EXCLUSIVE: Princess Diana 'Slapped' Her Father Across the Face Over Secret Marriage to Much-Loathed Second Wife Raine, Brother Claims: 'That's for the Pain You're Causing Us All'
Diana erupted in fury after reading in the newspaper that her father secretly married her much-loathed stepmom Raine.
Sept. 23 2026, Updated 2:50 p.m. ET
The late Princess Diana was so enraged and devastated after discovering her beloved father had secretly married a woman she deeply loathed that she "slapped him across the face" in a stunning fit of fury, RadarOnline.com can revea.
Charles Spencer retold the story about his late sister in his new memoir, revealing it was the one and only time Diana ever became physical with either of their parents.
Charles Spencer Claims Diana Revered Her Father Until 2nd Marriage
Charles Spener made the sensational claims in his new memoir.
The siblings' parents, 8th Earl Spencer Johnnie and Frances Shand Kydd, divorced in 1969, when Diana was 7. Frances went on to marry Peter Shand Kydd later that same year.
Johnnie was awarded custody of the former couple's four children, and Diana grew up worshipping her father.
"Until her mid-teens, the love that Diana would always have for our father was so strong and so unquestioning that she would later realize that, in her words, she had viewed him as some sort of ‘a superhero,'" Spencer writes in Swan Song: Diana, My Sister.
Princess Diana and Her Siblings 'Intensely Disliked' Raine
The Spencer children thought Raine was after Althorp, according to a new book.
Spencer shares, "This adulation came to an instant end in the summer of 1976, when Diana found out from reading a newspaper article that he had married Raine, then Countess of Dartmouth, a woman we children had each met several times and whom we disliked intensely."
The 9th Earl Spencer explains, "We had happily accepted his earlier girlfriends, but we could see that Raine was primarily interested in getting her hands on Althorp, and its contents, rather than truly loving the father we all adored. We had warned him and urged him to recognize her for the gold-digger she famously was."
'That's for the Pain You're Causing Us All'
Charles Spencer claimed his sister's slap came with a stinging message.
The future Princess of Wales allegedly unleashed her anger and heartbreak on her father physically.
"Diana was so disappointed and outraged by my father’s secret marriage that she slapped him across the face – the only time she physically clashed with either parent – while saying, on behalf of Sarah, Jane and me, ‘That’s for the pain you’re causing us all,'" Spencer writes, revealing Diana delivered the stinging rebuke on behalf of herself and her three siblings.
He adds, "After that flashpoint, Diana continued in her daughterly love, but she never returned our father to his pedestal, and she would afterwards spend much more time with our mother."
Diana and Her Siblings Into 'Smallest and Plainest Attic Bedrooms'
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Diana's stepmom Raine allegedly redecorated the family's ancestral home.
Things didn't improve after Johnnie and Raine's marriage, as the siblings' "gold-digging" fears proved true, according to Spencer.
"After marrying my father in July 1976, Raine took Althorp by the scruff of the neck, making her mark" on the family's ancestral home "in many thoughtless ways," Spencer claims, as she went on to redecorate in "unsightly" ways that were "sad and jarring" for Johnnie's children.
The aristocrat also writes that Raine relegated Diana and her siblings to "the smallest and plainest attic bedrooms."
"These, in previous generations, had been occupied by the lowliest members of staff," he pens. "Diana, Sarah and I had space for a single bed, a side table and a small chest of drawers in each of our rooms. In a house of ninety rooms – the majority large, and many enormous – this was unnecessary. It was, though, an eloquent expression of where we fitted in Raine’s world."
Spencer plaintively notes, "My father was too much under his new wife’s thumb to get involved in such matters."
