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Princess Diana ’s brother Charles Spencer took a stroll down memory lane over the weekend. Princes William and Harry ’s maternal uncle, 56, shared on Twitter a rare vintage photo of himself and his late sister from their childhood. The throwback snapshot, which wasn’t captioned, showed the siblings sweetly standing next to each other. The Princess of Wales was pictured wearing a pink gingham dress and wrapping one arm around her younger brother, who was dressed in blue shorts and a polo.
Royal fans praised Diana as a protective big sister. “A beautiful photo! I can see the closeness and protectiveness of Diana as a big sister!” one commented. Another tweeted, “Princess Diana seemed like a caring elder sister. Always loved and never forgotten.”
The Princess of Wales tragically died in 1997 following a car accident in Paris. Charles, Ninth Earl Spencer, commemorated the 23rd anniversary of his sister’s death in August by lowering the Spencer family flag to half-mast at Althorp House, the stately home in Northamptonshire where he and Diana grew up. “My first family duty on 31 August. Never forgotten,” he wrote alongside the picture.
Charles has opened up about his sister in the past, calling her “incredibly brave” in a 2017 interview with People magazine. “First of all, none of us ever called her ‘Di’ at home,” he shared. “In fact, there are so many myths from our childhood that are just so ridiculous. That’s one of them. I just think she was never shy, but she was canny about people and she was reserved to start with. And she would take a judgment of somebody before reacting to them. So, that’s not shy . . . that’s actually quite clever.”
“She could make any person, whether they were the grandest or the most humble, totally at ease,” Charles added. “It’s an incredible gift.”