Countess Raine Spencer was standing in her grand English manor when the most famous woman in the world lunged forward and shoved her down the stairs.
Life had been one steep climb for Raine — until she met Princess Diana, who was determined to keep her down, both physically and metaphorically.
The daughter of a romance novelist, Raine used her beauty and her wits to rise through the social ranks until she was a noblewoman with a luxurious home, an extensive staff and a wardrobe of taffeta gowns that made her look like a delicate little cream puff.
But as she tumbled down the steps, Raine might have wondered if it was all worth it.
A fortuitous marriage brought Raine into Diana's ancestral home.
In a scandal that rocked London high society, she had left her husband, Lord Dartmouth, for an even higher born aristocrat, Earl Spencer, in 1976.
Her new husband came with many treasures, including Althorp, a sprawling, 5,300 hectare estate that had been in his family since the 16th century.
But he also had four children from a previous marriage, two of whom still lived at home: his son and heir Charles, the Viscount Althorp, and his youngest daughter, little Lady Diana Spencer.
Traumatised by their parents' acrimonious divorce, the children despised their new stepmother — so much so, they sang "Raine, Raine, go away" to her every chance they got.
Even after Diana grew up, married the heir to the British throne and became the Princess of Wales, she maintained her rage against Raine.
And in 1989, the tension between them exploded.
The Spencers had gathered at Althorp for the wedding of Diana's little brother when an argument broke out.
"It happened on the top of the saloon stairs," Raine's personal assistant, Sue Howe, recounted in the documentary, Princess Diana's Wicked Stepmother.
"She had a furious row with Raine because Diana was so upset that her own mother had been ignored in the ancestral home, and she pushed her, and Raine fell down the stairs.
"She was badly bruised and was dreadfully upset."
Ms Howe believed that the then 28-year-old princess, whose marriage to Prince Charles was beginning to spin out of control, was "very stressed" at the time.
"It was not justified at all. It was a cruel, heartless thing to do," she said.
But three years after she sent her stepmother tumbling down the steps, Diana was still unrepentant.
"I pushed her down the stairs, which gave me enormous satisfaction," Diana told her vocal coach in a recorded conversation in 1992.
"I wanted to throttle that stepmother of mine. She brought me such grief."
The war between Diana and Raine put two very different women at odds.
Diana was a blue-blooded aristocrat, born into one of the most important and powerful families in British history, whose destiny was to sit upon a throne.
Raine, meanwhile, made her own luck.
She parlayed her beauty, her charm, and her carefully concealed intelligence into three favourable marriages to men with titles, as well as a short-lived career in politics.
But fate held many surprises for both Raine and Diana.
In the final year of Diana's short life, when she was cast out by the royal family, the princess made a startling discovery.
Her "wicked" stepmother wasn't wicked at all, but the maternal figure she had always desperately needed. (Courtesy ABC Australia)
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