Diana (1961–1997)

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Diana (1961–1997)

Princess of Wales who was a beloved international celebrity and one of the world's most charitable benefactors. Name variations: Lady Diana Spencer. Born Diana Frances Spencer on July 1, 1961, at Park House, the family's country home on the grounds of the royal estate at Sandringham in Norfolk, England; died, age 36, in Paris, France, in an automobile accident on August 31, 1997; interred at Althorp, Northamptonshire, on September 6, 1997; third of four children of Edward John VIII Spencer (b. 1924), viscount Althorp, and Frances Burke Ruth Roche (Fermoy) Spencer, viscountess Althorp, later known as Frances Shand Kydd; married Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor (b. 1948), prince of Wales, July 29, 1981; children: William Arthur (b. 1982); Henry Charles (b. 1984).

After completing education in private schools, took a job as an assistant in a London kindergarten; married Charles, prince of Wales, royal family's oldest son (July 29, 1981), followed by the birth of two royal sons, Princes William and Harry, during the next decade; heard divorce announced in House of Commons (August 1996); began dating film producer and financier Dodi al-Fayed; was with al-Fayed in Paris at the time of the car crash that claimed both their lives (August 1997).

To speak of Lady Diana Spencer is to speak in contradictions. Although she was one of the world's most glamorous and aristocratic women, born to privilege and raised in wealth, the public perceived her as one of their own, as "the people's Princess" who bridged the gap between Britain's commoners and an aloof, cold monarchy. She embraced charitable causes, aiding the poor and diseased, yet reveled in designer gowns and expensive jewelry. She was seen as a beaming member of the international jet-set, yet she suffered from debilitating depression. And while she excoriated the reporters and photographers who hounded her relentlessly, she at the same time found ingenious ways to manipulate the image of her that they presented to the world. Now, her sanctification by a tragic death has left the world with only these fragmented glimpses, as blurred as the invasive tabloid photographs she loathed. Four years before her death, Diana pleaded with her public to "find it in your hearts to give me time and space," but there would not be enough of either.

In her death as in her life, Diana straddled the world where fairy tales come true and the world where babies die of AIDS; she was The Princess, and she was of the people, and she was gone.
—Sharon Begley and Christopher Dickey, Newsweek

Thirty years before, the need for such an impassioned statement would have seemed ludicrous, for she had been known in her childhood as a quiet, shy, rather serious-minded girl. The Honorable Diana Frances Spencer was born on July 1, 1961, the third of four children of the Viscount and Viscountess Althorp, otherwise known as John and Frances Spencer. Like her older siblings, Diana was born at Park House, the family's country home on the grounds of the royal estate at Sandringham in Norfolk. The Spencers had been enjoying royal favor since the early 16th century, when an enterprising ancestor had so successfully built his sheep farm into a linchpin of the immensely profitable British wool trade that a hereditary earldom had eventually been bestowed on the family. Diana's paternal lineage was a bewildering array of links to the throne from Charles II onward, mostly through a byzantine collection of royal mistresses and their illegitimate offspring. In later years, in fact, it would be noted that Diana carried more royal blood in her veins than her husband. Her mother, Lady Frances Fermoy (later Frances Shand Kydd ), was the granddaughter of a willful American girl (Frances Ellen Work ) who had, in the late 19th century, defied her jingoistic father by marrying a British noble, leading to much discussion among royal genealogists about Diana's own well-publicized stubborn streak and their determined attempts to relate her, however distantly, to famous Americans ranging from George Washington to Gloria Vanderbilt .

Sir John and Lady Frances had been expecting, indeed praying for, a boy as their third child. Daughters Sarah Spencer and Jane Spencer had been born in 1955 and 1957, respectively, leaving Johnnie Spencer desperate for a male heir to inherit the title and keep its attendant riches out of the hands of relatives. The couple's joy at the birth of a boy in 1960 was dashed when the infant died just ten days later. Diana arrived the following year to barely disguised disappointment. "I was the girl who was supposed to be a boy," she once drily noted. The hoped-for male heir, Charles Spencer, finally arrived in 1964.

Having produced the required male after five childbirths in ten years, Lady Frances and her husband considered themselves relieved of further childbearing duties and turned their attention to a number of discreet extramarital affairs that led to a trial separation in 1966. Lady Frances' affair with Peter Shand Kydd, a wealthy wallpaper manufacturer, was by then well-known, as was Kydd's intention to leave his wife and three children to marry Frances. With Sarah and Jane in boarding school, Diana and her younger brother went to live with their mother in London's elegant, leafy Belgravia. Kydd's ensuing divorce, in which Frances was named by Kydd's wife as an adulteress, was followed by similar proceedings initiated by John Spencer against Frances. London society was electrified when Frances' mother, Lady Ruth Fermoy , testified in court against her own daughter and urged that her son-in-law be given custody of the children, the elder woman apparently of the opinion that the children's chances of good marriages were more favorable as Spencers than as Kydds. Among her set, Frances Kydd became known as "the bolter," although she would herself be abandoned by Kydd in later years. Diana's fractured home life as a child would later be cited as a factor in her adult struggles with depression. "Her childhood was hell," Diana's friend Peter Jensen once said. "Her parents despised each other. She grew up under that."

Spencer, Sarah (1955—)

British royal. Name variations: Sarah McCorquodale; Lady Sarah Spencer. Born Elizabeth Sarah, Lady Spencer, in 1955; daughter of Edward John VIII Spencer (b. 1924), viscount Althorp, and Frances Burke Ruth Roche (Fermoy) Spencer, viscountess Althorp, later known as Frances Shand Kydd ; married Neil Edward McCorquodale, in May 1980.

Spencer, Jane (1957—)

British royal. Name variations: Jane Fellowes; Lady Jane Spencer. Born Cynthia Jane Spencer in 1957; daughter of Edward John VIII Spencer (b. 1924), viscount Althorp, and Frances Burke Ruth Roche (Fermoy) Spencer, viscountess Althorp, later known as Frances Shand Kydd ; married Sir Robert Fellowes (the Queen's private secretary), in March 1978; children: Laura Jane Fellowes (b. 1980).

Five-year-old Diana weathered these domestic storms only to find herself back with her father in Norfolk with a succession of nannies and a suddenly empty house, bereft of the laughter and activity that had marked her earlier years in a two-parent household. Photographs of her at this period are of a rather somber, blonde-haired, rosy-cheeked country girl in corduroys and Wellies, keeping company with a procession of family pets against a background of ancient stone and mellowed brick. At the age of six, Diana was sent to Riddlesworth Hall, to which Spencer girls for generations had been packed off to begin their formal education. She was a mediocre student, but she excelled at team sports and was so well liked by the other girls that she was awarded a special school prize for helpfulness in her second year. She managed to do well enough at her schoolwork to advance in 1973 to West Heath School in Kent. It was at West Heath that she formed the friendships that

would last the rest of her life, while again winning a school service award. But she failed to pass four of her five "O level" tests, equivalent to American SATs, and ended her formal education with her graduation from West Heath in 1977, when she was 16.

By now she was Lady Diana Spencer, by virtue of the death of her paternal grandfather and her father's inheritance of the ancestral title of Earl Spencer. The change in status also required leaving the family's beloved Park House to take possession of the ancient Spencer family seat, Althorp, a sprawling country house set in a 600-acre park on a 13,000-acre estate north of London, near the village of Great Brington. Diana's memories of Althorp (perversely pronounced by the British as "ALL-trup") were not fond ones. Not long after the family's arrival there, her father was named as an adulterer in a divorce proceeding filed by Lord Dartmouth. The ex-countess of Dartmouth was Raine Cartland , the daughter of British romance novelist Barbara Cartland whose books were among Diana's favorite reading as a young woman. Barbara Cartland was now Diana's stepgrandmother. None of the Spencer children attended their father's marriage to Raine in a quiet civil ceremony in London in July of 1976, for the simple reason that none of them were told about it. Further trouble ensued when Raine set about redecorating Althorp with money raised by selling off many of its renowned artistic treasures and by imposing strict rules of the house on Diana and young Charles (Sarah and Jane were now living in London on their own). "Raine stopped play" became one of Diana's favorite quips, but the strained relations seemed to go far beyond the usual ones between stepmother and daughter. Raine constantly criticized her husband's daughters, claiming that Jane was "only good for producing children" and that Sarah was "okay as long as she sticks to hunting and shooting, which is all she cares about." As for Diana, Raine said, "How can you have a single conversation with someone who doesn't have a single 'O' level? It's a crashing bore." Not surprisingly, Diana began to spend less time at Althorp and more in London, where she stayed with her mother and her other stepparent.

There were skiing vacations to Gstaad, a full schedule of balls and teas during the social season, and occasional visits to Althorp for weekend parties. At one of them, a shooting party in November of 1977 arranged by her sister Sarah, Diana first met the man who was the world's most eligible bachelor. It was Sarah, however, who was then attracting attention as a possible bride for Prince Charles, although the relationship would not advance beyond a brief infatuation. As generations of Spencers before them had done, Diana's family entertained visions of royal in-laws and made sure to include during that weekend a more intimate dance party at Althorp in the prince's honor that would provide further exposure to their daughters. "I remember thinking what fun she was," Charles later said of his first meeting with Diana, although the two would not see each other again for some time.

Despite these lofty social duties, Diana had to attend to practical matters as well, since her Spencer inheritance was many years away and a small allowance was her only support. There were, accordingly, several jobs minding the children of friends and acquaintances, followed by a ten-week cooking course that led to a position with a catering firm, where she prepared meals and served cocktails at private parties. A position at a dance school teaching ballet to children came next. By the time she was hired as a supervisor at the Young England kindergarten in Pimlico in southwest London, Diana had used the proceeds of an inheritance from the will of her American great-grandmother to rent a three-bedroom flat near fashionable Knightsbridge. She and two friends from West Heath with whom she shared the apartment each contributed about $34 a week toward the rent, becoming members in good standing of the collection of young aristocrats then called "Sloane's Rangers," after the central square in Knightsbridge surrounded by many of their favorite watering holes.

Along with her peers and most of the rest of England, Diana followed with interest the procession of what the press called "Charlie's Angels," the line of young women seen in Prince Charles' company who were publicly scrutinized in turn as potential princesses. Royal enthusiasts worried that Charles, in his early 30s when Diana moved to Knightsbridge, had waited the longest of any royal heir to take a wife, although the number of young women with whom he had been dallying over the years was impressive. "He's supposed to be an incurable romantic, although a late starter," one palace observer noted. "It wasn't until University that the interest in women took hold." Charles apparently compensated for his tardiness with such dispatch that the media quickly lost interest in his younger brother, Prince Andrew, who had been dubbed "Randy Andy" in the tabloids. Among Charles' paramours during the 1970s, besides Sarah Spencer, was actress Susan George , followed by the lead singer of a pop group called "The Three Degrees" and, more suitably from the Palace's standpoint, several titled women of good family. The press had been particularly fascinated with Anna Wallace , the daughter of a wealthy Scottish landowner whose sharp temper and stinging rebukes earned her their sobriquet of "Whiplash Wallace," but the relationship ended when Charles pointedly ignored her at a royal ball to spend much of the evening dancing with Camilla Parker-Bowles , whom he had known for some years.

But by the late 1970s, careful observers began to notice that one name had been appearing consistently on the lists of Charles' invited guests to various functions. Diana was at Sandringham twice for royal shooting parties in 1979 and 1980, at Balmoral during the summers of those years, and was among the royal party invited to watch when Charles took to the polo field with his team, Les Diables Bleus. It was during this polo weekend in July of 1980 that Diana found herself sitting on a bale of hay at a lawn party following the game, chatting with the heir to the English throne. She later recalled for journalist Andrew Morton that she had told Charles how much she remembered and sympathized with the loss of his beloved "Uncle Dickie," Lord Louis Mountbatten, who had been killed by an IRA bomb the previous year. Charles, she said, had seemed moved by her compassion and responded by spending much of the rest of the afternoon in her company.

By the time of the pinnacle of the British summer social season, the Goodwood House Ball, marking the end of the Goodwood Races, even casual observers could not help but notice how much time Charles spent on the dance floor with Diana Spencer; or that she was again among his intimates aboard the royal yacht Britannia during the annual Cowes Week of yacht racing just a month later. When Charles and Diana were photographed at Balmoral in August of 1980 fishing together without a chaperon, the press was off and running.

"He's in love again!" trumpeted The Sun, while armies of photographers set up camp outside Diana's Knightsbridge flat or followed her red Mini Metro through snarls of London traffic. She once agreed to be photographed outside the Young England kindergarten on the hopeless promise she would then be left alone, only to find herself splashed across the pages of the world's newspapers with a strong sun shining from behind and through her thin summer dress, her shapely legs becoming the subject of earnest discussions in pubs across the land. "I cried like a baby to the four walls," Diana told journalist Morton 11 years later. "I just couldn't cope with it." The public attention was so intense by late 1980 that Diana's mother was obliged to write a letter to The Times asking Fleet Street's editors "whether, in the execution of their jobs, they consider it necessary or fair to harass my daughter daily, from dawn until well after dusk?"

Even with the constant snooping, the world did not immediately know of Charles' proposal of marriage to Lady Diana Spencer on February 6, 1981, offered in the nursery of Windsor Castle. Charles said that he had missed her terribly during a skiing vacation to Switzerland and then asked her, simply and plainly, to marry him. She later confessed to being overcome with a giggling fit before her suitor's earnest reminder that she might one day be queen of England brought home the enormous consequences of her answer. She said yes. Charles relayed the news of Diana's acceptance to his mother Elizabeth II , then at Sandringham, only moments afterward; Diana's family was told the following day. "She looked as happy as I have ever seen her look," Diana's brother Charles remarked. "It wasn't the look of somebody who had just won the jackpot, but somebody who looked spiritually fulfilled as well." Diana's grandmother, Lady Ruth Fermoy, later denied reports that she had promoted the match, claiming she had, in fact, advised against it by telling her granddaughter that the difference in lifestyle would be too difficult an adjustment.

It was not until Diana had left England for an Australian vacation that the announcement was made public, on February 24, with the marriage scheduled for that summer. Charles was 33; Diana just 19 when the world learned of her engagement. The age difference was only one of the striking contrasts between them. Despite the string of women that preceded Diana, the prince of Wales was a rather introspective man, fond of architecture and painting, ruled by a rigid code of conduct instilled in him since childhood that had effectively shielded him from the public he was raised to serve. Diana, on the other hand, was still a free-spirited young woman much more immersed in the real world than her fiancé but nonetheless prone to the dreams and fantasies of youth. While Diana had fallen in love with her Prince Charming, Charles looked at the matter with the circumspection of his upbringing and his greater years. "Essentially, you must be good friends," he had once answered a reporter's question about the nature of marriage, "and love, I'm sure, will grow out of that friendship." Also unlike Charles, Diana's experience of the opposite sex was limited to the occasional date and a chaste kiss on the cheek, while Charles had frankly admitted to her his past liaisons, some with married women whom, he is said to have told her, were "safer" because they had husbands and families to protect and would remain silent. Then, too, there was the media exposure which, to Charles, had long been a fact of life but that, to Diana, was disturbing enough to have provoked her mother's indignant letter to the Times. It was merely a hint of what would become of Diana's privacy as a member of the royal family.

Diana's translation to the rarified atmosphere of the monarchy began at once. The red Mini Metro disappeared and was replaced by a chauffeured Rolls Royce from Buckingham Palace; Diana was required to officially adopt Clarence House, the traditional royal holding pen for future princesses, as her residence (although she still spent most nights in her own flat). She embarked on weeks-long courses in royal protocol and etiquette, including everything from where and how to sit during public appearances by the royal family, to the carriage of one's head and posture during public appearances and the proper method of waving to one's public from balconies or the back seats of limousines. The indoctrination into royal house rules was in addition, of course, to the preparations for the wedding itself, set for July 29.

Much time and discussion was focused on the design and manufacture of Diana's gown, which was made by hand by just one seamstress. It was, naturally, of English silk, featured pearl embroidery and mother-of-pearl sequins, lavishly ruffled sleeves, and a V-neck over a frilly laced bodice, all surmounted by a diamond tiara that was a Spencer family heirloom. The gown, which was immediately copied by the score for less exalted weddings, was ivory-colored rather than white to cut down on glare reflected to television cameras. But its most dramatic feature was its 25-foot train, the longest of any royal bridal gown in English history, requiring a small army of attendants moving in near-military precision for her merely to take a step, to say nothing of the even more formidable task of descending from the bridal carriage. Diana spent hours practicing her "wedding walk" up and down the cavernous ballroom of St. James's Palace with pounds of paper tissue attached to her head. There were endless alterations and modifications to the gown as the weeks passed, many because of considerable variations in Diana's weight as the pressures mounted.

Charles, meanwhile, with his much plainer wardrobe consisting merely of his royal naval uniform, had plenty of time to plan the first wedding of a prince of Wales since 1863, when Victoria's son, the future Edward VII, had married Alexandra of Denmark . Details of that earlier occasion were closely studied, including the royal naval cadets' uniforms which were resurrected for Diana's two pageboys. Unlike the earlier wedding, however, which had taken place in the usual site for royal rites of passage, Westminster Abbey, Charles had chosen St. Paul's after deciding that its acoustics were more suited to the music of English composers like Purcell, Elgar, and Sir William Walton which would grace the ceremony. Three orchestras of which he was the royal patron would perform, while a choir of which he was president would be joined by opera diva Kiri Te Kanawa for the vocal segments of the program.

During the late winter and early spring of 1981, some 2,600 coveted invitations issued from the Lord Chamberlain's office while Charles and Diana were relentlessly photographed and interviewed, together and separately. Charles recalled for the press how he had thought Diana "a very jolly, amusing and attractive girl, great fun, bouncy and full of life" at their first meeting five years earlier. Diana related how her future husband had been "a tower of strength" in coping with the attention focused on her and how she looked forward to her new status as a way to improve herself as an individual by serving her nation. "As I'm only 20," she said, "I've got a good start." The only crack in Diana's shy, winsome demeanor that the public was to see came the weekend before the wedding, as Diana watched Charles play polo. She suddenly burst into tears, Charles rushing off the field to offer comfort and guide her to a waiting limousine.

The display was chalked up to pre-wedding nerves, neither the public nor the press knowing the details of Diana's harried, lonely life as a royal fiancee. Charles' constant round of royal appearances kept him away from his bride-to-be for most of the four months of their engagement, and Diana angrily claimed a dozen years later that on the few occasions when they were required to appear together, Charles criticized her clothes and made light of her discomfort at the loss of the privacy she had once cherished. It was during the engagement, Diana said, that the eating disorder known as bulimia began to plague her, marked by periods of deliberate, often secretive overeating followed by guilt-ridden bouts of purging and self-starvation. Although the cause of the disorder often lies in childhoods troubled by fractured domestic environments, it is exacerbated by the stresses of adult life. In Diana's case, the stresses of life as a public icon rather than a human being were disastrous.

In addition to these sorts of pressures, she later related, there was the package she discovered, just a week before the wedding, in the office at Buckingham Palace which she shared with several of Prince Charles' aides and secretaries. Diana insisted on opening it even though it was not addressed to her. It contained a gold bracelet with a blue enameled disk bearing the letters "F" and "G" intertwined. Diana needed no explanation, for it was common knowledge among royal intimates that "Fred" and "Gladys" were the nicknames Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles had given each other and that their relationship had not ended with Charles' engagement, despite Diana's expectations.

Charles had been smitten with the former Camilla Shand since he had first met her in 1972, when his polo team mate Andrew Parker-Bowles was courting her. She was outgoing, buoyant, attractive, and shared Charles' passion for the pursuits of the country aristocracy. (Her great-grandmother, Alice Keppel , had been the mistress of Edward VII.) Camilla had already married by the time Charles realized the depth of his feeling for her, but their friendship—and, some whispered, their adultery once Camilla had wed—continued unabated. Camilla's house, Middlewich, was only 12 miles from the prince's Highgrove, in Gloucestershire, and every reporter worth a tabloid salary knew the unmarked car that Charles used to pop over for a visit. "There were three of us in this marriage," was Diana's much-quoted assessment of the situation after it had all ended in a heap of accusations and innuendo. In those later years of bitterness, Diana even claimed she had seriously considered canceling the wedding, although it is hard to believe that she actually thought she could turn the prince of Wales into a jilted bridegroom by simply walking away a few days before a ceremony that bore the weight of centuries of national tradition. And it is hard to square Diana's angry rebukes in light of the note Charles sent to her the night before the wedding, enclosed with a signet ring engraved with his royal symbol. "I'm so proud of you and when you come up I'll be there at the altar for you tomorrow," he wrote to her. "Just look 'em in the eye and knock 'em dead."

She did just that on the morning of July 29, 1981, as she stepped Cinderella-like from the glass coach that had carried her and her father from Clarence House to St. Paul's; walked regally beside Earl Spencer for the three-and-a-half minutes it took to negotiate the aisle toward her waiting prince (although it was Diana who supported her father, much weakened by a stroke but insistent on taking her to the altar); and curtsied gracefully to the queen. She then turned to the archbishop of Canterbury to be transformed from Diana Spencer into Her Royal Highness, the princess of Wales. Seven hundred and fifty million people in 70 countries watched a ceremony that hardly seemed real, one that confirmed the future of a centuries-old institution that had lost much of its practical use but none of its capacity to enchant with the gleam of a fantasy world. "I was calm, deathly calm," Diana recalled to a friend a dozen years later, when the gleam had long been dulled. "I felt I was the lamb to the slaughter. I knew it, and I couldn't do anything about it."

Any hopes she might have held for a quiet honeymoon, first at the Mountbatten estate in Hampshire, Broadlands, and then during a Mediterranean cruise on the royal yacht, proved false. Even at sea, where it was more difficult for the media to follow, the couple was surrounded by the 200 officers and crew of the Britannia and were rarely alone together. When a few private moments were granted them, Charles preferred reading passages aloud to her from his favorite books and resisted Diana's persuasions to tell her more about himself. The couple joined the royal family at Balmoral on their return to England, the expectation being that Diana would now assume a less prominent role in the life of the monarchy and dedicate herself to producing an heir. No one, not even Diana, expected that the public would become so besotted with their fairy-tale princess.

Hardly a day passed without a photograph of "Shy Di" gracing the tabloids. Anything would do—a glimpse through an unguarded window, a wave while emerging from a palace limousine, a peep from a phalanx of security guards. The British public had never had a princess like this one, an attractive young woman who, if not exactly from a background like theirs, at least seemed at home in their world. It was as if she were their eyes and ears on the monarchy, who might one day report to them what those remote, untouchable demi-gods were up to in their palaces, yachts and private jets. Diana could have told them that except for their adulation and the stir she caused wherever she went, most of her royal life was, frankly, boring. Charles, when not traveling on his constant round of royal duties, spent his leisure time surrounded by cronies and courtiers with whom she had little in common. Indeed, she was by far the youngest member of the royal entourage. Even the queen, it was said, had come to recognize her new daughter-in-law's loneliness and had suggested that Diana invite some of her friends for overnight and weekend stays at the Palace.

Soon, Diana began to turn her energies to the charity work for which she would be most admired. She began with the usual royal patron-age of hospitals, pensioners homes and, especially, children's charities, but it was to Diana's great credit that she turned, too, to causes that the Crown had so far passed over. She added drug addiction, mental illness, and childhood abuse to her growing list. She became the first member of the royal household to visit the psychiatric ward at Broadmoor prison, where some of the country's most violent and psychotic criminals were held. Most famously, she became the royal patron of several AIDS charities and made sure she was photographed touching and hugging AIDS victims at a time when most of the public feared to do so. "Anywhere I see suffering," she once said, "that is where I want to be, doing what I can." She often pointed out that the prince's official motto, Ich Dien, meant "I serve."

In late October of 1981, Diana appeared with Charles on a tour of Wales, highlighted by her first public speech, in Cardiff, which she delivered partly in Welsh. She then returned to London for the announcement from Buckingham Palace on November 5 that she was pregnant. Her first pregnancy was a difficult one, for more than the usual physical reasons since, as the months wore on, Diana was finding the expectations placed on her increasingly troublesome. Even to her closest friends, she was no longer "Di" or even the nickname she had borne since childhood, "Duch," but "Your Royal Highness" or "ma'am." Women she had gone to school with and with whom she had giggled her way through pajama parties were now required to curtsey to her, while a simple shopping trip involved at least 20 security guards, an ambulance in waiting in case of emergency, and the usual bevy of strident reporters. Worse, her Prince Charming was proving ever more distant, more impatient with her attempts for emotional intimacy and, it seemed, more fond of spending time with his bookish friends or with the women who had been his confidantes before his marriage—notably Camilla, who was a frequent visitor to Highgrove when Diana chose to remain in London and even served as host at Charles' parties there when Diana was not present. By spring of 1982, the royal couple were rarely seen in public in each other's company. What was not known outside the royal family was Diana's desperate reactions to her loneliness, cries for help from a young woman barely out of her teens. In addition to bulimic episodes that grew more and more frequent, Diana slashed her wrists on at least two occasions, and threw herself down a flight of stairs at Kensington Palace, although doctors determined that her baby had not been hurt. These incidents were quickly cloaked in the deepest royal security. All that became publicly known was that on June 21, 1982, England was given a new heir for the line of succession, named Prince William.

As that year wore on, however, the watchful press began to suspect that all was not well. The scarcity of joint public appearances, once attributed to Diana's pregnancy, now became intriguing portents of domestic turmoil. Much was made of Diana's appearance 15 minutes late in the royal box at a memorial concert for Britain's war dead in November of 1982—an unprecedented and shocking breach in etiquette that brought Charles' obvious displeasure. (Charles had insisted she attend; Diana had insisted on staying home with her baby, then had changed her mind at the last minute after everyone else had left for the event.) Careful observers also noticed two other breaches of protocol—first, the announcement that Prince William was not being raised by a nanny but by Diana personally, a sharp departure from tradition; second, that the child would accompany his parents on a tour of Commonwealth nations in the Pacific, rather than being left at home. Both were against the queen's express wishes. Even more disturbing, the family would actually travel on the same plane together, risking the loss of two heirs to the throne if disaster struck during the journey. Although the tour went well and Charles and Diana seemed happy in each other's company, these oddities were much pondered. Further departures from the usual followed. The changes in Charles' wardrobe, for example, were much discussed, it being noticed that the prince's tailoring became much more natty as the months passed, his choice of ties more colorful and, some sniffed, more flamboyant. Then there were Charles' appearances, in Diana's company, at rock concerts, particularly at performances by INXS, the princess' favorite.

Suspicions were temporarily put to rest with the news of Diana's second pregnancy. The announcement was made on February 14, 1984; on September 15, Prince Henry Charles Albert David, quickly and more conveniently referred to as Prince Harry, was born. Fleet Street happily quipped that Diana had now produced "an heir and a spare," although Diana's comment in private to Charles that "I'm not a production line, you know" was not reported. After the birth of her second son, Diana appeared increasingly drawn and thin, while much was made of her behavior during a state visit to Vancouver to open Expo '86, where she spoke sharply to reporters and later collapsed and fainted into Charles' arms. "Even the Prince cannot paper over all the cracks that have begun to appear in his wife's persona," noted the Daily Mail, recalling Diana's undisguised irritation just a few weeks earlier in Vienna, when the wife of that city's mayor had playfully flirted with Charles during a state dinner.

Buckingham Palace began to sense a looming public relations disaster when Diana's friendship with Sarah Ferguson , the ebullient and outspoken daughter of the manager of Charles' polo team, began to attract attention. "Fergie," as the press quickly dubbed her, was a member in good standing of a group of bored youngbloods who frequented night clubs of dubious reputation and occasionally got themselves into the papers for behavior the Palace considered unsuitable to the company kept by a royal princess. Even more alarming, Fergie's engagement to Andrew, Charles' younger brother and the duke of York, was announced in late 1985, after Diana had invited Fergie to the Royal Ascot during the summer and introduced them. With the marriage of Prince Andrew to his new duchess, the Palace now had two renegades on its hands. The British press obligingly produced its usual pungent sobriquet by referring to the two women as the "Throne Rangers," but the Palace was not amused. An annoyed Charles, in another unusual breach of etiquette, was heard to mutter "Come on, come on" to his wife and sister-in-law when the two clowned and giggled for the press during a ski vacation in Switzerland, stepping on each other's skis and digging each other in the ribs.

By 1987, Diana and her husband were inhabiting completely different worlds. Charles increasingly sought comfort with his old friend Camilla and with his traditional circle, much occupied with polo, foxhunting, dog breeding and other such country pursuits; Diana's cohorts were more interested in fashion, rock groups, and attending the right parties. When several of her friendships threatened to cross the line into full-blown affairs, the Palace hastily took measures. Her relationship, for example, with a sergeant assigned to the Palace security forces was quickly ended by his transfer away from royal duty. More worrisome was her much-reported friendship with dashing young stockbroker Philip Dunne, especially after she was photographed running her fingers through his hair at an elegant wedding reception at which Charles was also a guest. Other of Diana's friendships were less controversial, notably with Prince Juan Carlos, king of Spain, with whose family she often vacationed in the Mediterranean and of whose children she was particularly fond. Even then, Charles objected to the tabloid photographs of his bikini-clad princess taken during one such stay with the Spanish royal family.

By the late 1980s, Diana and Charles were only appearing in public when necessity demanded it. Gossip about the state of the marriage was so rampant that the queen herself, it was said, had decided to intervene by sternly lecturing her son and daughter-in-law about their public duty, whatever their private lives might be. Philip Dunne was induced by the Palace to stop seeing Diana; and when rumors began to spread of a relationship with James Hewitt, who was a member of the Royal Horse Guards and who had been giving the two young princes riding lessons, Hewitt was quietly reassigned to a more distant post. Charles, meanwhile, was reportedly told to consider the consequences of his relations with Camilla Parker-Bowles, whom Diana had boldly confronted at a party in 1988. "I would just like you to know that I know exactly what is going on between you and Charles," she was heard to tell her rival. A carefully devised series of public appearances was instituted for the royal couple, often in the company of their children, while the queen's admonitions, some said, were responsible for the Princess of Wales' announced patronage of a new national organization designed to offer counseling for troubled relationships. At least in public, where they were now seen more frequently, Charles and Diana appeared to have reconciled. The nation was particularly touched at Charles' obvious sympathy and support for Diana at the death of her father in March of 1992. But then came Andrew Morton's book.

Morton, a tabloid writer and the author of several books on the royals, claimed his Diana: Her True Story was based on conversations with some of Diana's closest friends and confidantes who, he said, "believed that for once the truth should be told about the difficult life Diana has led." Morton did not need to point out that his sources would hardly have spoken to him without Diana's explicit approval, and admitted after Diana's death that she herself had been the source for much of the book's information. His written questions were taken to her at Kensington Palace by one of Diana's friends. Diana would then tape record her answers and send the tapes back to Morton by the same route. "I was at the end of my tether," she answered Morton when he asked her why she had contacted him. The book laid bare everything that had been so carefully hidden from public knowledge—Diana's belated doubts about the marriage, Charles' relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles (referred to by Diana as "the rottweiler"), Diana's suicide attempts, and her struggles with bulimia (the royal family, it was said, complained she was wasting good food). "We are in danger of losing the Princess of Wales," Morton told a British newspaper, laying the blame squarely on the royal family who, he said, were doing nothing to help her. Morton's publisher, meanwhile, took care that statements from those interviewed appeared prominently in the newspapers, to confirm that Morton's reportage of their conversations was accurate. Buckingham Palace refused to comment on the book, except to say that Diana had granted no official interviews to Morton. More to the point, there was no official denial of the book's contents, while the invitation to tea Camilla Parker-Bowles received from the queen just a week after the book's appearance only made things worse. "I'm certainly not going to bury myself away because of what the papers say," Camilla defiantly said.

The public reaction to the book underscored Britain's ambiguous relationship to its monarchy. While the staid and loyal management of Harrod's refused to put the "scurrilous publication" on the store's shelves, the tabloids editorialized about the uselessness of an institution that displayed such a callous regard for Diana's suffering. Chat shows earnestly explored whether the book was a breach of royal privacy and whether Diana was simply not suited for royalty, while Diana herself burst into tears at the sight of supporters bearing signs saying "We Love You" during an official tour of a new cancer hospital. Pop psychologists volubly offered their analyses of Diana's condition on television and radio; the stairwell down which Diana had thrown herself during her first pregnancy attracted so many gawkers that it had to be roped off; and the archbishop of Canterbury said the royal couple, and especially their children, were in his prayers daily.

Buckingham Palace had already been shaken earlier in the year by Sarah Ferguson's separation (and later divorce) from Prince Andrew. Now, while it publicly remained silent about the latest scandal, the private discussions in the royal quarters of the Palace were long and intense. Prince Philip joined the queen in suggesting a cooling off period for Diana and Charles while, at the same time, getting them as much as possible in front of the public in a show of unity. By mid-June, Diana and Charles appeared on a balcony of the Palace smiling and waving. They were seen at concerts and benefits, apparently enjoying each other's company, and a tour of South Korea that fall was announced.

It is not known if Diana was present at the strategy sessions designed to counter the damage done to Charles' image, or if she had advance knowledge of the first salvo in the public relations plan: the Sunday Times' front page "The Case For Charles," which appeared in late June. It was followed by U.K. Today's "Charles: His True Story" in early July, written by a well-known biographer of the prince of Wales. Both articles were liberally sprinkled with interviews by Charles' intimates, who all stated that the Charles of Morton's book was not the Charles they knew. They stressed Charles' dedication to his country and the responsibilities of his position. More important, they implied that it was not Charles' behavior, but Diana's illness, that had led to the present state of the marriage. As for Camilla, the Today article claimed, Charles had naturally turned to an old friend in an effort to "maintain his sanity in a traumatic marriage," when his attempts to help his wife were met with "tears and shouting." The public spectacle of the couple's private affairs now had Diana on the defensive and under even more scrutiny.

It was a deliriously good story for Fleet Street, which now intensified the chase with more sophisticated means. In August of 1992, the Times printed the transcript of a telephone conversation between Diana and one James Gilbey, who had called her on his car phone. The call had been recorded, the paper said, in January of 1989 by a source the Times refused to identify. Gilbey professed undying love for his "Squidgy," while Diana described her relatives as "the royal twits." As usual, the Palace had no public comment but put it about that despite the call, Charles and Diana were still trying to patch things up. In November of that year, however, while Diana was away on an official visit to France, Prime Minister John Major offered the Commons a statement from the Palace informing the Honorable Members that the prince and princess of Wales had decided on a temporary separation, although they would continue to carry out their royal duties and there were no plans for a divorce. Then, in January of 1993, six months after "Squidgygate," The Daily Mirror scooped its rivals by printing the transcript of yet another supposedly private telephone conversation, this one between Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles. This call, too, had been recorded in 1989; but while Diana's and Gilbey's comments left much to interpretation, the talk between Charles and Camilla was embarrassingly, extravagantly sexual, leaving no doubt as to the adulterous nature of their relationship.

Less than a year later, on December 3, 1993, Diana publicly announced that she would be leaving public life to devote herself to charitable causes and to the raising of her sons. She delivered the news in an emotional speech to a charitable gathering, telling her audience that she would try to fashion a means "of combining a meaningful public role with, hopefully, a more private life." The ambiguous statement mirrored her own confusion at the ruins of what had once seemed a fairy tale come true. This time, the fickle press came down firmly on her side, excoriating Charles for going off foxhunting while his wife suffered. One tabloid published a poll it had taken indicating that more than 30% of the public now thought that the queen should remain on the throne until Prince William came of age, bypassing her eldest son as the country's next monarch. The publication of Princess in Love, a tell-all book in which James Hewitt, the princess' former riding instructor, described his affair with her from 1986 to 1991, failed to swing opinion toward Charles. Even the twoand-a-half-hour documentary Charles: Private Man, Public Role on Britain's ITV, during which Charles disingenuously claimed that he had turned to Camilla only after his marriage "became irretrievably broken down," did nothing to alter his image as a cold-hearted philanderer.

The next year, however, the pendulum began to swing the other way when two of Diana's affairs with married men became public, both marriages in question dissolving in divorce; while her attempt to portray herself as the wronged woman in a BBC documentary backfired. In the program, Diana said she had no intention of divorcing Charles and that any such idea would have to come from him. "I believe I have a public role to fulfill and I have two children to bring up," she said—which many took to mean that Diana needed the royal family's money, if not their respect. More dangerously, Diana admitted that while she had no expectation of becoming queen of England, it made no difference because, she claimed, Charles had no interest in becoming king. The reaction from an outraged Queen Elizabeth was swift and cutting. In a letter to her son and daughter-in-law, leaked by the Palace to the papers in December of 1995, the queen wrote of her "anger and frustration" at the couple's inability to reconcile their differences and their lack of respect for the institution to which they were privileged to belong. "An early divorce," the queen succinctly concluded, "is desirable." Privately, it was pointed out to Diana that the queen had a constitutional right to oversee the upbringing of potential heirs to the throne. The implication was clear. Her children could be taken away from her, with or without a divorce.

Diana spent that Christmas alone, at Kensington Palace, while the rest of the royal family, including her sons, celebrated the holiday elsewhere. Now there were rumors of her erratic temper, of bitter arguments with the boys' nanny, of pointless disputes with her staff. Both her private secretary and his assistant resigned just after Christmas, followed by Diana's chauffeur. Finally, on February 28, 1996, Diana announced that she had agreed to a divorce. But even this difficult decision was not without controversy, for Diana claimed that she would be keeping her royal title. The Palace icily responded that no such agreement had been made and that the actual terms of the divorce had not been settled. Charles, it was said, exploded in anger at Diana's rash claim. It took the next six months to agree to the terms, which were announced in August. Diana would receive a lump sum payment of $26 million, based on her average annual expenses while married of some $245,000 (although they had sometimes reached $1.5 million). The Palace would accept no further responsibility for her personal finances. She would be allowed to remain at Kensington Palace and to participate in the upbringing of her children. Finally, she would lose her title of "Her Royal Highness," and would henceforth be referred to as "Diana, Princess of Wales." By denying the royal title, the queen made sure that Diana's name would not appear in any official documents about the Windsors, making it plain to history that Diana Spencer had been removed from the royal lineage. It was said that the queen privately ordered that Diana's name never again be spoken in her presence.

Diana made no public comment immediately after her divorce, leaving the press to speculate on how the Palace would deal with the fact that the heir apparent to the throne was now a divorced man and technically ineligible for the honor. But it was the press itself that now became the target of growing public anger, despite the fact that it was the public who bought the papers. A photographer who accosted Diana outside a gym in West London was in turn attacked

by a passerby, who put the offender in an armlock while Diana removed the film from his camera; and Diana herself, after letting her personal bodyguards go as an economy measure, was not above swatting and flailing at paparazzi who came too close. At the same time, Diana knew she needed the media's help in refashioning her public image. She was pleased with their coverage of the auction of 79 of her dresses at Christie's in New York, which raised over $5 million for AIDS and cancer charities; and she willingly posed and chatted with the press corps that followed her to Angola and to Bosnia in the first half of 1997 as part of the Red Cross campaign to ban land mines, which had long been an important cause for her.

Her separation from the royal family only seemed to increase the fascination with her love life, which intensified in July of 1997 during Diana's stay, with her two sons, in St. Tropez as a houseguest of Egyptian tycoon Mohammed al-Fayed and his eldest son, Emad Mohammed, nicknamed Dodi. The elder al-Fayed was not a well-liked figure in Britain. His purchase of Harrod's, the very symbol of British gentility, had been preceded by an ugly battle to keep it out of foreign hands which had fanned conservative xenophobia into full flame and had led to al-Fayed's petition to become a British citizen being firmly denied. Al-Fayed admitted to seeking revenge when he helped bring down Margaret Thatcher 's Tory government by revealing that conservative members of Parliament had accepted bribes from him. Diana's friendship with the al-Fayeds, and particularly with Dodi, whom she had first met in 1986, was portrayed in the press as her way of snubbing the old-line aristocrats who had rallied around Charles. Diana did, in fact, tell a French magazine interviewer during the early summer of 1997 that she would have left England for good if it had not been for William and Harry.

Dodi al-Fayed was known more for his ostentatious lifestyle than for his business acumen, although he had successfully dabbled in the movie business by co-financing such prominent films as Chariots of Fire, The World According to Garp, and Stephen Spielberg's Hook. When Dodi broke off his engagement with model Kelly Fisher to court Diana in earnest, the press broke into full cry. The papers were soon filled with hastily snapped shots of the two together. Not even Dodi's impressive flotilla of security boats surrounding his yacht during a Mediterranean cruise with Diana could defeat telephoto lenses the length of baseball bats. The two were captured, if somewhat indistinctly, embracing on deck or sitting wrapped in each others arms, fueling rumors that marriage was in the offing. It was said, in fact, that Dodi intended to formally propose to Diana during a planned visit to Paris in late August. The engagement ring, the papers breathlessly reported, had already been purchased. So it was that an army of photographers on motorcycles or in small, nimble sports cars converged on Paris' Ritz Hotel on August 30, 1997, and waited. During the evening, Diana spoke with The Daily Mail's Richard Kay, whom she had known since her marriage to Charles and who was one of the few journalists she trusted. She had sounded, Kay reported the next day, "as happy as I have ever known her. For the first time in years, all was well with her world."

The press corps' vigil lasted until past midnight. They had not been fooled by the chauffeur Dodi had sent downstairs to roar away in his Range Rover earlier in the evening, leaving the couple surrounded without a driver to spirit them away and forcing Dodi to recall the driver who had gone off duty earlier in the evening, Henri Paul. Paul returned to work shortly after ten with instructions to be ready to drive his employer and Diana to the al-Fayed private apartment. Finally, at 12:20, Diana, al-Fayed, and a bodyguard named Trevor Rees-Jones emerged from the hotel and clambered into the Ritz' armor-plated Mercedes, with Henri Paul at the wheel, Rees-Jones sitting next to him in the front seat, and Diana and Dodi in the rear. Rees-Jones was the only one to buckle his seatbelt as the Mercedes raced across the Place de la Concorde toward the Seine with the convoy of clicking paparazzi in hot pursuit, swarming around the car at a red light before it screeched away and sped onto a dual-lane carriageway running along the river. With the Eiffel Tower twinkling ahead, the Mercedes and its pursuers hurtled into a tunnel under Place d'Alma. Moments later, shortly after 12:35, the car ricocheted at full speed off one of the tunnel's supporting columns, whipped completely around from the force of the collision, and slammed into the opposite wall. Its roof and sidewalls were crushed, while the engine was rammed backwards into the passenger compartment. Dodi al-Fayed and Henri Paul were killed instantly. Diana and Rees-Jones were rushed to La Pitie-Salpetriere hospital, one of the city's best, where Rees-Jones' injuries, although severe, were found to be treatable. But frantic efforts to save Diana's life failed. She had sustained massive head injuries, while the impact to her chest had perforated her left lung and filled her chest cavity with blood. Her heart stopped beating moments after arriving at the hospital, and resuscitation efforts ultimately proved fruitless. At four o'clock on the morning of August 31, 1997, Lady Diana Spencer, princess of Wales, was officially pronounced dead. She was 36 years old. The news was relayed to Balmoral by the British Embassy. Charles' reaction was a cry of grief and pain so loud and anguished that the British Embassy official who placed the telephone call clearly heard it. "Who would ever believe me if I described the Prince's reaction?" he later said. "He uttered a cry of pain that was spontaneous and came from the heart, before breaking into uncontrollable sobs."

"We are today a nation in a state of shock, in mourning, in grief that is so deeply painful to us," British Prime Minister Tony Blair told a press conference hours later. But while similar sentiments from world leaders arrived at Buckingham Palace, the outpouring of grief was hard-edged with anger at the photographers who, it seemed, had hounded Diana literally to death. The public rage was so intense that the French government launched an official investigation, particularly aimed at what had happened in the 15 minutes between the emergency call placed by one of the photographers on a cellular phone and the arrival of the ambulances. Witnesses told of paparazzi pressed against the wreckage snapping the "death pictures" that were published the next day, while making no effort to rescue the car's occupants. "I was trying to push back the photographers, who were virulent," one of the first police officers on the scene later testified to the investigators. "At no time did a photographer come to give me a hand. They kept taking pictures the whole time." One of the nine photographers held and interrogated by police admitted "we didn't help the injured," although his failure to act was because, he said, he had been "paralyzed by the connection between me and the people in the car." Another claimed to have reached into the car to take Diana's pulse and to have comforted Trevor Rees-Jones, although the film taken from his camera proved he had also been taking pictures at the same time. Diana's brother Charles angrily told reporters that "every proprietor and editor of every publication that has paid for intrusive and exploitative photographs [of Diana] … has blood on his hands today." Rees-Jones, who did not regain consciousness for days afterward, was unable to recall the moments leading up to the crash. French investigators would later conclude that it had been the combination of the pursuing press corps and the amount of alcohol consumed by Henri Paul before he was called back to duty that had proved fatal.

Anger was directed, too, at the royal family itself. While crowds waited outside the gates of Buckingham Palace, while reporters waited in the Palace's press rooms, while millions of Britons sat by their televisions and radios, there was only silence after Prince Charles, his two sons, and Diana's sisters accompanied Diana's body home to London. Three days after her death, by which time 43 condolence books had been signed by mourners and mounds of flowers and sympathy notes had been deposited outside the Palace, there was still no official word from the throne. Finally, a three-line statement was issued thanking the public for its sympathy and saying that the princess of Wales would be given "a unique funeral for a unique person." The statement's brevity and terse wording only increased the perception of a cold, unemotional monarchy. "Not one word has come from a royal lip, not one tear has been shed in public from a royal eye," complained The Sun, which had published some of the most scandalous pictures of Diana while she had lived. The paper neglected to mention that at no time in modern history had such public displays ever been observed in a member of the royal family, even while bombs fell or London burned or kings died, for it had long been intrinsic to the royal code that a calm, dignified image is a public duty of the highest order. Others were shocked that Diana would not be given a full, state funeral, forgetting that such a ceremony is reserved only for notable government leaders or members of the royal family, from which Diana had been removed by divorce.

But even royalty cannot be blind to public opinion, and it was clear that something needed to be done. "Speak to us, Ma'am!," pleaded The Daily Mirror; and on the evening of September 5, Queen Elizabeth II did just that in an extraordinary television address broadcast live to her subjects. She spoke, she said, not only as a monarch but "as a grandmother" who, she assured her audience, would see to it that her grandsons would be raised with love and respect. Her astonishingly personal tone was maintained when it came to the subject of her late daughter-in-law, of whom she had never before publicly spoken. Diana was, the queen said, "an exceptional and gifted human being" whom she "admired and respected," adding that she joined her subjects to "thank God for someone who made many, many people happy." As a further indication of the royal family's sense of loss, however guarded, the Palace announced that the Union Jack would be flown at half-mast on the day of Diana's funeral and that the route the funeral procession would take had been extended from one mile to three, to allow more of her public to pay their final respects as her coffin made its way to Westminster Abbey.

It was said that the crowd that lined the streets from Kensington Palace to the Abbey on September 6, 1997, was the largest public turnout in London since the end of World War II. A worldwide television audience estimated at two billion joined in watching as the somber procession made its way east from Kensington, through a city eerily silent despite the throngs. In another tribute to Diana's memory, the coffin was allowed to pass under the Wellington Arch, near Hyde Park, an honor that had always been reserved for royalty; and in another remarkable display of regal grief, the queen bowed to the coffin as it passed the gates of Buckingham Palace, where she had been waiting with Prince Philip, Prince Charles, her grandsons, and Diana's brother, Charles Spencer. The younger men then joined the procession, walking slowly behind the coffin along the Mall to the Abbey, where 2,000 dignitaries and celebrities from around the world had gathered.

The ceremony that followed would be remembered for two things—Elton John's moving delivery of "Goodbye, England's Rose," adapted from his earlier song "Candle in the Wind"; and for Charles Spencer's emotional tribute to his sister, with his stinging rebuke to the media that had made Diana, he said, "the most hunted person of the modern age," and his unexpected snub to the royal family sitting in front of him. He promised his sister that her "blood family" would see to it that her sons were raised in "the imaginative and loving way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men, so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition, but can sing openly, as you planned." But even in death, the contradictions persist. The "people's princess" lies alone on a small island in the middle of a lake at Althorp, where her Spencer ancestors buried their hunting dogs and where only her immediate family can visit her grave.

"I have watched many, many hours of television in the aftermath of Diana's death," wrote Barbara Grizzuti Harrison , "and the images speak: She inclines her body and applies her hands and her lips to lepers, to babies with amputated limbs, to frail AIDS victims; she gathers her children to her heart with an almost violent ecstasy of tenderness. I can't believe that all of this was done in the name of public relations…. A doctor I know, a kind healer, was on the staff of Harlem Hospital when Diana visited. He said, 'They were literally untouchable, some of the people she touched; you wouldn't want to be anywhere near them…. But she touched them and welcomed them into her affection with absolute unself-consciouness.'… She loved the world and the world loved her back, and it was thrilling to have her among us."