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Make It Reign: The lonely life of Princess Diana revealed

A new generation of royal watchers were captivated by the marriage of Kate Middleton to Prince William in 2011.

Diana, Princess of Wales 1990
Diana, Princess of Wales 1990

The marriage between the heir to the British throne and a wealthy commoner was seemingly a real-life fairytale that helped the royal family connect with a younger audience. The recent wedding of Meghan Markle to Prince Harry attracted so much attention that the relationship helped the monarchy seemingly re-brand itself in the public eye as a continuously evolving system.

However, there are many of us who still remember that for most of the 20th Century, the royal family that was mired in scandal and tragedy.

Princess Diana in 1988
Princess Diana in 1988

No member of the royal family received more attention or more scrutiny from both the press and senior members of the royal family than Diana, Princess of Wales.

In 1992, Andrew Morton released Diana: Her True Story, that contained explosive details and secrets of life for the then 30-year-old princess.

The Prince and Princess of Wales in 1983
The Prince and Princess of Wales in 1983

In a series of recordings, Diana revealed the most intimate details of her troubled marriage, her struggles with bulimia and depression, as well as several suicide attempts to Morton. Morton was sworn to secrecy, and published the book without revealing that he had ever spoken directly to Diana.

The truth was finally revealed when the tapes were released in 2017, almost twenty years after the princess’s tragic death. Morton and his publishers commissioned a documentary of the same title to be narrated entirely by Diana in an effort to expose the lonely and troubled life of the woman called the “People’s Princess.”

Princess Diana and Prince Charles
Princess Diana and Prince Charles

One of the most shocking of Morton’s reports is that while pregnant with Prince William, Diana made a half-hearted suicide attempt by throwing herself down a flight of stairs to get her husband’s attention.

“I had told Charles I felt desperate and I was crying my eyes out. He said I was crying wolf,” Diana tells Morton on the recordings. “So I threw myself down the stairs. The Queen comes out, absolutely horrified, shaking – she was so frightened.”

On this week’s episode of Yahoo Canada’s Make It Reign podcast, we’re introducing our new royals book club, and our first pick, Diana: Her True Story.

We’ll be discussing the book in detail in a future episode, but invite you to follow along and tweet us your thoughts to @YahooStyleCA.

New episodes of Make It Reign are available every Monday and are available for download on iTunes, Google Play and wherever else you listen to podcasts!

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Check out our brand new podcast, Make It Reign — our hot takes on all things royals in a non-stuffy way — on iTunes and Google Play.