Princess Diana during her infamous interview with Martin Bashir
Twenty years after Princess Diana’s tragic death in a Paris road crash, her two sons and daughter-in-law paid a solemn visit in the pouring rain to the garden created in her honour at London’s Kensington Palace where the Princess of Wales lived.
Even before they reached there on the eve of the anniversary of her death, bouquets were already gathering there. The royal trio spent about an hour in the garden dominated by blooming white flowers specially planted to pay tributes to the icon who was affectionately called Lady Di. William and Kate carried umbrellas to shield from the drizzle while Harry preferred to wear a brown hat.
The princes also went to see dozens of bouquets of already deposited by passers-by at the gate and Prince Harry placed a bouquet, which was presented by an onlooker, among dozens messages of sympathy, photos, posters and candles blown out by the light rain and the wind.
”I came twenty years ago with my mother and my son, now I am 21 years old. I do it for her sons, who follow her path,” said Stephanie Davinson, a 52-year-old assistant professor, after depositing a bouquet, according to French magazine Paris Match.
In the afternoon her two sons met the representatives of charities that the princess supported, away from the glitter of the giant concert they organized in London to mark the tenth anniversary of their mom’s death.
SONS PAYING TRIBUTE TO HER LIFE AND WORK
“This commitment will allow princes to pay tribute to the life and work of their mother,” said a Kensington Palace spokesman. No formal appointment is scheduled for August 31, the day Diana died at the age of 36 in Paris around 4 am in 1997 along with Egyptian heir Dodi Al-Fayed, the son Al Fayed, then the owner of the luxury retailer Harrods.
William and Harry are planning to erect a statue of Diana – perhaps before the end of the year – in the Kensington Gardens.
In a documentary aired by the British television channel ITV Prince William, 35, said ”For Harry and I, it’s extremely important to celebrate her life.”
Harry, 32, said: ”I want to try and fill the gaps my mother left,” in a BBC documentary entitled “Diana, 7 Days”.
Carolyn Harris, a Toronto-based author and royal historian, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) “Diana was a person who resonated with the public because she combined glamour and vulnerability…There is this sense of this very fashionable public figure who at the same time was very open about her problems and empathized with the problems of others, so the public really responded to her.”
In 2010, William gave his wife-to-be Kate his mother’s engagement ring, likely symbol of her ill-fated marriage to his father, Prince Charles. William’s daughter Charlotte has Diana as one of her middle names.
LIKE AN ICONIC CELEBRITY WHO DIED YOUNG
“She’s like other iconic celebrities who died young — think Marilyn Monroe or James Dean. There’s a new generation,” suggests Mark Borkowski, a British public relations expert.
Author Sally Bedell Smith, says Diana’s original appeal stemmed from her “unusual combination of beauty, glamour and vulnerability.” She could also connect effortlessly with people from all social classes.
“But her darker traits remained largely hidden from the public. She was incapable of seeing beyond her intense emotions, or recognizing that her actions could have unintended and destructive consequences,” says Smith. “One of her relatives once told me that ‘she had a perfectly good character, but her temperament overtook her.'”
Still, there have been some shifts in the Diana narrative over the years, with more nuanced and analytical views of everything from the tabloid-filling demise of her marriage to the way she interacted with reporters and photographers.
“During the last summer of her life, she was not the mythical ‘new woman’ portrayed in the tabloids. She was spinning like a top, emotionally unmoored, caught up in the unsavoury web of the Fayed family,” says Smith. “The romance with Dodi, ‘an irresponsible and self-destructive playboy with no real achievements to his name’ showed above all, how troubled she was, to the very end.”
The mythic nature of Diana’s image has little to rival it so completely within the Royal Family. Some royals have shown elements of it, such as the 1950s and ’60s glamour of Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth’s younger sister.
Diana was also romantically linked with Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan.
Borkowski sees qualities that attracted attention to Diana 20 or 30 years ago still having an allure.
“She was a Hollywood film star in a way. She had the same charisma,” he says. People “felt sorry for her, felt sorry for her being sucked into this unprepared circumstances.”
The interesting fact about her death was there was no real culprit. Many blamed the recklessness of the paparazzi who were on hot pursuit after the car carrying the royal. Somebody had to be blamed for the death of such a high profiled personality.
Smith draws a parallel with the 1817 passing of Princess Charlotte, daughter of the prince regent and future King George IV, after she gave birth to a stillborn son.
The public outpouring of mourning that came with the 18th century death also needed to find a culprit and “the public decided the obstetrician was to blame,” Harris says. In that, there were similarities to Diana’s death, with crowds shouting at Paris photographers “this is because of you, you hounded her.”
Immediately after the death, the former Harrods owner Mohammed Al Fayed, father of Dodi, alleged that there had been a Royal Family/M16 conspiracy to murder the princess, according to a report in the Express.
He suggested the couple were killed as part of a British establishment plot to prevent her from marrying his son, as this would have left Prince Harry and Prince William with an Egyptian stepfather, according to the paper.
An investigation called Operation Paget concluded Al Fayed’s claims were nothing more than a conspiracy theory, reaching the conclusion the crash happened because of the driving of chauffeur Henri Paul, who was three times over the French drink-driving limit according to police toxicology reports, and the antics of pursuing paparazzi photographers.
According to press reports her former private secretary has disclosed that Princess Diana “deeply regretted” giving the infamous television interview in which she discussed Prince Charles’ extra-marital affairs just before the death.
Her scandalous interview was kept a total secret from Buckingham Palace – and within a month of it being broadcast, the Queen wrote to both Diana and Charles personally advising them to divorce.
HER MOST EXPLOSIVE TV INTERVIEW
Dressed in a powerful black suit and white blouse, Diana sat down with Martin Bashir for an hour in what would become one of the most explosive interviews ever conducted.
She dropped a number of bombshells as she opened up about her life as a member of the Royal Family.
A staggering 22.8 million watched it, and it remains one of the highest-rated BBC programmes of all time.
Bashir – a seasoned journalist – asked: “Do you think Mrs Parker-Bowles was a factor in the breakdown of your marriage?”
Diana, whose head had been pointing towards the ground, looked up and replied: “Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”
The line became infamous and one of the most explosive in an interview already full of scandal.
The Princess also spoke candidly of her battle with post-natal depression after giving birth to William.
She said: “I was unwell with post-natal depression, which no one ever discusses, post-natal depression, you have to read about it afterwards, and that in itself was a bit of a difficult time”.
Even today some describe Princess Diana as an attention grabber and as a curse on the royal family. (Paris Match, CBC, Youtube, press reports)
