Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales |
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Diana, Princess of Wales (Diana Frances Mountbatten-Windsor, née Spencer) (1 July 1961–31 August 1997), commonly, but incorrectly, known as Princess Diana, was for fifteen years the wife of HRH The Prince Charles, Prince of Wales. She was the mother of the second and third in line to the British throne, HRH Prince William of Wales and HRH Prince Henry ("Harry") of Wales.
From the time of her marriage to the Prince of Wales in 1981 until her death in a car accident in Paris in 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales was one of the world's most high-profile, most photographed, and most iconic celebrities.
Early years
Diana was the youngest daughter of Edward Spencer, Viscount Althorp, and his wife Frances. Known at birth as The Honourable Diana Spencer, she was thus a descendant of King Charles I. 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. She was educated in Norfolk and at boarding school in Kent, and was regarded as an academically below-average student. In spite of this she was an accomplished pianist, and in later life a daring and bold bridge player. At 16 she attended Institut Alpin Videmanette, a finishing school in Rougemont, Switzerland. Diana never was particularly scholarly, but she excelled in sports and longed to be a ballerina.
Marriage and family life
The Spencers, like many noble families, had been in the service of the British Royal Family for decades. That service became personal when HRH The Prince of Wales, briefly dated the Lady Sarah Spencer (the Lady Diana's older sister) in the 1970s. His love life had always been the subject of press speculation, and he was linked to numerous women. Nearing his mid-thirties, he was under increasing pressure to marry. As a future Queen, the Prince of Wales' bride had to be of impeccable lineage, not a Roman Catholic and a virgin. Reportedly, it was his then (and current) lover Camilla Parker Bowles who helped him select 19-year-old Lady Diana Spencer, who was working as a nursery-school teacher. Buckingham Palace announced their engagement on February 24, 1981.
The wedding took place at St Paul's Cathedral in London on July 29 before 3,500 invited guests (including Camilla Parker-Bowles) and an estimated 750 million TV viewers around the world. The Lady Diana was the first Englishwoman to marry an heir to the throne since 1659 when the Lady Anne Hyde married the Duke of York, the future James II of England.
Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales had two children, His Royal Highness Prince William Arthur Philip Louis on June 21, 1982 and His Royal Highness Prince Henry Charles Albert David (commonly called Prince Harry) on September 15, 1984 On the same day as Prince Harry was born, the Princess gave birth to a stillborn baby girl, which led to the speculation that Prince Charles wanted a baby girl rather than a boy.
After the birth of Prince William, the Princess of Wales suffered from post-natal depression. She later developed the eating disorder bulimia nervosa, and made a number of suicide attempts. In one of her interviews, released after her death, she claimed that, while pregnant with Prince William, she threw herself down a set of stairs, and was discovered by her horrified mother-in-law.
It has been suggested that the Princess 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' (so-called 'para-suicide'). In the same interview where she told of the suicide attempt while pregnant with Prince William, she said that the Prince of Wales 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 the Prince of Wales 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 the other party of adultery. The Prince of Wales had resumed his relationship with Mrs Parker-Bowles,while the Princess of Wales had become involved with James Gilby, (the so-called Squidgygate affair). She later confirmed she had also had an affair with her riding instructor, James Hewitt. (Theoretically, such an affair constituted high treason in both parties.)
Although the Prince and Princess of Wales separated on December 9, 1992, their divorce was not finalised until August 28, 1996.
Charity work
During the mid-to-late 1980s, the Princess of Wales became well known for her support of charity projects, and is credited with considerable influence for her campaigns against the use of landmines and helping the victims of AIDS.
AIDS
In April 1987, the Princess of Wales was the first high-profile celebrity to be photographed touching an AIDS-infected person. Her contribution to changing the public opinion of AIDS sufferers was summarised in December 2001 by Bill Clinton at the 'Diana, Princess of Wales Lecture on AIDS', when he said:
- In 1987, when so many still believed that AIDS could be contracted through casual contact, Princess Diana sat on the sickbed of a man with AIDS and held his hand. If the Princess of Wales could hold the hand of a man with AIDS, who could claim to be above it? She showed the world that people with AIDS deserved not isolation, but compassion. It helped change world opinion, helped give hope to people with AIDS, and helped save lives of people at risk.
Landmines
Perhaps her most widely publicised charity appearance was her visit to Angola in January 1997, when, serving as an International Red Cross VIP volunteer[1], 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.
The pictures of Diana touring a minefield, in helmet and flak jacket, were seen worldwide. In August that year she visited Bosnia with the Landmine Survivors Network. Her interest in landmines was focused on the injuries they create, often to children, long after the conflict for which they are intended has finished.
She is widely credited[2] for her influence on the governments of the UK and other nations, in their signing of the Ottawa Treaty in December 1997 (after her death) which created an international ban on the use of anti-personnel landmines. Introducing the Second Reading of the Landmines Bill 1998 to the British House of Commons, the Foreign Secretary Robin Cook paid tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales' work on landmines:
- All honourable Members will be aware from their postbags of the immense contribution made by Diana, Princess of Wales to bringing home to many of our constituents the human costs of landmines. The best way in which to record our appreciation of her work, and the work of NGOs that have campaigned against landmines, is to pass the Bill, and to pave the way towards a global ban on landmines. [3]
Death
Circumstances
On August 31, 1997 Diana was involved in a car crash 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 Ritz Hotel in Place Vendome, Paris, and drove along the north bank of the Seine. At 00:25 on the 31st, their Mercedes Benz 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 taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital. Despite frantic attempts to save her, her internal injuries were too massive. At 04:00 that morning the doctors pronounced her dead.
In 1999 a French investigation concluded that the Mercedes had come into contact with another vehicle (a white Fiat Uno) in the tunnel. But the driver of that vehicle never came forward, and the vehicle itself was not found.
Initial media reports stated that Diana's car had collided with the pillar at over 190 km/h (120 mph), and that the speedometer's needle had jammed at that position. But it was later announced that the car's actual speed on collision was about 95-110 km/h (59-68 mph), and that the speedometer had no needle as it was digital. The car was certainly travelling much faster than the legal speed limit of 50 km/h (30 mph), and faster than was prudent for the Alma underpass.
The investigators concluded that the crash was an accident brought on by an intoxicated driver attempting to elude pursuing paparazzi at high speed.
In November 2003, Christian Martinez and Fabrice Chassery, the photographers who took photos of the casualties after the crash, and Jacques Langevin, who took photos as the couple left the Ritz Hotel, were cleared of breaching French privacy laws (Source: Paparazzi at Diana crash site acquitted - The Guardian).
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.
Accident or Assassination?
Debate rages between those who believe she was assassinated, and those who believe she died as the result of an accident.
The French investigators' conclusion that Paul was drunk was made largely on the basis of an analysis of blood samples, which were stated to contain a high alcohol level. But the samples were also said to contain a level of carbon monoxide sufficiently high as to have prevented him from driving a car (or even from standing up). Some maintain this strongly indicates that the samples were tampered with. No official DNA test has been carried out on the samples, and Henri Paul's family has not been allowed to commission independent tests on them.
The families of Dodi Al-Fayed and Henri Paul do not accept the French investigators' findings. In the Scottish courts, Mohamed Al-Fayed applied for an order directing that there be a public inquiry, and is to appeal against the denial of his application. Fayed for his part stands by his belief that the Princess and his son were killed in an elaborate conspiracy launched by the "racist" husband of Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
Motivations which have been advanced for murder include suggestions that Diana intended to convert to Islam, and that she was pregnant with Dodi's child. In January 2004, the former coroner of the Queen's Household, Dr John Burton, stated that the Princess was not pregnant at the time of her death when he said (in an interview with The Times) that he attended a post-mortem examination of her body at Fulham mortuary in which he personally examined her womb and found her not to be pregnant.
Rumours and conspiracies aside, it must be noted that Diana, Dodi, and Paul were not wearing their seat belts when the car crashed. Rees-Jones, the only survivor, had his seat belt on. Also, the underpass at the Place de l'Alma is known as an accident black spot, and visiting it one can see why this is so; it is on a stretch of high-speed road, but only has limited visibility ahead in places, and there are square-shaped pillars in the central reservation which could lead to nasty collisions.
Legacy
Diana's death was greeted with extraordinary public grief, and her funeral at Westminster Abbey on September 6 drew an estimated 3 million [4] mourners and worldwide television coverage. People in India did see the funeral, even though it was during the nine emotional days in their country that marked the death and state funeral of Mother Teresa, who died the day before.
More than 1 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.
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 total lack of feeling; the refusal of Buckingham Palace to fly the Union Jack at half-mast 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".
Mourners cast flowers at the funeral procession for almost the entire length of its journey. The Queen notably departed from standard royal protocol in bowing as the procession passed. There was something of a festive atmosphere outside Westminster Abbey as the crowds cheered the dozens of celebrities - including singer Sir Elton John (who performed a re-written version of his song Candle in the Wind), actor Tom Cruise, director Steven Spielberg, and British tycoon Richard Branson - who filed inside. The service itself was televised live throughout the world, even in India, which lost Mother Teresa just the day before, and speakers 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 criticised 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.
During the four weeks following her funeral, the overall suicide rate in England and Wales rose by 17%, compared with the average reported for that period in the four previous years. Researchers suggest that this was caused by the "identification" effect, as the greatest increase in people taking their own lives was in people most similar to Diana: women aged 25 to 44, whose suicide rate increased by over 45% (Source: Effect of death of Diana, Princess of Wales on suicide and deliberate self-harm, British Journal of Psychiatry 2000;177:469-72). This effect is similar to copycat suicides.
In the aftermath of her death, interest in the life of Diana remains high. Numerous manufacturers of collectibles continue to produce Diana merchandise. Some suggested making Diana a saint, stirring much controversy.
As a temporary memorial, the public co-opted the Flamme de Liberté (Flame of Liberty), a monument near the Alma Tunnel, and related to the French donation of the Statue of Liberty to the United States. The messages of condolence have since been removed and its use as a Diana memorial has discontinued. However, the concrete mini-wall at the edge of the tunnel is still used as an impromptu memorial for people to write their thoughts and feelings about Diana. A permanent memorial, the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain was opened in Hyde Park in London on July 6, 2004.
Diana was ranked third in the (2002) Great Britons poll sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the British public.
In 2003, Marvel Comics announced it was to publish a five-part series entitled Di Another Day (a reference to the James Bond film Die Another Day) featuring a resurrected Diana, Princess of Wales as a mutant with superpowers, as part of Peter Milligan's X-Statix title. Amidst considerable (and predictable) outcry, the idea was quickly dropped.
In 2004, the American 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. A few weeks later, rival network CBS showed pictures of the crash taken by the photographers showing an intact rear side and an intact centre section of the Mercedes, including one of a unbloodied Diana with no outward injuries, crouched on the rear floor of the vehicle with her back to the right passenger seat - the right rear car door is completely opened. These pictures caused uproar in the UK, and spurred another lawsuit by Mohammed Al-Fayed.
As of January 2005, Diana's legacy on landmines remained unfulfilled. The UN appealed to the nations which produced and stockpiled the largest numbers of landmines (China, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and the USA) to sign the Ottawa treaty forbidding their production and use, for which Diana had campaigned. Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the UN Children's Fund, said that landmines remained "a deadly attraction for children, whose innate curiosity and need for play often lure them directly into harm's way". [5]
Titles
- From 1961 until 1975, Diana was known as The Honourable Diana Frances Spencer.
- From 1975, when her father inherited the Earldom of Spencer, until 1981, Diana was known as The Lady Diana Frances Spencer.
- From her marriage to His Royal Highness Prince Charles, Prince of Wales on Wednesday July 29, 1981 until their divorce was finalized on August 28, 1996, Diana was officially known as Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales.
- From August 28, 1996 onwards, she was officially known as Diana, Princess of Wales.
The usage "Princess Diana", though commonly used in speech and the media, is incorrect. Diana herself made a point of correcting people who used it.
Lineage
Prior to her marriage, much research was done into Diana's lineage by genealogists. It was discovered that her ancestry included links to such varied persons as romantic novelist Barbara Cartland [6], Hollywood screen legend Humphrey Bogart (who was her 7th cousin), and poet Edmund Spenser, the author of The Faerie Queen [7]. Actor Oliver Platt is reportedly also related fairly closely to Diana.
See also
External links
- The Spencer Family Tree (Adobe Acrobat pdf format)
- Diana's coat of arms
- The unofficial Diana memorial (Flame of Liberty)
- Althorp for Diana's final resting place
- The Work Continues - Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund
- alt.conspiracy.princess-diana - Diana assassination newsgroup
- Chronology of Diana's last day
- Incomplete chronology of legal proceedings, 1997-2004
- Surrey Coroner for the Diana and Dodi Fayed inquests
- Whatever happened to Diana's landmines legacy?
- Diana crash inquiry report
- Was there a conspiracy to kill Diana? (TIMEeurope magazine)
