Princess Diana truly loved her pearls and they have always been a major part of her style. The new movie, Spencer, creates Diana's love for pearls in intense and dream-nightmare scenes.

I do have spoilers for the movie, but this is about the pearls!

The movie is a fictionalized sequence of events in a three day period starting on Christmas Eve to Boxing Day in 1991. It was a dramatic time in Diana's life as her marriage to Charles was falling apart and the relationship with the Royal family was fracturing.

Diana is not in a comfortable mind set when she arrives at Sandringham for the holidays. Things take a major dive when she opens her Christmas present from Charles. He has given her (in the movie) an enormous strand of presumably South Sea Pearls. This would have been a beautiful thoughtful gift if she hadn't seen the same necklace on Camilla Parker Bowles.

In a dreamy-movie like sequence, she rips off the pearl necklace and begins to eat the pearls...She is clearly not having a loving connection with this pearl strand. The necklace is not savagely destroyed but is worn again and again in great agony by Diana.

The pearls also relate to hazy thoughts Diana is having about Ann Boylen after reading the book Ann Boylen: Life and Death of a Martyr that was mysteriously left by her bed. You remember that Ann loved her pearls as well. Ann was the second and tragic wife of Henry VIII. Diana now believes that she might be killed by Charles to get her out of the way so he can marry Camilla.

This is all very dramatic, but it is a movie. Diana loved her pearls and they were often her signature style from her multi strand chokers to beautiful drop pearl and diamond earrings. And they were usually a comfort for her to wear them.