From a shy teenager who became engaged to Prince Charles to a caring mother, humanitarian and global star, the life of Princess Diana, who died aged just 36, continues to capture the attention of people around the world.
Young, beautiful and fun, she looked refreshingly informal when she married Britain’s heir to the throne in 1981 at the age of 20 after a courtship that, according to the media at least, was like something out of a fairy tale.
But the bitter breakup of their marriage, with many juicy details that filled the tabloids, pushed the monarchy into a permanent crisis, and it towards self-destruction.
In an unusual interview in 1995, she spoke openly about her husband’s affair with Camilla Parker Bowles and to his own unbelief.
Stripping the monarchy of its veil of mystique and calling into question Charles’ fitness to be king, the interview horrified parts of the British establishment.
In recent years, Diana’s public image has changed because her sons fiercely defend her memory and use the fact that Diana was allegedly mistreated by the media in their own confrontations with the media.
“She’s a saint now, so to speak, and they made her that way because they keep talking about how the media drove her to her death,” said the royal family historian, writer Ed Owens.
A recent Hollywood film and the popular Netflix series “The Crown” presented a fictional version sympathetic to Diana, reviving interest in her life and style.
“I think ‘The Crown’ will do a lot when it returns to the small screen this fall to flesh out that idea of human tragedy, the saint, as it were,” added Owens.
Internal turmoil
Born on July 1, 1961, Diana came from an aristocratic Spencer family that had close ties to the monarchy: Her father worked for King George VI. and Queen Elizabeth II.
She grew up with two sisters and a brother, and her childhood was marked by the bitter divorce of her parents.
She left school at the age of 16 with no qualifications and eventually completed a ‘behaviour school’ in Switzerland, after which she got a job in a nursery school in London.
When she met Charles, her life changed.
The prince was under increasing pressure to marry, so he proposed to her when he was 32 years old.
Diana said they only met 13 times before the wedding.
The heir to the throne, Prince William, was born a year later, and two years later, Prince Harry was born.
Robert Hardmana journalist who covered the royal family and author of The Queen of Our Time: The Life of Queen Elizabeth II, said of Diana that she was an “absolutely caring mother.”
“She helped both sons equally, devoted herself to them, encouraged them and pleased them,” he said.
Diana was very empathetic with a good sense of style and knew how to harness popular support for the monarchy.
She used her position to help marginalized groups, shaking hands with AIDS and plague patients, who were then considered outcasts.
But privately she struggled with bulimia and fears that her husband did not love her, and the rest of the royal family didn’t care.
The fairy tale is over
Rumors that the marriage was in trouble surfaced in 1992 after biographer Andrew Morton exposed Diana’s misfortune with his landmark book, based on audio recordings the princess recorded answering his questions through a mutual friend.
That year ended with the shocking announcement that the royal couple would divorce.
The scandal deepened with further mutual accusations through the media, before first Charles admitted that he had been unfaithful, and then Diana.
In a controversial 1995 interview with the BBC’s Panorama, Diana admitted to an affair with an officer James Hewittbut she also criticized the royal family and questioned her husband’s ability to be king.
The BBC later admitted that it had obtained the interview fraudulently and promised not to show it again in its entirety.
William criticized the BBC for using its methods to fuel Diana’s “fears, paranoia and isolation” towards the end of her life.
Queen Elizabeth then publicly expressed regret and wrote to both Charles and Diana asking them to divorce.
The divorce was granted on August 28, 1996, and Diana lost the title of Royal Highness. The fairy tale is over.
Queen of hearts
But she was still the Princess of Wales and she was still interesting to the public.
She had a summer affair with Dodi Fayedthe son of an Egyptian tycoon Mohamed Al-Fayedwho died with her in a car accident on August 31, 1997, while they were being chased by paparazzi through Paris.
The grief of the public was enormous.
Tons of flowers were left outside her home in Kensington Palace and more than a million people lined the streets of London for her funeral to pay their last respects.
The public was very angry with the royal family because of her death, and the queen herself contributed to this by refusing to return from Scotland at first, so republicanism strengthened in the country.
A quarter of a century later, the public appears to be supporting the monarchy again.
Charles has been largely rehabilitated, while Camilla should become his queen consort.
But it is unlikely that she will ever reach the popularity of Princess Diana, the self-proclaimed “queen of hearts”.
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