After years of publicity and speculation over Princess Diana's appearance in "The Crown," a dramatization of British royal history, the show's fourth season (opens in new tab), which premiered on Netflix on November 15, finally had its ill-fated moment. In the first episode of season four, Prince Charles, played by Josh O'Connor, meets a teenage Mrs. Diana Spencer (Emma Colin).

While the showrunners have taken some liberties in depicting the first meeting between Prince Charles and Princess Diana, the (brief) relationship between Sarah and the Prince and her sister's involvement in the Prince's courtship is entirely real. Sarah dated Prince Charles for several months in 1977, later taking credit for introducing him to her sister, and even calling herself "Cupid" in their relationship when news of their engagement (opens in new tab) broke in 1981.

Here is everything you need to know about the real-life matchmaker, from his relationship with the royal family to his current relationship with the royal family.

Sarah was born Elizabeth Sarah Lavinia Spencer in 1955 and is Diana's oldest sister. Sarah and her sisters grew up very close to the royal family, and their childhood home was at Sandringham Manor. Like her sisters, Sarah attended West Heath Boarding School in Kent.

In 1980, a few years after her relationship with the Crown Prince ended, Sarah married Neil Edmund McCorquodale and became Lady Sarah McCorquodale; they have three children, Emily, George, and Celia, and two grandchildren.

Sarah and Charles began dating in 1977. At this time, they were both in their twenties and had a series of brief romantic relationships, Charles with "armchair women (opens in new tab)" and Sarah with "thousands of boyfriends (opens in new tab)."

Their relationship came to an abrupt halt within a few months. Sarah gave an interview (opens in new tab) to two reporters in which she confessed that she would not marry the prince "if he were a dustman or the King of England." She also reportedly opened up about her past struggles with eating disorders and alcoholism, dropped the line about "thousands" of suitors, and insisted on keeping a scrapbook of press clippings about her relationship with Prince Charles to show her future grandchildren, telling the interviewers, "She is a public figure made her report that "she seems to have been driven mad by the public.

When she showed the article to her then-boyfriend, he was furious and reportedly told Sarah, "You've done something incredibly stupid."

In a sense, yes. As with their meeting depicted in The Crown, Sarah did not actually orchestrate the formal introduction of her sister and Prince Charles, but she was certainly the reason they met. According to a 1981 report in The Times (opens in new tab), Diana was a 1977 met her future husband in November of 1981, when she was 16 and he was 28, while visiting the Spencer family to meet Sarah. Diana reportedly described her meeting with Charles as "in the middle of a cultivated field."

Later, after Charles and Diana reunited and became engaged after a dizzying courtship, Sarah called herself the ringleader of the pair. 'I introduced them. I'm Cupid," she told The Guardian in 1981,

and she was the one who introduced them.

Diana's eldest sister remained close to the royal family after her separation from Charles. She served as Princess Diana's maid of honor and, along with her sister Jane, accompanied Prince Charles to retrieve the body of Princess Diana, who died in Paris in 1997. She was appointed co-executor of Princess Diana's will and served as its president until the Princess Diana Memorial Fund closed in 2012.

Sarah also remained active in the lives of her nephews, Prince William and Prince Harry, often being present to support their major accomplishments, such as when Harry received his pilot's wings in 2010. More recently, she attended their wedding, as well as the weddings of their own children, both of whom are cousins. Prior to Harry and Meghan Markle's 2018 wedding, a family friend confirmed to Vanity Fair that "Harry is in constant and close contact with the Spencer family" (opens in new tab), and when their son Archie is born in 2019, the royal family will be sure to bring Sarah and other Spencer family members were always present at the birth announcement (opens in new tab).