She could have been queen! But this respected farmer’s wife would rather have “married a garbage man” than someone she didn’t love. So instead she played Cupid to Charles and Diana

When Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, it seemed no aspect of the fairytale wedding went unnoticed – from the bride’s extraordinary 23-foot train to the role her father, Earl Spencer, played as he walked unsteadily through the aisle walked.

But there was another figure who, although she preferred to stay behind the scenes, had played a central role that day.

Not only was Lady Sarah McCorquodale Diana’s eldest sister, she was also a friend and confidante of the groom – a former friend, in fact – and the woman who, as she later admitted, had played cupid in bringing Charles and Diana together.

She would later become a trusted ally to her sister when the marriage ended, as well as a support to Princes William and Harry when their mother died under such terrible circumstances.

“I introduced them,” Lady Sarah said of Charles and Diana ahead of their wedding. “I’m Cupid.”

Just three years earlier, it was speculated that Lady Sarah would be the one to marry Charles.

She had met the Prince of Wales at a polo match in 1977, at a time of increasing public interest in who the heir to the throne would choose as his bride.

Charles was then approaching thirty.

Lady Sarah abruptly put an end to the rumors in 1978 after a ski trip with the Prince in the Swiss resort of Klosters.

It was a “great vacation, but there is no question of an engagement,” she told reporters.

Sarah, then 22, said: ‘There’s no way I’m marrying him. I’m not in love with him. And I wouldn’t marry anyone I didn’t love, whether he was the garbage man or the King of England.

‘If he asked me, I would turn him down. I would only marry for love.’

But as she poured cold water on her own royal match, she fanned the flames of a possible marriage between him and her sister.

It was Sarah who had first introduced Charles to Diana at the Spencer family manor of Althorp in Northamptonshire.

Educated at the famous West Heath boarding school, near Sevenoaks, in Kent, Lady Sarah later worked in London.

When younger sister Diana moved to London in the late 1970s, she shared Sarah’s flat.

Andrew Morton’s biography of Diana suggested that Sarah assigned her sister much of the cleaning work, although Diana did not mind the work.

It was during Diana’s stay in London that her relationship with Charles blossomed. There was intense media attention on the young woman who could become the Princess of Wales.

In the meantime, Lady Sarah had met Neil McCorquodale, a farmer and former officer in the Coldstream Guards.

They married in a modest ceremony on 17 May 1980 at St Mary’s Church in the village of Great Brington near Althorp with a reception at the family home.

Her sister’s engagement was another matter and was international news when it was announced on February 24, 1981.

The wedding at St Pauls on June 29 that year was televised worldwide to 750 million people.

St Paul’s was chosen partly because it could seat more people than Westminster Abbey, the traditional venue for royal weddings. An estimated 600,000 people lined the route.

The sisters followed very different paths – one was a princess, the other a farmer – but they remained close.

Lady Sarah – or Lady Sarah McCorquodale, as she had become – often accompanied Diana on official visits as one of her ladies-in-waiting. And Sarah was one of the few people Diana trusted during her final years.

Sarah, who has three children of her own, often helped the princess care for William and Harry.

The sisters regularly went on holiday with their children.

After Diana’s death on August 31, 1997, her sisters and Charles were responsible for collecting her body.

Lady Sarah read a heartfelt poem at Diana’s funeral.

Lady Sarah was co-executor of Diana’s will and also became chair of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund before it closed in 2012.

Sarah, 69, and sister Jane, 67 – now Lady Jane Fellowes – have remained close to their cousins ​​Prince William and Prince Harry.

When Prince William said an emotional farewell in October 2012 to his childhood nanny, Olga Powell, who cared for him both in his youth and in the most important days of his adult life, his aunt was by his side.

She also attended William’s 2011 wedding to Kate Middleton, as well as Harry’s 2018 wedding to Meghan Markle in 2018, and their son Archie’s christening the following year.

The close bond between the sisters is reflected in a Spencer family tradition that all three – Sarah, Jane and Diana – have embraced in their lives.

At Lady Sarah’s wedding, the bride wore a classic bouquet of white flowers and a high-neck lace dress, along with the Spencer family tiara.

The tiara, made by Garrard’s, features an elaborate design of stylized flowers decorated with diamonds in silver settings.

Believed to date from the 18th century, it was given as a wedding gift to Diana’s grandmother, Cynthia, Viscountess Althorp, by distant relative Lady Sarah Spencer in 1919.

While all three Spencer sisters wore the headpiece on their wedding days, their mother, Frances Shand Kydd, did not wear it when she married Earl Spencer in 1954.

The Spencer family has long been part of the British aristocracy, and two of Sarah’s grandmothers – Cynthia Spencer and Ruth Roche, Baroness Fermoy – served as ladies-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

The family had such a close relationship with the royal family that the Queen Mother was godmother to Sarah, who herself shares the Queen Mother’s first name and was born Elizabeth Sarah Lavinia.

Although Princess Diana was not a bridesmaid at her eldest sister’s wedding, Princess Margaret’s daughter, Lady Sarah Chatto, was.

Lady Sarah and Neil McCorquodale remain together and have three adult children, Emily Jane, Celie Rose and George Edmund.

The couple enjoy a peaceful life near Grantham, Lincolnshire, where she served a one-year term as High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 2009. In 2010 she became a master of the Belvoir Hunt.