Her Royal Highness Princess Diana Spenser, gone too soon but Lives & Reigns in Her Son Prince William! Long Live My Lady !!! On her father's side, she was a descendant of King Charles II of England through four illegitimate sons: Henry Fitzroy, 1st Duke of Grafton, son by Barbara Villiers, 1st Duchess of Cleveland Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond and Lennox, son by Louise de Kérouaille Charles Beauclerk, 1st Duke of St Albans, son by Nell Gwyn James Crofts-Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, leader of the famous Monmouth Rebellion in 1685, son by Lucy Walter. She was also a descendant of King James II of England through an illegitimate daughter, Henrietta FitzJames, by his mistress Arabella Churchill.
On her mother's side, Diana was Irish and Scottish, as well as a descendant of American heiress Frances Work, her mother's grandmother and namesake, from whom the considerable Roche fortune was derived.
The Spencers had been close to the British Royal Family for centuries, rising in royal favour during the 1600s. Diana's maternal grandmother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, was a long-time friend and a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. Her father had served as an equerry to King George VI and to Queen Elizabeth II.
In August 2009, the New England Historic Genealogical Society published Richard K. Evans's The Ancestry of Diana, Princess of Wales, for Twelve Generations.
From her marriage in 1981 to her divorce in 1996 she was styled Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales. She was generally called "Princess Diana" by the media despite having no legal right to that particular honorific, as it is reserved for a princess by birthright rather than marriage.
