MORE THAN TWO billion people had watched the funeral on television. For weeks after, the world mourned and Britain was engulfed in grief. Diana’s engaging smile, captured on endless news footage and luminous on the many magazine covers that followed her death, was a haunting reminder of her presence over her sixteen years in the spotlight. She had touched many lives, and her sudden death brought sharp winds of change to Britain and its monarchy.
The Queen, who had seemed so dispassionate at the time of Diana’s death, had heard the angry voices of her people and listened to the advice from Downing Street. Her misjudgment of Diana’s hold on the people had caused the most serious crisis the monarchy had suffered since Edward VIII’s abdication. Now, if it was to survive, the Queen knew she must move with the times. She does not easily take to change, but there has been a cosmetic reshaping and a willingness to embrace ‘the generation that will decide the future of the House of Windsor.’
A year after Diana’s death, Simon Lewis, at thirty-nine the youngest voice in Palace politics, was employed by “the firm” (as Prince Philip likes to call the members of the Royal Family) as the Queen’s communications director. But the Queen had already shown signs of easing into a more contemporary style: she smiled whenever she knew a camera was upon her, rode for the first time in a taxi (to promote environmentally friendly liquefied gas fuel), visited a Devon pub (holding a sealed bottle of ale in a gloved hand at the bar), and chatted easily with rock singer Julie Thompson at a Buckingham Palace function, seemingly unfazed by the young woman’s shocking pink hair.
She accepted the changes to ceremony and procedure that Tony Blair’s Labour government put into effect. Primogeniture, an eldest son’s right to succeed to the throne before his older sister, was abolished. This was followed by the Queen’s ending compulsory bowing and curtsying to members of the Royal Family—which included the bow formerly demanded of Philip for the Queen, of Charles for his mother, and of those in the Royal Family junior to Charles for him.
Voices were raised over the need for constitutional reform, and accusations that “the system is an ancient briar rose, never pruned of pricks and suckers, impenetrable, obstructive, creaking with age.” The government promised that in the near future hereditary peers would be expelled from the House of Lords.
Although no date was given the Queen agreed that Kensington Palace be transformed into a museum, housing art in the Royal Collection never before placed on public display. She would undertake the expense of rehousing its inhabitants. In November 1997, on her golden wedding anniversary, the Queen broke with tradition again to address the nation and reassure it “that the monarchy is in touch with its government and people.”
But the most evident change was not in her words and actions but in the attitude of the people towards her and members of her family. Her subjects had become “a lot less reverential and a lot less deferential,” author Brian Hoey concedes. “People no longer believe royalty walks on water.”
It was Tony Blair who had popularized the phrase “the People’s Princess” when he spoke movingly to newsmen that August morning after Diana was known to have died. His active role in bringing the Queen back to London and his stand throughout this time of public mourning secured his hold on the country. The Tories accused him of using the tragedy for political gain, but Blair had his finger on the pulse of public opinion and he knew how to use the media to get his message out to the people.
Once Henri Paul’s alcohol intake was ascertained by autopsy, some of the heat was off the paparazzi who had been arrested at the crash site and later released. Romuald Rat and Christian Martinez were accused of “ravenously snapping pictures instead of trying to help,” and of being “excessively aggressive, fighting with police, blocking access to the victims.” Although later exonerated, their press cards and driver’s licences were confiscated and they were forbidden to leave France. For Rat, the first to comfort Diana, this was ironic. Photographs of the victims, Diana included, were circulated to foreign markets, but publishers feared a backlash if they were printed. Rumours circulated that British intelligence had conducted secret raids on the homes and laboratories of some of the photographers to make sure that such pictures were not made public. Only those taken of the crumpled car after the victims were removed ever saw publication.
A new but voluntary press code was initiated by the Press Complaints Commission in Britain. It was more specific than the one in the United States which says only that newspapers “should respect the individual’s right to privacy.” Now British editors must justify the behaviour of their staff and of any freelancer whose material they use. If they expose someone’s private life they must show that there is an “overriding public interest.” Lord Wakeham, the commission’s chairman, stated: “Motorbike chases, stalking and hounding are unacceptable—and editors who carry pictures obtained by them will be subjected to the severest censure.” But as long as paparazzi can sell their photographs abroad for high figures, it will be hard to enforce this code.
The public temperature towards the paparazzi remained feverish. There was a modified global cooling of the kind of posse tactics that Diana endured. No other person, with the possible exception of Monica Lewinsky, the woman at the centre of the Clinton impeachment, has emerged whose image could command such prices.
Almost immediately after the crash conspiracy scenarios began to circulate. On the Monday after the funeral Libya’s Colonel Gaddafy in a speech on Libyan national television claimed that the accident had been an “arranged crash” plotted by British “anti-Islamic and anti-Arab” forces, “to make sure that a member of the Royal Family did not marry an Arab.” He added that it was “naïve of people to believe otherwise.” Ten days after the funeral, the lead story Who Killed Diana?, subtitled Order From the Palace: Execute Emad Fayed, appeared in Egypt’s Al Ahram newspaper claiming that Diana had been “killed by British intelligence to save the monarchy.” Newspapers in Jordan and the Gulf suggested the same scenario. And not long after Mohamed al Fayed began a vigorous investigation of his own and would claim rather wildly that there had been a conspiracy led by Prince Philip.
Diana’s tragic death was met with such disbelief that people had the desperate need to find a reason for it that was as momentous as her death. First it was the paparazzi who had hounded her. That so beautiful and vital a young woman could have been the victim of an accident perpetrated by a drunk driver was too simple an explanation to be an acceptable idea to many.
Yet, the circumstances of the crash negate the theories that the death of the three people in the Mercedes was caused by anything other than a tragic combination of no seat-belts, and a drunk driver in an unfamiliar car travelling at great speed and losing control. It was hinted that Henri Paul might have been poisoned before he sat behind the wheel of the Mercedes—perhaps the yellow liquid he had consumed at the Ritz bar had contained some lethal substance; perhaps the car had been tampered with, or the mysterious white Fiat Uno had set up Paul for the crash. It was even suggested that an unidentified motorcyclist, cloaked in black leather, had swerved in front of the Mercedes causing it to crash.
These theories were all proven by the French investigation to be unfounded. They were also illogical. After twenty-three months of diligent inquiry led by Judge Hervé Stéphan, one of the most powerful judicial figures in France, it was concluded that the accident had been caused by the speed of the vehicle and the driver’s drunkenness. Even with the tremendous impact that crushed the front of the car, Diana and Dodi might have survived, albeit seriously injured, had they been wearing seat-belts.
The only survivor, Trevor Rees-Jones, returned to his home in Oswestry, England. After a year he was well enough to take a part-time job in a sports shop a short distance from his home. He has intense therapy for his left arm, which was crushed in the crash, and will have more surgery on scars. He can eventually sue the Ritz, but whatever he might receive will not erase the trauma and pain he has experienced. He is quieter, more reticent than his friends and family recall him before the crash. His memory has not fully returned, and may never do so.
On the day of Diana’s funeral the Spencer family appeared united and Earl Spencer’s speech caused speculation that his star was in the ascendancy, that the days of Champagne Charlie were behind him. Within a year, though, he was maligned from all quarters. An acrimonious divorce from his wife in November 1998 again splashed his name across the front pages of the British press: he was attempting to prove that she was not a fit mother due to her emotional problems, and was offering a settlement of less than half a million pounds. A former mistress, Chantal Callopy, supported Victoria in her sensational suit, which exposed his bad behaviour and his flagrant womanizing.*
In August 1998, Earl Spencer opened the Princess of Wales Museum at Althorp and was accused of profiteering by charging an exorbitant £10 entry fee (visitors to Buckingham Palace pay £8). It allowed visitors to tour the museum, which contained many of Diana’s clothes and personal mementoes, but to view Diana’s island grave they had to stand a hundred feet back from the banks of the water that surrounded it. His vow to his nephews in his famous eulogy to his sister to be active in their lives was difficult for him to uphold: he was, after all, living in South Africa for most of the year, and had his own four children to look after, while the princes had their own routine in Britain. There was also some resentment on their part for the way he had spoken against the Royal Family at their mother’s funeral. His time with his nephews has been limited. Sarah had been very close to Diana in the last years of her life. They had spoken almost daily and Diana had called her “the only person I can trust.” Sarah was still slim and a ravishing redhead as she approached her mid-forties but Diana’s death took a great toll on her. Her job with the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund had placed her under great stress but she and Jane found time for Diana’s beloved sons, attending school events, writing and telephoning them frequently. Prince Charles has invited Frances Shand Kydd for several overnight visits to Highgrove, and the princes and she have spent time together in their father’s beloved Highgrove gardens.
Prince Charles spent more time at Highgrove where he felt the most comfortable, and where he and Camilla could be alone together. He told friends he needed her “now more than ever before.” For many months after Diana’s death Camilla was justifiably terrified to appear in public. There were even fears that she might be assassinated: Charles employed bodyguards for her protection, and as she had lost a great deal of money in recent investments, helped to cover her expenses.
His grief, publicly displayed in the days after Diana’s death, was truly felt. Charles, as one close friend observed, was “totally at a loss, torn in different directions by his family’s natural reserve and the public’s frightening wave of emotion.” He was paralysed by a profound sense of guilt about her and a desperation that he might now lose Camilla for ever. He could hardly blame her if she turned away from him rather than spend her life in hiding, loathed by the world, denied a normal life with the man for whom she had already, as he saw it, sacrificed so much. He knew he could count on her discretion and loyalty, but she was entitled to a respected place beside the man she loved. He was not sure that he could give her that. Camilla did not turn away from him. She was there whenever he called and never complained. Her support paid off.
Within ten months the world had regained compassion for Charles, who had shown a more human side of his personality, kissing his sons for the first time in public, placing his hand easily on their shoulders, taking them to a rock concert. People felt the sincerity of his grief and the honesty of his love for Camilla. They felt, as had Diana after the divorce, that he should be allowed dignity in his private life, which meant accepting Camilla at his side. As the first year of mourning neared its end, she had virtually become mistress of Highgrove and accompanied Charles, ever discreetly, on many of his travels. On 12 June 1998, Prince William was introduced to Camilla in his father’s apartments at St James’s Palace. Harry met her three weeks later, also over tea, at Highgrove.
These test meetings went well. Camilla is a jolly sort, with a good sense of humour, and there was no doubt that their father was happy in her company. Sensibly, the princes did what they could to mend fences. One important step was a party they gave for Prince Charles’s fiftieth birthday, in which Camilla was an active participant.
In 1998 Charles and Camilla finally were seen together as they left a birthday celebration for Camilla’s sister. The press had been notified that they would leave together and the photographs taken by them were widely published. By the summer of 1999 a holiday that included Charles, Camilla and William and Harry was approved.
The Queen still regards Camilla as a “non-person,” but there is strong public sentiment that Charles and Camilla should be allowed to share a life openly.
In accordance with Diana’s wishes, Harry joined William at Eton. Their mother’s death brought both boys much closer to their father. Outwardly Harry seemed to have the greatest difficulty in coping with his loss: during the first year he often seemed lost in thought and clung to his father. William, always the more serious of the two, has grown into young manhood. He looks more like his mother with each passing year, and has her quick sense of humour and the ability to laugh at himself. His recent style has become more imitative of Charles—he’s seldom seen in the sports caps and jeans that he wore when he was younger. His father spends more time with him preparing him to be king, as does the Queen, whose eyes light up whenever he visits.
Both boys have bonded closely with the Windsors. When the Spencer family gathered at Althorp for a private ceremony on the first anniversary of Diana’s death, William and Harry opted to remain with their father and grandparents at Balmoral where they also had the companionship of Peter and Zara Phillips. There they went shooting and fishing with Charles, or biked with their cousins.
Former Prime Minister John Major was appointed as a special guardian to the princes to look after their interests in sensitive negotiations over Diana’s will. The problem arose because she had neglected to update it following her divorce and the receipt of her £20 million settlement (£17 million plus £3 million interest on it.) The final decision was to split Diana’s assets between her sons, the money to be held in trust in an interest-bearing account until they are twenty-five. (Much of Prince Charles’s wealth is in trust for Harry because William will eventually succeed to the Duchy of Cornwall, which currently generates an after-tax income of about £2 million a year.) In a moving clause in her will, Diana gave her sons first choice of her personal possessions, “including her stuffed animals,” which they prize as an intimate reminder of their mother. William also took her Cartier tank watch, which he almost always wears. Diana’s intellectual property rights were, and still are, worth tens of millions of pounds. These include the use of her name or photograph on souvenirs and commercial products. A large part of this income was to go to the memorial fund set up in her name.
The manner of Diana’s death was so terrible that it will not be forgotten, but her person and life will be immortalized. Unlike those historical figures of past centuries who stare blankly at us from portraits and photographs, she was born into the age of technology where her image, smiling, speaking, crying, elegant, funny, sexy, will always be available. Her story was an amazing welding of fairytale and soap opera. She was, as Bryan Appleyard wrote in The Times shortly after her death, “a kind of one-woman rainbow coalition of every imaginable trauma from infidelity to marriage breakdown, from domestic humiliation to global conflict.”
In exchange for glory she traded, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes not, her privacy. Both her life and death were representative of an epoch “when celebrity obsession seems as out of control as a hurtling Mercedes on a late summer night in Paris.” Diana’s celebrity was such that when Mother Teresa died in the same week the saintly nun’s death was given short shrift in a media preoccupied with the Princess. And why was Diana’s death such a major story? For all the reasons listed above, but more importantly because her life and her death instituted changes that affected society. Diana changed the monarchy and the British attitude towards grief. The House of Windsor was almost brought down by the tears of their subjects, who demanded their democratic prerogatives and insisted that the Queen act as their subject, sharing their emotion, when for centuries British monarchs were held up as role models for public behaviour despite their own improprieties.
The synchronicity of Diana’s death and Mother Teresa’s also points up the complex nature of Diana’s ability to survive in vivid memory, for she combined two unlikely components: glamour and spirituality. She talked to the poor, the disenfranchised, visited the homeless, the maimed, the dying and brought them hope.
There is a fascinating duality about Diana: she was a saint with mortal passions, a fairytale princess who encapsulated all the problems faced by women of her time. She was the most famous woman in the world who publicly confessed to adultery, attempted suicide, an eating disorder, and was loved even more for doing so. She died young, at the height of her beauty and popularity in a ghastly car crash. The tragedy was of ancient Greek dimension.
Her radical message will never be forgotten: “You don’t need a palace to be a princess. You may even need to leave it to become one.”
LADY DIANA SPENCER, HRH THE PRINCESS OF WALES, DIANA, PRINCESS OF WALES
1961–1997
*Countess Spencer won a settlement of $3.2 million and her Cape Town house; and retained joint custody of their four children.