We've already seen how much Prince George and Princess Charlotte look just like their late grandmother, but a newly colorized photograph reveals how much Princess Diana took after her own dad, John Spencer.
Her brother Charles Spencer shared the striking portrait on Twitter last week, thanking digital colorist Marina Amaral for "turning one of my favourite black and white pictures of my father into this beautiful colour image." Amaral, co-author of The Colour of Time with Dan Jones, will attend a literary festival at Althorp (the Spencer family estate, where Diana is buried) this fall.
Another tweet from the festival account revealed the original photograph Amaral had altered. Saturating the image highlighted the blonde hair and bright blue eyes shared by John and his youngest daughter, qualities lost in the monochrome original.
Born in 1924, John Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer had his own ties to the royal family. "Johnnie" attended Eton and the Royal Military College at Sandhurst before serving as a Captain in the Royal Scots Greys during World War II, according to The Washington Post.
After the war, he worked as Equerry to King George VI and then Queen Elizabeth II after she ascended to the throne. (An equerry is a personal attendant to a senior member of the royal family and holds one of the most important positions in the household; you might remember Group Captain Peter Townsend working as one from The Crown.)
Another Twitter user posted an image of John Spencer in action during a royal tour:
In fact, the Queen and other members of the royal family even attended his wedding to Frances Ruth Roche in 1954. The couple had five children, one of whom died shortly after birth. Besides Charles and Diana, two older sisters — Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes — also grew up at Althorp. When John and Frances divorced in 1969, the father gained custody of all four children.
He famously walked Diana down the aisle at her 1981 wedding only a few years after suffering a debilitating stroke, albeit with some bittersweet emotions. "There are times I wish she was marrying an ordinary chap, so I could have her and my son-in-law living here with me in the park," he said after her engagement to Prince Charles.
When John passed away in 1992 at the age of 68 from a heart attack, Charles inherited the title Earl Spencer. Unfortunately, Diana would only die prematurely five years later in a Paris car accident. More than two decades after her death, this rare photograph serves as a powerful reminder of how the Spencer family would change royal history forever.
