Princess Diana Once ‘Slapped’ Her Father For a Heartbreaking Reason: “Don’t You Ever…”

Princess Diana greatly suffered in her marriage to Prince Charles as he pursued an affair with long-time flame Camilla Parker Bowles. Diana's sufferings were also exacerbated by the fact that her own parents divorced in 1969 when she was just 7. According to Andrew Morton, author of Diana: Her True Story, the late Princess once even slapped her father over it. Morton claimed that Diana was extremely hurt by her father remarrying another woman without informing his children.

Diana had a difficult childhood marked with loneliness, according to The Express. Born Diana Frances Spencer, she was the fourth child in a family desperate for a male heir. Her parents' marriage was troubled, with her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, having an affair with Peter Shand Kydd, which led to their divorce. In 1976, her father, Edward John Spencer, remarried Raine McCorquodale and Diana was furious that he didn't tell or invite his children to his wedding. In a moment of rage, she slapped him across the face.

According to the Daily Mail, Morton penned that Diana allegedly shared, “I was the little crusader here... and I got really angry and I, if I remember rightly, I slapped him across the face, and I said, 'That's from all of us, for hurting us' and walked out and slammed the door.”

Her father Spencer was understandably fuming with rage. He ran behind her daughter yelling, “Don't you ever talk to me like that again.” But Diana bravely looked at her father and allegedly responded, "Well, don't you ever do that to us again" — and he didn't. He stayed married to his new wife up until his death in 1992 from a heart attack. Princess Diana had a rough relationship with her father, but the pair put their differences aside for her wedding to Prince Charles. He walked her down the aisle for the beautiful ceremony. He also reportedly convinced her not to call off her wedding to the future King when knowledge of Parker-Bowles gave Diana cold feet.

According to royal biographer Ingrid Seward's book, My Mother And I, Diana once made her way to her father's home in Northamptonshire feeling ‘distraught, flustered, angry’ that Charles was ignoring her at a party. As far as Diana was concerned, ‘the royal wedding was off.’ When she told her father, he was appalled. “After calming her down, he pointed out it would be an act of gross discourtesy to break off her engagement to the future King so close to the wedding,” said Seward. The marriage ultimately ended in divorce in 1996 at the order of the late Queen Elizabeth II herself, who was unhappy with Diana airing her grievances in the BBC Panorama interview.