Princess Dianaquietly sought guidance from an unexpected source — her astrologer — who helped the young royal navigate life’s biggest challenges and questions in the years after she married then-Prince Charles.
“I think that [our] very first session was where astrology showed its strengths and ability to really be a guiding light,” Penny Thornton exclusively told Us of her introduction to Diana, who she worked with from 1986 to 1992. Diana tragically died five years later at age 36 after a 1997 car crash. “You want to give a client something that they can hold on to. And if they’re going through a very difficult time, what is it that’s going to help them on a daily basis or in some kind of way to get through whatever it is they’re getting through.”
Reflecting on her past exchanges with Diana, Thornton claimed the People’s Princess said that she “felt powerless” and as if she “was in a goldfish bowl” following her wedding to Charles, now 77, on July 29, 1981.
“She couldn’t reach out and get help from Charles. She couldn’t, you know, approach anyone really in the family,” Thornton claimed of Diana’s marriage to Charles, who assumed the British throne in 2022. “She felt very isolated and hopeless, really. I felt well, that sense of powerlessness has got to be turned around. So, if you are the victim – which, of course, she was a victim in her way of seeing the situation – then my suggestion was that she should work with victims. In other words, she should go out and help those who suffered and were suffering.”
Thornton believes that Diana embraced her advice to “carve out a really purposeful path” of giving back to individuals in need. Thornton, who also serves as psychotherapist, worked with Diana from 1986 to 1992.
“When I was first with Diana, the first consultation I assumed would be the last,” the With Love From Diana author recalled to Us. “When I went [to the palace], I didn’t know the extent of her difficulties and how unhappy she was. I had no idea. … I really didn’t expect to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth the first time I went there.”
According to Thornton, their initial session “set in motion” a different type of working relationship than a typical client arrangement.
“She would phone me if there was something that she needed support with, [and] then we talked that through on the phone,” Thornton said. “I was out of London at that time. It wasn’t like I was living in Kensington and could just kind of drop by [the palace]. I did see her a couple of times more at Kensington Palace for really serious updates, but most of it was a back and [forth]. She would ask me questions. I’d speak to her semi-regularly on the phone, and sometimes I give her a written update on something, especially before some really big kind of events.”
Despite dealing with a sense of overwhelming isolation, Diana was an “absolute ray of a bright sunshine” whenever she met with Thornton.
“[Her] charisma is very palpable when you were with her,” she said. “I had been advised that I was to curtsy and call her, ‘Your Royal Highness.’ I started out by curtsying, and I almost got ‘Your Royal Highness’ out when she said, ‘Oh, stop that stuff and nonsense! You know, just call me Diana. Let’s go upstairs.’”
Thornton said she will never forget the first time they met. What began as an introduction turned into a four-hour conversation.
“I had [a] headache, and I said to Diana, ‘You know, you don’t happen to have a paracetamol, [or] something like that? remembered Thornton. “And she said, ‘Oh yes, I do,’ and she disappeared into the kitchen or wherever it was and came out later with a glass of water and two paracetamol, and she had a little box in her hand. It was a little gold box with a little bee on the top of it. She said, ‘I just want to thank you so very much for everything you’ve done, and you made everything well,’ and she was just very complimentary.”
In her meetings with Thornton, Diana allegedly asked several questions about her future with Charles. (Diana and Charles eventually divorced in 1996 and he married his now-wife, Queen Camilla, in 2005.)
“Everything was about Charles, and, you know, it changed. I mean, I don’t know whether you’ve ever been in a marriage or a relationship where it starts off with high hopes, but then as it goes on, the divisions between you get worse,” Thornton said. “You go through tunnels where you think it can’t get any worse than this, and then through spaces where you’re back in a space where you’re happy again, where you can certainly survive. And so, being with her in those six years, there were times when she was sunk in despair that this could ever be sorted, and times when she believed, ‘I think we can work this, I think we can do this.’”
Thornton, who has studied Diana’s astrological chart, said the princess “lived her chart thoroughly.”
“She had this kind of ethereal quality,” she said. “People would say in hospital, for instance, when she walked into a ward, it was almost like she came in with a shining light. I mean, people would kind of recover because she had been at their bedside. She had this kind of radiance and charisma that was extraordinary. It was her superpower, you might say, and that’s also shown if you look hard enough in the astrology. She was her chart.”
Diana is survived by her two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, as well as her siblings.
