What does it mean to have royal blood? You get to go on fun trips around the world, shaping how people view the royal family, and on one of those trips, you see a culture so diverse and rich that you also find yourself adopting a daughter.
That might never be the case for you, but it was for Princess Diana, and the little girl she informally adopted? Avanti Reddy.
The year is 1992. Princess Diana and Prince Charles were on a royal tour of India, and the Princess visited the Lalapet Government High School, where she was welcomed by children performing a tribal Lambadi dance (Daily Star, 2017). They finished their dance, and one child in particular piqued the Princess's attention. Four-year-old Avanti Reddy was seated on the ground right after the presentation.
The child, who is now thirty-seven years of age, recalls the moment like it was yesterday.
“She asked me what my name was, so I told her which school I was in and my class," she shared in an article by Hello Magazine (Hello Magazine, 2017). "I had a cold, so she wiped my nose with her own handkerchief. She kept me with her the whole time, then as she was going said, 'I don't want to leave you.'"
The princess’s maternal instincts were at maximum with Avanti that day. Although she had no daughter, Avanti recalls her saying, “I don't have a daughter, so today you are my daughter.” (Daily Star, 2017).
Although she was just four years of age then, the Princess corresponded with her via letters. In 1997, when Avanti was 10, they were to meet up during a family trip, but sadly, Princess Diana was killed in a car crash before the meet-up could happen (Hello Magazine, 2017).
Avanti remembers the funeral quite clearly: ‘it was very sad’. She further added, “When I got older I started to realise more about who Princess Diana was. I appreciate all the work she did for the charities and all the things she did for poor children and people with leprosy.” (Hello Magazine, 2017).
The years might have gone by, but Avanti still holds on to the cherished memories she has with the princess; one in particular would be the autographed photo, which is framed, and also her wanting to replicate the princess's signature layered haircut, which shows how much connection there was between them (Daily Star, 2017).
Another would be the piece of Indigo silk which was used to line the princess's chair when she visited, which the former Director of School Education Pronoti Suhasini Kavoori keeps in a plastic bag adorned with heart motifs. A treasure she plans to pass on to her daughter (Hello Magazine, 2017).
Avanti grew to become a trained dancer and primary school teacher. Her mother, Japamala Rani, was also a dance teacher, so technically, Avanti was born into the style and had it in her to dance. Her career in dance took her places, as she also danced in various schools in Belgium, which was the trip that would have been a reunion with the princess (Daily Star, 2017).
Their bond might have just been created from a meeting, but it shaped Avanti and even the princess's life because a 2013 DNA study revealed that Prince William (Princess Diana's son) has Indian ancestry.
While the British royal family has long been known for its German roots and has been taunted for it, evidence of Indian ancestry was revealed by an ancestry testing company, British DNA, which carried out DNA tests of Princess Diana's matrilineal cousins and compared them to the database (CNN, 2013).
These tests revealed that Princess Diana had been born of Indian descent and that her third-great-grandmother, who was the prince’s fourth, was the daughter of Eliza Kewark and Theodore Forbes (CNN, 2013).
Eliza had been described as a woman of Armenian descent, but the woman was at least half-Indian by the testing. The DNA company has proven that the testing is accurate because it traced Prince William's mitochondrial DNA, which is passed on from Mother to child. Other samples from unmentioned family members were taken and found to also trace back seven generations to Eliza.
Why did the Royal family keep quiet about it?
There has been no comment from Buckingham Palace, but a likely reason, as stated in the biography of Princess Diana (ABC News), is that the “Unsavoury as the taint of illegitimacy was, even at that distance in time, it was nothing compared with the stigma of what was then known as 'colored blood.' Had it been generally known that Ruth [Diana's great-grandmother] and her children were part-Indian, they might never have made good marriages (ABC News, 2013).
It's been three decades, and Avanti still holds on to what is left of her relationship with the Princess: a framed photograph, some letters and her memory of that afternoon in Hyderabad.
References:
- Daily Star. (2017). The Indian girl who Diana called 'my daughter'. https://www.thedailystar.net
- Hello Magazine. (2017). Princess Diana's 1992 India visit. https://www.hellomagazine.com
- CNN. (2013). DNA tests reveal Prince William's Indian ancestry. https://edition.cnn.com
- ABC News. (2013). Princess Diana's hidden ancestral secret revealed. https://abcnews.com