Sandringham, Diana decided to leave Prince Charles, her husband of 10 years.
The truth is that Princess Diana and Prince Charles announced their separation in 1992, 11 years after their extravagant wedding. Two years later, Charles publicly admitted his infidelity, the same day Diana wore the famous “Revenge Dress“.
Finally, the royal couple made their divorce official in 1996 at the behest of Queen Elizabeth II.
