At a dinner following the opera, she walked, alone, down a huge winding staircase without ever looking at her feet, so we knew she was a princess. But at dinner she ate like your sister, tearing into her meal with a kind of wanton delight, turning aside her lady-in-waiting’s insistence that it was time to be leaving with the flat observation that dessert hadn’t come yet.

Born this day in 1961, Princess Diana—consort (1981–96) of Prince Charles and mother of Princes William and Harry—was widely admired for her charity work and style, and her 1997 death caused a massive outpouring of grief.