On July 29, 1981, Diana Spencer married Prince Charles in the royal wedding of the century, becoming Princess of Wales in the process.
St Paul's Cathedral was packed to the rafters with royals, relatives, friends and well-wishers, but one of Diana's family members was notably absent on the big day.
It was her most famous relative, eccentric step-grandmother Dame Barbara Cartland.
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A popular romance novelist, Cartland was a 'royal' in her own right at the time, having become known as the "Queen of Romance".
Though she wasn't related to Diana by blood, the novelist joined the Spencer family in 1976 when her daughter, Raine, married Diana's father.
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Just 15 at the time, Diana was already aware of her new step-grandmother and had been reading her novels for years.
But according to Cartland, that wasn't always a good thing: "The only books Diana ever read were mine, and they weren't terribly good for her."
Sure, it gave the pair something to connect over and foster a new relationship, but it also supposedly skewed Diana's view of romance.
Cartland wrote about rose-coloured worlds where young heroines were swept off their feet by dashing, often aristocratic heroes.
The couple would fall in love, have their 'happily ever after', and that was that.
The romances Cartland wrote were idealised and she knew it, once confessing: "The publishers said I should go modern and write about divorce and people getting into bed, but I said no.
"I know it happens, but it's not romantic."
That's all well and good for a novel, but when a real-world 20-year-old marries a 32-year-old Prince and future King, they don't always get their 'happily ever after'.
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Of course, there's no knowing if Cartland's books really did influence Diana's love life, though it seems unlikely.
And at the time of their engagement and marriage, there was little indication Charles and Diana's future together would be anything but happy.
Still, Cartland refrained from commenting on her royal step-granddaughter's relationship at the time.
"They'll all die of fury if I say anything about it," she quipped in 1981.
"After all, I'm the only one who's got anything to sell, and I don't want people to say, 'Look there, she's just clinging to the royal bandwagon.'"
She was nowhere to be seen when the big day rolled around, and it's unclear if she received an invitation but declined it, or was never invited at all.
Still, it should come as no surprise that some members of Diana's family were missing on her wedding day.
The late princess was reportedly only allowed to invite 100 people to her wedding, despite there being more than 2,000 guests in attendance.
"I think they [the royal family] expected her to just, stay in the background and stay quiet, and follow five steps behind Prince Charles," an old friend of Diana's explained.
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2020-11-20 20:31:00Z
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