Princess Diana has been claimed as many things over the decades. A feminist and an anti-feminist. The pride of the British aristocracy and a heroine to gay people and ethnic minorities. Yet the cornerstone of her reputation, at home and abroad, has always been her identity as a mother.
Diana saw motherhood as the key to attaining personal happiness. By raising a happy family, she hoped to salve the wounds she’d suffered in her own childhood. Yet motherhood was also the vehicle of her immense ambition. Despite popular depictions of Diana as a walking, talking length of tulle, she had a sense of historical mission that rumbled away beneath that famously bashful exterior. Her lofty aim was to transform the British monarchy by molding her sons into new types of princes, “modern” and relatable in a way that no British royals had ever been.
