Photo: Getty

Princess Diana will always remain missed by royal fans, but she is thankfully survived by her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, and her Spencer family members, who wish to keep her memory alive in touching ways. Charles Spencer, Diana’s brother, shared a sweet look back at the princess in her childhood years via a throwback photo of the Spencer family, posted to his Instagram.

In the sepia-toned photo, Diana is seen posing in front of a window for a family photo alongside her father, John Spencer, who sports a classy suit and tie. In the image, her two sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes, shoot the camera wide, bright-eyed smiles. Charles, in his own tiny suit and age appropriate bowl haircut, gives the camera a subtle smirk.

Diana, who is seated off to the far right side of the photograph, gives the camera a steely look, holding on to the window curtain and looking over her shoulder as if she didn’t realize a photo was being taken. The future princess, who would have been between 10 and 11 years old, wore sharp bangs with flippy ends, and wore a sweet layered long-sleeve top with a skirt. “Family photograph, 1972,” Charles captioned the throwback image.

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Diana’s early years were filled with both good moments, and rough ones. Her nanny, Mary Clarke, told The Times in 2020 that Diana was “a lovely child, a real English rose with rosy cheeks and that downward glance everyone got to know. I had been told by the other house staff about some mischievous tricks she’d got up to. So I did have a bit of trepidation. But I never had anything like that with Diana. I found her initially shy, [but] soon she would warm to you…once you gave her confidence, she really excelled.”

Charles, however, revealed that the absence of their mother was hard on them growing up. “Diana and I had two older sisters who were away at school, so she and I were very much in it together and I did talk to her about it,” he explained in his 2020 interview in The Sunday Times. “Our father was a quiet and constant source of love, but our mother wasn’t cut out for maternity. Not her fault, she couldn’t do it. She was in love with someone else—infatuated, really.”

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He further explained that Diana “was the big sister who mothered me as a baby… and endured those long train journeys between our parents’ homes with me at weekends.”