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Princess Diana
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The People's Princess
One of the best known icons of the late 20th century Diana, Princess of Wales (more commonly - but incorrectly - known as Princess Diana; 1 July 1961 - 31 August 1997), is best known for her charity work and as the wife of Charles, Prince of Wales. She is the mother of two sons, who are the second (William) and third (Harry) in line to the British throne.
From the time of her engagement in 1981 until her death in a car accident in 1997, Diana was a high-profile celebrity. She is also remembered for her charity work for the benefit of AIDS sufferers and the victims of landmines.
Early life
Diana was the youngest daughter of Edward Spencer, Viscount Althorp, and his wife Frances. She was a descendant of King Charles I. Diana's parents divorced in 1969.
On the death of her paternal grandfather, Albert Spencer, 7th Earl Spencer in 1975, her father became the eighth Earl Spencer, and she acquired the courtesy title of The Lady Diana Spencer. In 1976 Diana's father was remarried to Raine, Countess of Dartmouth. It is widely reported that there was Diana strongly disliked her stepmother.
She was educated in Norfolk and at boarding school in Kent, and was regarded as an academically below-average student. She was an accomplished pianist. At 16 she attended a finishing school in Switzerland. Diana excelled in sports and reportedly longed to be a ballerina.
Family and Marriage
Diana's family had been associated with the British Royal Family for decades. Prince Charles briefly dated Lady Sarah Spencer (Diana's older sister) in the 1970s. Nearing his mid-thirties, he was under increasing pressure to marry. In order to gain the approval of his family and their advisors, any potential bride had to have an aristocratic background and could not have been previously married - and for Charles to remain in the line of royal succession, he could not marry a Catholic.
Reportedly, it was Charles' former lover Camilla Parker Bowles who helped him select the 19-year-old Lady Diana Spencer, who was working as a nursery-school teacher. Buckingham Palace announced the engagement on February 24, 1981.
The state wedding took place at St Paul's Cathedral in London on Wednesday July 29 before 3,500 invited guests (including Parker-Bowles) and an estimated 1 billion television viewers around the world. Diana was the first Englishwoman to marry an heir-apparent to the throne since 1659, when Lady Anne Hyde married the Duke of York, the future James II of England. She assumed the principal title of 'Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales' and was immediately ranked as the most senior royal woman in the United Kingdom, after the Queen and the Queen Mother.
Charles and Diana had two children, William Arthur Philip Louis Windsor on June 21, 1982 and Henry Charles Albert David Windsor (commonly called Prince Harry) on September 15, 1984.
After the birth of William, the Princess of Wales suffered from post-natal depression. She later developed bulimia nervosa, and made a number of suicide attempts. In one interview, released after her death, she claimed that, while pregnant with William, she threw herself down a set of stairs and was discovered by her horrified mother-in-law.
It has been suggested that Diana did not, in fact, intend to end her life (or that the suicide attempts never took place) and that she was merely making a 'cry for help'. In the same interview where she told of the suicide attempt while pregnant with William, she said that the Charles had accused her of crying wolf when she threatened to kill herself. But, if the 'suicide attempts' did take place, there was certainly a significant risk that she would miscarry her baby.
In the later 1980s her marriage to Charles fell apart, an event at first suppressed and then sensationalised by the world media. Both the Prince and Princess of Wales spoke to the press through friends, accusing each other of adultery. Charles had resumed his relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles, while Diana had become involved with James Gilby.
In an unprecedented television interview with Martin Bashir Diana spoke of Charles' continuing affair with Camilla. Accepting she would never be crowned Queen, Diana expressed her hope that she would become "queen of people's hearts".
The Prince and Princess of Wales separated on December 9, 1992; their divorce was finalised on August 28, 1996. Following the divorce Diana was stripped of her "Her Royal Highness" title.
In 2004, the American TV network NBC broadcast tapes of Diana discussing her marriage to the Prince of Wales, including her description of her suicide attempts. These tapes have not been broadcast in the UK.
Charity work
Starting in the mid-to-late 1980s, Diana began to use her high media profile in support of charity projects, and is credited with considerable influence for her campaigns against the use of landmines and helping the victims of AIDS.
In April 1987, the Princess of Wales was the first high-profile celebrity to be photographed touching an AIDS-infected person.
Perhaps her most widely publicised charity appearance was her visit to Angola in January 1997, when, serving as an International Red Cross VIP volunteer she visited landmine survivors in hospitals, toured de-mining projects run by the HALO Trust, and attended mine awareness education classes about the dangers of mines immediately surrounding homes and villages.
Death
On August 31, 1997 Diana was involved in a car accident in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris, along with her romantic companion Dodi Al-Fayed, their driver Henri Paul, and Al-Fayed's bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones.
Late in the evening of Saturday the 30th, Diana and Al-Fayed departed the Hôtel Ritz in Place Vendome, Paris, and drove along the north bank of the Seine. At 00:25 on the 31st, their Mercedes-Benz S280 entered the underpass below the Place de l'Alma, pursued in various vehicles by nine French photographers and a motorcycle courier.
At the entrance to the tunnel, their car struck a glancing blow to the right-hand wall. It swerved to the left of the two-lane carriageway and collided head-on with the thirteenth pillar supporting the roof, then spun to a stop.
As the casualties lay seriously injured in their wrecked car, some of the photographers continued to take pictures of them.
Dodi Al-Fayed and Henri Paul were both declared dead at the scene of the crash. Trevor Rees-Jones was severely injured but later recovered. Diana was freed alive from the wreckage, and after some delay from attempts to stabilize her at the scene, she was taken by ambulance to Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, arriving there shortly after 02:00 [5] (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0316051diana3.html). Despite frantic attempts to save her, her internal injuries were too major. At 04:00 that morning, the doctors pronounced her dead. Her death was announced at a press conference at 05:30.
Around 17:00 the Prince of Wales and Diana's two sisters arrived in Paris to collect Diana's body. They left with her body 90 minutes later.
Accident or Assassination?
In 1999 a French investigation concluded the crash was an accident brought on by an intoxicated driver attempting to elude pursuing paparazzi at high speed.
Many believe Diana's death may not have been the result of an accident. For example, it has been claimed that samples showing driver Paul's blood alcohol limit were tampered with. The investigation also found the Mercedes had come into contact with another vehicle (a white Fiat Uno) in the tunnel. The driver of that vehicle has never come forward, and the vehicle itself has not been found.
The father of Dodi, Mohamed Al-Fayed, stands by his belief that the Princess and his son were killed in an elaborate conspiracy launched by the husband of Elizabeth II, Prince Philip.
On January 6, 2004, an inquest into the death of Diana opened in London held by Michael Burgess, the coroner of The Queen's Household. At the time of writing (April 2005) the inquest has still not reached its conclusion.
Funeral and public reaction
 Floral tributes to Diana outside Buckingham Palace, London |
In an emotional speech following the announcement of Diana's death UK Prime Minister Tony Blair famously described her as "the people's princess".
Diana's death was greeted with extraordinary public grief. More than one million bouquets were left at her London home, Kensington Palace, while at her family estate of Althorp the public was asked to stop bringing flowers as the volume of people and flowers in the surrounding roads was causing a threat to public safety.
I had occasion to visit central London a few day's after Diana's death and took the opportunity to walk through St. James's Park down The Mall to Buckingham Palace. The usually buzzing atmosphere had been replaced by a silence I had never before or since experienced in the heart of the metropolis.
Diana's funeral at Westminster Abbey on September 6 drew an estimated 3 million mourners and worldwide television coverage.
The reaction of the Royal family to the death of Diana caused unprecedented resentment and outcry. The House of Windsor's rigid adherence to protocol was intepreted by the public as a lack of compassion; the refusal of Buckingham Palace to fly the Union Jack at half staff provoked angry headlines in newspapers. "Where is our Queen? Where is our Flag?" asked The Sun. The Queen, who returned to London from Balmoral, agreed to do a television broadcast to the nation. At the urging of Downing Street, what was to be a recorded piece became a live broadcast and the script was revised by Alastair Campbell to be more "human".
Diana's funeral service was televised live throughout the world and loudspeakers were placed outside so the crowds could hear the proceedings. Tradition was defied when the guests applauded the speech by Diana's brother, Lord Spencer, who was highly critical of the royal family for their treatment of her.
She is buried at Althorp in Northamptonshire on an island in the middle of a lake on her family's estate. A visitors' centre allows visitors to see an exhibition about her and walk around the lake.
More information
Princess Diana 1961-1997 TIME's Tribute to Princess Diana.
Diana The Work Continues Information about Diana, Princess of Wales and the work carried out in her name by the Memorial Fund.
Diana: a Celebration Memorial exhibition at Althorp, Diana's family home.
The Panorama Interview Transcript of the BBC1 Panorama interview with Diana, broadcast in November 1995
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Diana, Princess of Wales".
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