Countess Spencer was born Raine McCorquodale, the only child of Army officer Alexander McCorquodale and romantic novelist Dame Barbara Cartland. Her third marriage came in 1993, to the rather younger and allegedly financially challenged Comte Jean-François de Chambrun. Burrell told The Post that the princess would arrange for newspaper photographers to snap pictures of her embracing Raine in public — a move orchestrated to spite Shand Kydd, from whom Diana was then estranged. The news agency said the Countess and Diana reconciled their relationship in the last years of the Princess's life, having previously had a frosty relationship. Southwest captain forced to lend his shirt to passenger with 'lewd' top, Meet the tallest teen strutting into the Guinness World Records, Chris Christie still hospitalized with COVID-19 after six days, Unholy trinity: Priest arrested for threesome with dominatrices on church altar, Olympian rumored to have given birth to Putin's twins vanishes: report, Princess Diana talks with her stepmother Countess Raine Spencer. Raine, the daughter of flamboyant British romance novelist Barbara Cartland, first entered Diana’s universe when dating her father, Earl John Spencer, following his 1969 divorce from Diana’s mother, Frances Shand Kydd. Was she the evil stepmother? “The princess did a complete U-turn and invited Raine and her husband for lunch,” said Burrell. Diana and Prince Charles arrive at the church for the funeral of Earl Spencer, Diana's father, who died on 29 March, 1992. The marriage lasted two years and afterwards she reverted to her previous name, Countess Spencer. She was the daughter of Alexander McCorquodale and the romantic novelist and socialite Dame Barbara Cartland. Her stepfather, Hugh, was equally distant, and the two sons of the second marriage were too far apart from her in age to provide true sibling affection. Terms of Use They are at a private viewing at the auctioneer’s Christies of dresses worn by the princess to be sold in aid of the Aids Crisis Trust and the Royal Marsden hospital cancer fund. A year after Earl Spencer's death, Raine Spencer married for a third time, to Count Jean-Francois Pineton de Chambrun. This story has been shared 632,374 times. Raine, meanwhile, was banished to a seat at the back of St. Paul’s Cathedral. First published on Fri 21 Oct 2016 20.43 BST, Raine, Countess Spencer, who has died aged 87, was an irrepressible force. “They were strong to the core — survivors,” Diana’s former butler, Paul Burrell, told The Post. She is survived by her chidren. 632,374, This story has been shared 98,564 times. It was September 1989, and Princess Diana was staying at her ancestral home of Althorp in Northamptonshire, England, when her fury for her stepmother boiled over. She was, however, gratified when she achieved a reconciliation with Diana, who invited her to dinner at her Kensington Palace apartment and told her: “Thank you for looking after Daddy. She had a long career in local government with Westminster and Greater London councils and later divorced her husband shortly before marrying Earl Spencer. Your California Privacy Rights She would have made a first-rate chairman of the rail network, and, like Mussolini, would have made the trains run on time.”.