The Brutal Nickname Princess Diana And Brother Charles Called Their Stepmother

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The tribulations of Princess Diana's life didn't start after she stepped into her famous royal role. Diana had a tortured childhood, marked by the death of the infant brother she never got to meet, her family's unhappiness that she wasn't another male heir, the subsequent collapse of her parents' marriage, and her mother's loss of custody of the children. Seven years after the tumultuous divorce was finalized in 1969, her father, John Spencer, married the socialite Raine McCorquodale. Diana and her brother Charles Spencer learned about the wedding from the newspapers. The stepmother was off on the wrong foot with the children, who quickly nicknamed her "Acid Raine."

To be fair, the late Princess of Wales wasn't just angry with her stepmother. Diana shockingly slapped her father after learning the news, marking the beginning of complicated times at Althorp. McCorquodale withstood the animosity of her young teenaged stepchildren with grace. That doesn't mean she was immune from it. "I could have them all for breakfast if I wanted to," she is quoted as having once said during a private moment in her 2016 obituary in The Telegraph.

Later in life, Charles was able to see that their hostility toward their stepmother was in part a response to their previous traumatic experiences. "Raine was, in many ways, a classic unfortunate stepmother for us," Charles told Marie Claire in 2026. But their relationship remained strained long after they left home. "The worst of Diana and Raine's relationship took place long after childhood and tended to reach particularly low points around major family events," Charles wrote in his September 2026 book, "Swan Song: Diana, My Sister" (via InStyle). But in a twist no one saw coming, Diana made peace with her stepmother in her final years.

Those who are old enough to remember Princess Diana before her shocking death in August 1997 might have a different picture of her relationship with Raine McCorquodale. They might remember the lunch dates they shared at Kensington Palace and public restaurants. In the picture above, they were captured leaving The Connaught hotel in London in March 1997. Diana and McCorquodale's relationship did a highly improbable flip in the mid-'90s. Just a few years earlier, in September 1989, a 28-year-old Diana had pushed her stepmother down the stairs ahead of Charles Spencer's first wedding.

What changed? There are two different theories. In one, Diana is said to have found unwavering support in McCorquodale after her tumultuous split from the now-King Charles III. "[I discovered] she is the mother I never had," Diana once said, according to The Times. From then on, the two developed a strong friendship. They talked on the phone daily, and Diana shared her most intimate secrets with McCorquodale. In fact, Diana's lover and the man who died alongside her, Dodi Fayed, was the son of her stepmother's boss. 

However, Charles Spencer, whose relationship with McCorquodale never improved, believes Diana was trying to get back at their own mother, Frances Shand Kydd. "Diana and my mother had fallen out. So, Diana knew that sort of publicly befriending Raine would be very painful to my mother," he said in the Marie Claire interview. Whether Diana genuinely bonded with her stepmother during a difficult time or whether she used her for revenge is up for debate. But in her brother's opinion, McCorquodale never stopped being Acid Raine. "For Diana, she was something to almost be played with," he said.