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Comtesse Raine de Chambrun, born Raine McCorquodale (9 September, 1929), is the only child of the famous romance novelist Dame Barbara Cartland and her first husband, Alexander McCorquodale, an Army officer who was an heir to a printing fortune. Throughout her life, she has variously held titles of Countess of Dartmouth, Countess Spencer, and Countess Chambrun through different marriages.
Biography
Raine McCorquodale first marriage in 1947 was to the Hon. Gerald Humphry Legge, who succeeded to the courtesy title Viscount Lewisham and later became the 9th Earl of Dartmouth. They had four children, and divorced in 1976. During this time, as Countess of Dartmouth, she served as a Conservative member of the Greater London Council, representing Richmond-upon-Thames.
Raine, Countess of Dartmouth, second marriage, at Caxton Hall, London, England, on 14 July, 1976, was to Edward Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer. Deeply unpopular with her stepchildren, who included the late Diana, Princess of Wales, she was ridiculed by them and other family members as "Acid Raine" and her time at Althorp, the Spencer family seat — a period that saw the ancestral house operatically redecorated and treasures sold — dismissed as the "Raine of Terror." The Earl died in 1992, upon which Diana and her brother put her clothes into black rubbish bags and kicked them down the stairs, and refused to let her remove any furniture from the ancestral home without providing proof of purchase. The book also claims that on another occasion Diana pushed Raine herself down the stairs.
Raine, Countess Spencer third marriage, in 1993, to Comte Jean-François Pineton de Chambrun, a descendant of the marquis de La Fayette and a member of a prominent French family related to the presidential Roosevelts. Son of Jean-Pierre Pineton de Chambrun (a deaf biochemist-artist marquis) and a great-grandson of Ohio heiress Maria Longworth Storer Nichols (the founder of Rookwood Pottery), he was previously married to Josalee Douglas, an American debutante, who was a first cousin of the late Princess Margaret's intimate friend, Sharman Douglas. Chambrun's courtship of the widowed Lady Spencer lasted 33 days before they married.
Upon the couple's divorce in 1995, Comtesse Raine de Chambrun sought to revert to her previous title of Raine, Countess Spencer, though as a remarried widow any claim to that title was now lost.
She is a member of the board of directors of Harrods, the department store owned by the father of Diana, Princess of Wales' friend, Dodi Al-Fayed, who died with her in the car crash that claimed their lives in 1997.
Media reports suggested that at the time of her death, Diana, Princess of Wales had reconciled with Raine and become friends, ironically while her relationship with her natural mother, broke down irretrievably.
Footnotes
- Kitty Kelley The Royals. The reliability of Kelley's book has been questioned.