Diana, Princess of Wales's Birth Chart

Two measures set this order, the weight astrologers give a kind of feature and how few simulated 1960s births share it. Leading are the yod (about one chart in 7) and the T-square (about one chart in 6); Mercury's backward motion (about one chart in 5) and its combustion (about one chart in 4) come third and fourth. Fifth and sixth are dignities, Taurus for Venus (about one chart in 7) and Capricorn for Saturn (about 45%), each the sign its planet rules. Venus returns seventh as Lord of the Geniture (about one chart in 10), and Jupiter's retrograde motion closes the list (about 30%).

Six of the eight hold from midnight to midnight. The T-square and the lordship of Venus lean on the clock, yet neither changes across the reported times: the T-square lasted from 4:50 AM that morning to 5:46 AM the next, and Venus held the lordship from 10:22 AM until 10:21 PM.

English birth registers of the period noted a time only for multiple births, and Penny Junor's 1983 biography, which confirms the date and Park House, gives no hour. The Norfolk Record Office, citing the Sandringham baptism register, dates her christening to August 30, 1961. Britain kept summer time that year from March 26, 1961 to October 29, 1961, so the evening hour is 18:45 UTC on July 1, 1961.

Penny Thornton, Neil Spencer, Nicholas Campion and Richard Houck all report the palace's 2:00 PM at the engagement of February 24, 1981; Thornton, Spencer and Houck add that the same office put out 7:45 PM about a week afterward. Houck also cites a letter of August 3, 1995, from the Queen's press office to the astrologer Frank Clifford that repeated the evening figure.

Thornton, who read Diana's chart from 1986 to 1992, writes in With Love from Diana (1995) that Diana's mother put the birth a little after two, just before play began at Wimbledon, the same moment as the palace's first figure; Houck says the mother gave the astrologer Charles Harvey 7:45 PM. Campion writes, "In 1993, Diana offered me two birth times via an intermediary": 2:15 PM, then, once he queried it, 7:45 PM. Houck adds a psychic, Karve, who supplied 2:10 PM blind, with no documentary basis.

That leaves the time disputed: conflicting accounts, none verified. No source reproduces the 1981 statements or the 1995 letter, Harvey's own account is not among them, and the palace spoke almost twenty years after the birth. This page uses 7:45 PM, the one with the palace's correction, Diana's second answer and the mother's word to Harvey behind it; the afternoon has the palace's first statement, Diana's first answer and Thornton's Wimbledon detail. Clifford's letter or Harvey's notes, if published, could settle it.

The horizon divides the two families of times. Sagittarius rose over Sandringham from 6:07 PM to 8:39 PM, and the evening figure keeps that sign even if the true birth came 1 hour 38 minutes sooner or 54 minutes afterward; Libra rose from 12:20 PM to 3:14 PM, taking in every afternoon account. The rising sign carries the chart ruler with it, Jupiter or Venus under both the traditional and modern rulerships, and gives every planet a different house: the Sun, for instance, sits in the 7th house by evening and the 9th house by afternoon. Even the lunar phase in Dane Rudhyar's scheme shifts, from full to disseminating at 7:05 PM.

The yod's base is a sextile from Mercury (3°12′ Cancer) to Pluto (6°02′ Virgo), 2°50′ from exact, and both are quincunx Jupiter, the apex, at 5°05′ Aquarius, the Pluto leg 0°56′ wide and the Mercury leg 1°53′. Mercury, the quickest, moved just 0°07′ between 2:00 PM and 7:45 PM, so this yod, present in about one chart in 7 born in the 1960s, stands at every competing time.

Writers on the yod treat its apex as the planet asked to keep adjusting, since a quincunx joins signs sharing neither element nor mode. Here the apex is a retrograde Jupiter in Aquarius.

The second figure is tighter. Venus at 24°23′ Taurus squares the Moon at 25°02′ Aquarius within 0°38′ and Uranus at 23°20′ Leo within 1°03′, while the Moon opposes Uranus at 1°42′, all in fixed signs; T-squares of any kind occur in about one chart in 6. Its apex, Venus, is the chart's strongest planet. At 2:00 PM the Moon stood at 21°30′ Aquarius, loosening the square to Venus to 2°38′ without breaking the figure.

Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune were all retrograde, whatever the hour. Mercury was backing up at 0°28′ a day, a condition shared by about one chart in 5 born in the 1960s; Jupiter crept at 0°06′ a day, as in about 30% of that decade's charts.

Saturn, at 27°48′ Capricorn, lies in the 1st house only because the next cusp falls at 29°49′ Capricorn: a birth 7 minutes earlier would move it to the 2nd house, and one 17 minutes later would carry Jupiter into the 1st house. At 52°49′ north the evening chart's Placidus cusps also leave Leo and Aquarius intercepted.

The Sun, about 10 days past the June solstice, had a declination of 23°05′ north, 0°21′ inside the limit. No body was out of bounds; after the Sun, Pluto came closest, at 21°00′ north.

Of the shared placements, the lights draw the most comment: Western astrologers tie a Cancer Sun to attachment to home and a protective reflex, and read a Moon in Aquarius, a fixed air sign, as feeling routed through ideals and causes; the two signs, five apart, share neither element nor mode.

The closest contact in the table, Uranus sextile the Midheaven at 0°16′, is also the most fragile: with the Midheaven advancing about 16.0 degrees an hour, it holds only from 7:30 PM to 8:01 PM and is absent from the 2:00 PM chart.

Two more contacts to the angles start just ahead of the stated minute. Saturn's square to the Midheaven came into orb at 7:38 PM and Uranus's trine to the Ascendant at 7:39 PM, so a birth 7 minutes earlier would lose both, and no afternoon account has either.

The planetary contacts are sturdier. The Sun's trine to Neptune, Cancer to Scorpio and 1°01′ wide, holds all day; many astrologers tie the pairing to imagination and quick sympathy. Venus trines Saturn, 3°24′ wide and applying, and Mars closes on Pluto in Virgo at 4°23′. Mars's out-of-sign opposition to the Moon, Virgo against Aquarius, formed only at 3:41 PM, after every afternoon account.

The planets spread across 270°38′ of the zodiac with three wide gaps, the largest 89°21′, a splay that holds whatever the hour. The evening chart's only cluster, Mars, Uranus and Pluto in the 8th house, scatters across the 10th house and 11th house at the afternoon times.

Counting the planets plus the two angles, earth leads with four points and fire trails with two, Uranus and the evening Ascendant in Sagittarius; at 2:00 PM the Ascendant turns to air. Fixed signs lead the modes with five, three of them the T-square.

The Sun's altitude at 7:45 PM was 12°00′, with 1 hour 40 minutes of daylight left, and its center reached the horizon only at 9:18 PM, the moment that ends a day chart in the traditional sect scheme; every afternoon account falls in daylight too. The diurnal team of Sun, Jupiter and Saturn is therefore in sect, Saturn in its own sign besides, while the nocturnal Moon, Venus and Mars are out of sect.

Venus tops the strength tally on 88 from its domicile (about one chart in 7), its triplicity and a succedent house, which makes it Lord of the Geniture, as Venus is in about one chart in 10. Saturn, at home in Capricorn as in about 45% of charts born in the 1960s, ties Mars on 77, helped by an angular house at every reported time.

Mercury sits last on 23: retrograde, slow and combust all day, 6°27′ from the Sun, a state found in about one chart in 4 and one older astrologers likened to a planet lost in the Sun's glare.

The events table lists ten dates from Diana's public life with their sources. Her engagement to Charles, Prince of Wales, was officially announced on February 24, 1981, when she was 19, the occasion on which the palace first gave out a birth time; they married at St Paul's Cathedral in London on July 29, 1981.

Prince William was born on June 21, 1982, and Prince Harry on September 15, 1984, both at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington. On April 9, 1987, she officially opened the Broderip Ward for people with HIV/AIDS at the Middlesex Hospital in London.

John Major told the House of Commons on December 9, 1992, that she and the Prince of Wales had decided to separate, as Hansard records. Her BBC Panorama interview was broadcast on November 20, 1995, and the divorce was finalized on August 28, 1996, when she was 35.

On August 7, 1997, she began a four-day visit to landmine projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She died in Paris on August 31, 1997, aged 36, after a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel.

Matching uses only what every reported hour shares: the Cancer Sun, and the Aquarius Moon as a sign but not a degree, since the afternoon and evening Moons sit 3°31′ apart. Imelda Marcos comes first: her Sun lies within a degree of Diana's, and so does her Venus; Ariana Grande has Mars as close; Lionel Messi ranks third overall with no planet inside two degrees; Tom Cruise, fourth, has a Sun within two. Nobody on the roster shares the birth date.

In the Lahiri zodiac, 23°19′ behind the tropical one, the Sun drops back to 16°20′ Gemini, Mithuna, beside a Mercury in its own sign. Venus keeps Vrishabha and Saturn Makara, so both own-sign placements survive; Jupiter slips into Makara, its debilitation in Indian astrology, and Mars, Uranus and Pluto move into Simha (Leo).

At 7:45 PM the sidereal Moon is in Kumbha (Aquarius), which it entered at 4:56 PM, 2 hours 48 minutes earlier, and the lagna is Vrishchika (Scorpio), a sign it held only until 8:08 PM. The afternoon accounts would give a Makara (Capricorn) Moon, at 28°20′ Capricorn for Diana's 2:15 PM, and a Kanya (Virgo) lagna.

Saturn returned to 27°48′ Capricorn once in her lifetime, on January 19, 1991, when she was 29.6 years old. Jupiter's first return needed three passes, the planet turning retrograde across its natal degree, the last on November 9, 1973; the second came on March 1, 1985 and the third on February 12, 1997. Jupiter moved only 0°01′ between the competing hours, so these dates hardly depend on the time.

Precise astronomical calculations for the Park House site at 52°49′ N, 0°30′ E supply every position, matching the site's API (difference < 0.0002°); signs are tropical, houses Placidus. Every account is read on British Summer Time, so the casts differ by hour alone. Rates compare the chart with simulated 1960s births worldwide and measure frequency, not meaning; see about.