Princess Diana\u2019s mother Frances Shand Kydd would have turned 90 years old on January 20.To commemorate the occasion, Diana\u2019s brother Earl Charles Spencer shared a never-before-seen photo of Frances, and her resemblance to Diana is uncanny.Like Diana, Frances died far too young at just 68 years old in 2004.<\/p>\n
Princess Diana<\/a>\u2019s younger brother Earl Charles Spencer<\/a> shared a photo of his late mother, Frances Shand Kydd<\/a>, to mark what would have been her 90th birthday on January 20\u2014and it\u2019s impossible to ignore the resemblance between Frances and Diana.\n<\/p>\n Much like her daughter\u2014who died at 36 in a 1997 car accident\u2014Frances also died too young, she at age 68 in 2004 following a long illness. Though Frances\u2019s relationship with her four surviving children was often strained, in his emotional post on Tuesday, Charles wrote of \u201call the joy\u201d his mother brought to the world beside a black-and-white photo of her wearing a headscarf and a striped top. The photo was taken by Diana and Charles\u2019s father, Johnnie Spencer, who Frances divorced in 1967.\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Charles described his mother in the photo as \u201cyoung and happy\u201d and \u201clooking glamorous in a very understated way.\u201d He remarked that Frances \u201cdied far too young,\u201d adding that, just like at Diana\u2019s funeral seven years prior, \u201cI gave the eulogy at her funeral\u2014recalling all the joy she brought and gave; as well as reflecting on the terrible ordeal she had to endure, burying two of her children.\u201d He referred to Diana but also his brother John, who died in infancy in 1960, the year before Diana was born.\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Charles often shares never-before-seen photos of his family, like in 2024, when he shared a black-and-white photo of himself and Diana with Frances, smiling together with Charles on a swing as Frances held onto him from behind. The photo was taken circa 1967, Charles wrote alongside it, the same year that Frances would divorce her husband. \u201cI love how happy each of us looks,\u201d Charles wrote of the photo.\n<\/p>\n Frances Shand Kydd and Princess Diana at Wimbledon in 1993.<\/p>\n Getty<\/p>\n Describing how her marriage to Johnnie fell apart, Frances later said that she and her former husband \u201cjust drifted apart, and there was nothing either of us could do about it,\u201d per The Telegraph<\/a>. Frances met the man who would become her second husband, Peter Shand Kydd, at a dinner party in 1966, commenting on their meeting\u2014while both were still married to other people\u2014that \u201cIt wasn\u2019t love at first sight, but I do remember we made each other laugh.\u201d There was a \u201cstrong attraction\u201d between them, she continued, adding, \u201cIf Johnnie and I had had a strong marriage, it wouldn\u2019t have happened.\u201d\n<\/p>\n In 1967, Frances left the Spencer family home, Althorp, and went to live in London with Diana and Charles (her older two children, Sarah and Jane, were at boarding school). But when Diana and Charles went to Althorp for Christmas, Johnnie refused to let them return to London. Afterwards, Frances was labeled a \u201cbolter,\u201d and lost custody of her children in 1968. Frances married Peter the next year, in 1969. Charles later told The Sunday Times<\/a> that as Frances \u201cwas packing her stuff to leave, she promised Diana she\u2019d come back to see her.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \u201cDiana used to wait on the doorstep for her, but she never came,\u201d adding that Johnnie \u201cwas a quiet, constant source of love, but our mother wasn\u2019t cut out for maternity\u2014she couldn\u2019t do it. She was in love with someone else\u2014infatuated, really.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Frances and Peter ultimately divorced in 1988, and Frances blamed Diana and her family in part for the breakup of her second marriage, as \u201cPeter allegedly felt overshadowed by his more famous wife after Diana skyrocketed the popularity of the Spencers\u201d following her 1981 royal wedding to Prince Charles<\/a>, according to The Daily Mail<\/a>.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n In The Guardian<\/a>\u2019s obituary for Frances, the outlet quoted her as saying, \u201cI think the pressure of it all was overwhelming and, finally, impossible for Peter. They didn\u2019t want him. They wanted me. I became Diana\u2019s mum, and not his wife.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Diana would later tell her biographer Andrew Morton<\/a> that she felt \u201clet down terribly\u201d by her mother on her wedding day, when Frances told her \u201cshe couldn\u2019t cope with the pressure.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \u201cShe kept crying and being all valiant and saying that she couldn\u2019t cope with the pressure\u2014I tended to think I was the one under pressure because I was the bride,\u201d Diana told Morton. As Frances once said in 1997<\/a>\u2014the same year Diana died\u2014\u201cThe media descended here 16 years ago and have never left me since. I\u2019ve now accepted they never will.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Prince Philip and Frances Shand Kydd on July 29, 1981.<\/p>\n Getty<\/p>\n When Diana died, she and her mother were not on speaking terms after Frances spoke about her daughter losing her Her Royal Highness title in her 1996 divorce as something that was \u201cabsolutely wonderful\u201d in an interview. Yet, before their fallout, Diana praised Frances, saying, \u201cI\u2019ve got what my mother has got. However bloody you are feeling, you can put on the most amazing show of happiness. My mother is an expert at that, and I\u2019ve picked it up. It kept the wolves from the door.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Princess Diana and Frances Shand Kydd in 1989.<\/p>\n Getty<\/p>\n At Diana\u2019s funeral, though they weren\u2019t on speaking terms, Frances recalled of Diana, \u201cI felt so proud of her.\u201d She was also proud \u201cof my daughters [Sarah and Jane] who were rock steady in their readings, and of my son [Charles], who gave the ultimate tribute of brotherly love and expressed the thoughts of the family and the people who loved her.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nFollow us to see more of our stories on Google.\n<\/p>\n Follow Us On<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n When Frances died in 2004, Diana\u2019s sons Prince William<\/a> and Prince Harry<\/a> were \u201cvery upset\u201d<\/a> by her death, according to their father\u2019s office at Clarence House. Her small funeral was attended by both boys, and William gave a reading at it\u2014a touching gesture that, despite the falling out between Frances and Diana, spoke volumes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Princess Diana\u2019s mother Frances Shand Kydd would have turned 90 years old on January 20.To commemorate the occasion,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":["post-423429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}