Diana, Princess of Wales

Princess of Wales (1981–97)

• Born: July 1, 1961
• Birthplace: Park House, near Sandringham, Norfolk, England
• Died: August 31, 1997
• Place of death: Paris, France

Through her strong devotion to humanitarian causes, ranging from abolition of land mines to compassionate concern for those with AIDS and for the terminally ill, Diana revolutionized and uplifted the public image of British royalty in the 1990s. Her sudden death in a horrific automobile accident in 1997 shocked many around the world.

Early Life

Diana, Princess of Wales, was born Diana Frances Spencer. She was the youngest daughter of Viscount and Viscountess Althorp, now the late Earl Spencer and Frances Ruth Shand-Kydd. One sister, Jane, married Robert Fellowes, later private secretary to Queen Elizabeth II. The other, Sarah, dated Prince Charles before marrying Neil McCorquodale, a former army officer. Diana was especially close to her younger brother Charles, Earl Spencer, who fondly remembers her taking an almost maternal interest in him on his first day at school. Diana’s early childhood years also provided her with the nickname Duchess (or Dutch) by which close friends always knew her. Typical of the ironies that pervaded her life, the nickname had no connection with royalty, being instead the name of the leading feline in Walt Disney's animated film The Aristocats (1970). It was, however, typical of Diana’s childhood environment, emphasizing closeness with friends and animals. Although she grew up in a family with close ties to the monarchy (her birth home was on the queen’s estate near Sandringham), she never developed a taste for country sports, especially fox hunting, which was later to prove a major difference between her and Prince Charles.

Diana first attended Riddlesworth Hall Preparatory School in Norfolk, then, starting in 1974, boarded at West Heath School southeast of London. In 1978 she attended the Institut Alpin Videmanette, a finishing school near Rougemont, Switzerland. Diana’s critics often mentioned her twice failing the comprehensive tests taken by all students in their midteens. This lack of academic success was attributed to both the British habit of preparing upper-class women to be “breeders” and homemakers and to her lack of self-esteem resulting from her parents’ divorce.

Diana’s first job after moving into a London flat in 1980 was to look after the infant son of an American couple. At this time she also worked as a kindergarten teacher at the Young England School in Pimlico in south central London.

Life’s Work

The defining event in Diana’s life was her marriage to Prince Charles, heir to the British throne. Their friendship dated from a shooting party in November 1977, to which Diana’s sister Sarah had invited him. Later, at a barbecue in July 1980, Charles asked Diana to marry him after she expressed sympathy for the loneliness he felt over the assassination of his uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten.

Romantic illusions aside, Charles had found what he required: a Protestant virgin with pedigree. Diana’s marital goals were simpler; from early childhood she had stated her intents as falling in love, marrying, and having children with a husband to whom she could devote much time and support. However, some friends were concerned about her youth and lack of awareness about the demands of her official role and the different lifestyles of a royal such as Charles and a private upper-class woman such as Diana. The wedding on July 29, 1981, drew a media audience of millions of people, with 600,000 more lining the route from Buckingham Palace to St. Paul’s Cathedral to view the first Englishwoman to marry an heir to the throne in three hundred years.

It seemed only appropriate that Diana’s first official tour would be a visit to Wales, where she won the hearts of her hosts not only by her beauty and poise but also by delivering her speech in Welsh. However, the Welsh visit signaled a painful trend for the prince, one for which he had not been prepared: Diana’s immense popularity. Traveling by car on public occasions, Charles could hear people complaining that they could see him but not her. Like other members of his family, Charles had been brought up to assume that the spotlight would nearly always be on him. Diana, meanwhile, was much distressed by his lack of sensitivity.

Diana produced a royal heir, William, on June 21, 1982, and Henry (called Harry) on September 15, 1984. The royal couple broke tradition when they brought Prince William with them on a tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1983. Solo overseas visits for Diana had begun in September 1982, when she represented the queen at the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco; later travels ranged from the United States to South Africa, Hungary, and Nepal.

After 1990, Diana’s charitable work became highly visible, particularly with those with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and with many child welfare groups. Her campaign to ban land mines aided her colleague Jody Williams in receiving the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. With respect to her sons, Diana’s goals included teaching them to be responsive to the needs of all types of people. Thus they were taken to meet homeless people and people living with cystic fibrosis and AIDS.

The evolution of Diana’s relationship with fashion mirrored her movement from the unimaginative wardrobe of upper-class girls of 1980s London to an independent statement of personal values. Diana first embraced a romantic outburst of frills and flounces near her wedding. Realizing the need for resilience as her marital role grew more difficult, she learned to use clothing as a tool of power: A revealing black cocktail dress denoted sophistication, mature sexuality, and a rejection of conventional royal attire. By 1995, Diana had come far from the day when photographers maneuvered her into unconsciously revealing her legs through a long, flimsy skirt. Her later confidence showed in body-hugging, minimalist evening clothes. She became a fashion icon for women of all ages and classes, and auctions of her designer dresses raised millions for her charities.

Diana’s divorce from Prince Charles in 1996 forced her to resign as patron of many charities, but she continued with the English National Ballet and groups combating leprosy, AIDS, cancer, and children’s diseases. Diana’s biographers agree that her childhood had molded a woman who needed to be lavished with affection but that Charles, because of his upbringing, was incapable of responding to this need. Diana’s initial response to the frustrations of her situation included attacks of bulimia and three attempts at suicide. The idea that the marriage was without love from the start had been rejected by biographers such as Charles Kay, who asserted that there were years when Charles and Diana’s relationship was characterized by profound love and joy, especially the times near the birth of their children when they read poetry and listened to Russian composer Peter Tchaikovsky together.

The couple’s marriage, however, was troubled by more than Diana’s feelings of inadequacy; she was haunted by the frequent presence of Charles’s previous girlfriend, Camilla Parker Bowles, with whom he shared interests in riding, hunting, and other outdoor activities. Diana became convinced that she herself was not the sole object of his affection. Consequently, Diana turned to other men for support, ranging from an acknowledged lover, James Hewitt, to a platonic close friend, James Gilbey, to her final involvement with Emad Mohamed “Dodi” al-Fayed, son of the owner of Harrods, London’s elegant department store.

Though much debated, the precise relationship between Diana and Dodi al-Fayed may never be known. What is certain is that she much enjoyed his company and his warm, caring family who admired her for her individuality, not her position, and who also possessed the resources to protect her from invaders of privacy. Irony figured often in Diana’s life: Named for the Roman goddess of hunting, she was relentlessly pursued by the media. The final irony may be that not all the Fayeds’ wealth was enough to avoid fatal errors of judgment such as putting the couple into the care of a reserve chauffeur lacking specialized driving qualifications and who, on the fateful Saturday night of August 31, 1997, had drunk too much for safe driving. It may never be determined how much of a role paparazzi in pursuit of the couple played in causing the vehicle containing the driver, a bodyguard, Dodi, and Diana to crash into a pillar of an underground expressway in Paris, killing all but the bodyguard. Numerous investigations official and otherwise have proven little beyond the physical facts of the accident.

The official time of Diana’s death was 4:00 a.m., with the first floral tribute to her laid outside Buckingham Palace before 5:00 a.m. by a cab driver. By noon that Sunday, arrays of bouquets were in front of Harrods and Buckingham Palace. A carpet of blossoms, notes, teddy bears, and other gifts began swelling outside the gates of Kensington Palace, Diana’s London home. In the week between Diana’s death and funeral, the flower shops of Europe became denuded, and millions of people in Britain and abroad signed books of condolences in town halls, libraries, and even supermarkets.

In death Diana became, especially for those who had known her unstinting and genuine concern for others, a secular saint. Saints’ resting places often become the object of pilgrimages. An awareness of this problem led her family to inter her not in the parish church but on a private island at Althorp, the family estate, where her exact burial spot is known to very few. By the following July 1, Diana’s followers could continue to celebrate her life when a museum honoring her achievements and memory was opened at Althorp. Also, the British government’s announcement on July 31, 1998, of a total ban on land mines was timed to be implemented near the first anniversary of her death. Meanwhile, Charles ultimately went on to marry Parker Bowles in 2005.

Significance

Diana’s marriage to Prince Charles first focused media attention on her beauty and nearly impeccable style in clothing. Her public demeanor seemed to fulfill the promise of a more accessible monarchy. The troubled marriage and subsequent divorce and the openness with the British public about these matters caused many people to identify with her as a tragic figure, one capable of sharing the suffering and pain in their own lives. Her unexpected death paralyzed the world with grief for her and her sons. Questions about her relationship with Dodi and the possible involvement of paparazzi in causing the accident led to almost daily stories about Diana in newspapers around the world.

Those who believed that Diana had been killed by the insatiable curiosity of the people to whom she had given so much continued to venerate her with nearly saintlike fervor. Many others remember Diana’s keen, sometimes public, awareness of the problems of reconciling sensitive individualism and self-doubt with the impersonal image often demanded by her status. It was this awareness that identified her finally as the People’s Princess and the Queen of Hearts.

Since becoming adults, Prince William and Prince Harry have taken strides to honor their mother's memory and influence. Both have been very involved in charitable work and have been patrons for or have worked with a great number of charities. For example, Harry continued his mother's efforts to fight AIDS. He cofounded the Sentebale charity with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho to help children affected by the disease in Lesotho. William succeeded one of his mother's positions in 2007 as president of the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity. Her memory lived on in their personal lives as well. William (titled Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, until the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022, when he became William, Prince of Wales) proposed to his wife, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, who took on the title of Princess of Wales in 2022 (commonly known by her pre-marriage name of Kate Middleton), with Diana's engagement ring. The couple named their second child, Charlotte Elizabeth Diana, after his mother. Just as William and Kate's wedding had incorporated details honoring Diana, Harry included her family as well as touches such as her favorite flower in his 2018 wedding to Meghan Markle, whose engagement ring had been accented with some of Diana's stones. While Harry and Meghan remained the Duke and Duchess of Sussex following Queen Elizabeth II's death in 2022, their two children, as well as William and Kate's three children, gained prince and princess titles. Charles ascended the throne in September 2022 as King Charles III while Camilla, who had never assumed the title Princess of Wales, was then recognized as Queen Consort.

Diana's legacy was also further cemented through multiple fictional and nonfictional representations of her in books, television, film, and theater. In addition to numerous documentaries produced into the 2020s, some of the more prominent fictionalizations of Diana included in the series The Crown, which began on Netflix in 2016, and 2021's Spencer, in which she was portrayed by actor Kristen Stewart in an Academy Award–nominated performance. The year 2021 also saw the premiere of a Broadway musical about her, with commentators noting that people had become particularly interested in renewed analyses of her life through a more contemporary lens; shifts in the royal family, including Harry and Meghan's candid 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey and their decision to step back from royal duties, played a large role in such reassessments.

Bibliography

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