Inside Princess Diana's Falling Out With Princess Margaret
Princess Diana was beloved by many — but not always by the royal family she married into, who supposedly became tired of her marriage woes with Charles. At first, Princess Margaret, the Queen's sister, stepped in as an ally for Diana. Having shared similar hurdles, they established a strong relationship. But one wrong move by the People's Princess seemed to destroy that bond, and after all this time, a new development revealed that their fallout could have been avoided.
Diana was a target
If there was any point that revealed the true relationship between Princess Diana and Princess Margaret, it very well might have been at Di's lowest point. After all, the '90s were a chaotic decade for the royals, but especially for Diana and Charles. During that decade, the couple dealt with secret lovers, not-so-secret affairs, and increasingly dramatic headlines. Even after their scandalous divorce was finalized, the royal exes were under constant scrutiny — Diana especially. That's when secret recordings were leaked to the media that revealed one of Diana's deepest, "darkest" secrets.
Lover's lane
Known as the "Squidgygate Tapes," these recorded telephone calls between Princess Diana and an admirer who called her "Squidgy" became a media circus. Practically overnight, an innocent nickname became yet another embarrassment for Diana to endure. The transcripts provided both a risqué look into Di's love life and a scathing critique of the royal family she married into. The leak should never have happened in the first place — talk about an invasion of privacy! — but it did, and it wasn't just one person who leaked the private conversation, but two.
An unlikely source
Funnily enough, the first person to leak the conversation wasn't a personal-space-invading journalist, a mean-spirited gossip, or even a loose-lipped member of Diana's staff. It was thanks to a radio scanner that retired bank manager Cyril Reenan accidentally recorded most of the "Squidgy" conversation. Even though it was said Reenan had no idea what to do with the recording, he eventually sold it to the tabloid newspaper, The Sun, in order to make a little extra cash. And then there was the other eavesdropper.
Tabloid purchase
Not only did Reenan manage to record the conversation, but so did a mid-twenties typist. She was your average citizen who just happened to have the juiciest scoop of the year fall into her lap! And Jane Norgrove was in a similar predicament about how to handle the material. Unsurprisingly, she eventually mailed her copy to other tabloid agencies. Strangely, The Sun chose to not publish the material... but The Enquirer in the U.S. jumped on it.
