Diana, Princess of Wales
The Lady Diana Frances Spencer (Diana Frances
Mountbatten-Windsor, née
Spencer) (
July 1,
1961–
August 31,
1997) was the first
wife of
Charles, Prince of Wales. Her children,
Prince William and
Prince Harry, are respectively second and third in line to the
British throne.
From her marriage in 1981 to her divorce in 1996, she was styled
Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales. After her divorce from the
Prince of Wales in 1996, Diana ceased to be
The Princess of Wales and lost the resulting
Royal Highness style.
[Some continued, erroneously, to call Diana a "HRH" even after she had lost the style and title in her divorce.] As the former wife of the heir to the throne she received a title based on the format used for the
ex-wives of peers, namely her personal name, followed by her title. Under
Letters Patent issued by Queen
Elizabeth II she was known after her divorce as
Diana, Princess of Wales. Posthumously she is most popularly referred to as
Princess Diana, a title she never held. She is also sometimes known by her former titles above.
[Someone can only be referred to as Princess under either of two conditions. Firstly, they are the daughter of the the sovereign, as in Princess Anne, daughter of Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Mary, daughter of King George V or Princess Margaret, daughter of King George VI. Alternatively the title can be awarded to them. Neither applied in Diana's case. Marriage to a prince does not make someone a princess in her own right, it merely extends to them the female form of their husband's title. In the case of Diana, as the wife of the Prince of Wales, she was Princess of Wales. Diana was in fact the first Princess of Wales not to be a princess in her own right. Her predecessors, such as Alexandra of Denmark (later Queen Alexandra) and Mary of Teck (later Queen Mary, consort of George V), were themselves royal princesses by birth, and so legally Princess Alexandra and Princess Mary. The widely used name Princess Diana in reality did not exist in law and was merely a popular and media invention.] |
Princess of Wales Coat of Arms |
An iconic presence on the world stage, Diana was noted for her high-profile
charity work. Yet her philanthropic endeavours were overshadowed by her
scandal-plagued marriage to Prince Charles. Her bitter claims, via friends and biographers, of
adultery,
mental cruelty, and emotional distress visited upon her by her husband and the royal family in general, and her own admissions of adultery and numerous love affairs riveted the world for much of the 1990s, spawning books, tabloid newspaper and magazine articles, and television movies. During her lifetime, Diana appeared on the cover of
People (magazine) in the USA more times than any other individual.
From the time of her
engagement to the Prince of Wales in 1981 until her death in a
car accident in 1997, the Princess was arguably the most famous woman in the world, the pre-eminent female
celebrity of her generation: a
fashion icon, an image of feminine
beauty, admired and emulated for her involvement in
AIDS issues, and the international campaign against
landmines. During her lifetime, she was often described as the most photographed person in the world. To her admirers, the Princess of Wales was a
role model - after her death, there were even calls for her to be nominated for
sainthood - while her detractors considered her to have been mentally ill (possibly with
Borderline Personality Disorder, e.g. Bedell Smith, 1999) long before her marriage and regarded her life as a cautionary tale of how untreated psychiatric problems and an obsession with publicity can ultimately destroy human beings.
As of 2006, the inquiry into her death by
British police continues. A report is expected to be issued in 2007.
Diana Frances Spencer was born as the youngest daughter of
Edward Spencer, Viscount Althorp, and his first wife,
Frances Spencer, Viscountess Althorp (formerly the Honourable Frances Burke Roche) at Park House on the
Sandringham estate. She was baptised at St. Mary Magdalene Church in Sandringham, by Rt. Rev.
Percy Herbert (rector of the church and former
Bishop of Norwich and
Blackburn); her godparents included John Floyd (the chairman of
Christie's) and Mary Colman (a niece of the
Queen Mother). Partially
American in ancestry — a great-grandmother was the American heiress
Frances Work - she was also a descendant of
King Charles I. According to several family trees, Diana had
Armenian ancestry from her great-great-great-great-grandmother, Eliza Kevork, an Armenian concubine of a British soldier stationed in
India, and may have also had
Jewish ancestry through a direct maternal relation to the daughter of
Jacob Frank, the creator of the "Frankist" religion.[
1]
During her parents' acrimonious divorce over Lady Althorp's adultery with wallpaper heir
Peter Shand Kydd, Diana's mother sued for custody of her children, but Lord Althorp's rank, aided by Lady Althorp's mother's testimony against her daughter during the trial, meant custody of Diana and her brother was awarded to their father. On the death of her paternal grandfather,
Albert Spencer, 7th Earl Spencer, in 1975, Diana's father became the 8th
Earl Spencer, and she acquired the
courtesy title of
The Lady Diana Spencer and moved from her childhood home at Park House to her family's sixteenth-century ancestral home of
Althorp. A year later, Lord Spencer married
Raine, Countess of Dartmouth, the only daughter of the romance novelist
Barbara Cartland, after being named as the "other party" in the Earl and Countess of Dartmouth's divorce.
Diana was educated at
Riddlesworth Hall in
Norfolk and at West Heath Girls' School (later reorganized as the
New School at West Heath, a special school for boys and girls) in
Sevenoaks,
Kent, where she was regarded as an academically below-average student, having failed all of her
O-level examinations. In 1977, aged 16, she left West Heath and briefly attended
Institut Alpin Videmanette, a
finishing school in
Rougemont,
Switzerland (Diana's future husband was also dating her sister,
Lady Sarah at that time). Diana was a talented amateur singer, excelled in
sports and reportedly longed to be a
ballerina.
 |
The Prince and Princess of Wales return from their wedding at St Paul's Cathedral |
Diana's family, the Spencers, had been close to the
British Royal Family for decades. Her maternal grandmother,
Ruth, Lady Fermoy, was a longtime friend and a
lady-in-waiting to
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.
The Prince's 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. Legally, the only requirement was that he could not marry a Roman Catholic, but a member of the Church of England was preferred. His great-uncle
Lord Mountbatten of Burma, who was assassinated in 1979, had advised him to marry a virginal young woman who would look up to him. In order to gain the approval of his family and their advisors, any potential bride was expected to have a royal or aristocratic background as well as being
Protestant and, preferably, a virgin. Diana seemed to meet all of these qualifications.
Reportedly (though this has never been confirmed), the Prince's former girlfriend (and, eventually, his second wife)
Camilla Parker Bowles helped him select the 19-year-old Lady Diana Spencer as a potential bride, when Diana was working as a part-time assistant at the "Young England Kindergarten," a
day care center and
nursery school in
Pimlico. Contrary to claims, she was not a "kindergarten teacher," since she had no educational qualifications to teach, and "Young England" was not a kindergarten, despite its name. It was at this school that the famous iconic snap of a 19-year-old Lady Diana Spencer was taken by
John Minihan with the morning sun to her back, her legs in silhouette through her skirt.
Buckingham Palace announced the
engagement on
24 February 1981, and the wedding took place in
St Paul's Cathedral in
London on Wednesday,
29 July,
1981, before 3,500 invited guests and an estimated 1 billion
television viewers around the world. (Comment: Similarly large viewing audiences have been reported for television audiences of the Academy Awards and the NFL Super Bowl, but such numbers are not substantiated.) Among other performers, the acclaimed
New Zealand soprano
Kiri Te Kanawa sang
Handel's "
Let the Bright Seraphim" during the wedding ceremony, at the request of Prince Charles.
Diana was the first Englishwoman to marry the heir to the throne since 1659, when
Lady Anne Hyde married the Duke of York and Albany, the future
King James II (although, unlike Charles, James was
heir presumptive and not
heir apparent). Upon her marriage, Diana became
Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales and was ranked as the third most senior royal woman in the
United Kingdom after the Queen and the Queen Mother.
The Prince and Princess of Wales quickly had two children,
Prince William of Wales on
21 June 1982 and
Prince Henry of Wales (commonly called Prince Harry) on
15 September 1984.
After the birth of Prince William, the Princess of Wales apparently suffered from
post-natal depression. She had previously (before her marriage) suffered from
bulimia nervosa, which recurred, and even before the birth of Prince William, she made some half-hearted
suicide attempts. In one
interview, years later, she claimed that, while pregnant with Prince William, she had thrown herself down a set of stairs and was discovered by her
mother-in-law (that is,
Queen Elizabeth II). It has been suggested she did not, in fact, intend to end her life (and, by some, that the suicide attempts never took place), and that she was merely making a
'cry for help'. In the same interview in which she told of the suicide attempt while pregnant with Prince William, she said her husband had accused her of
crying wolf when she threatened to kill herself.
In the mid 1980s, the marriage of Diana and Charles fell apart, an event at first suppressed, but then sensationalised, by the world media. Both the Prince and Princess of Wales allegedly spoke to the
press through friends, each blaming the other for the marriage's demise.
[The suggestion that Charles authorised his story of the split to be communicated is disputed by his friends, who claim that he told his friends not to speak, a prohibition some of them breached under anonymity.] Charles resumed his old, pre-marital relationship with
Camilla Parker Bowles, while Diana became involved with her
riding instructor
James Hewitt and perhaps later with
James Gilbey, her telephone partner in the so-called
Squidgygate affair. She later confirmed (in a television interview with
Martin Bashir) that she had had an
affair with Hewitt. (Theoretically, such an affair constituted
high treason by both parties.) Another supposed lover was a bodyguard assigned to the Princess's security detail, although the Princess adamantly denied a sexual relationship with him. After her separation from Prince Charles, Diana was, in some way, involved with married art dealer
Oliver Hoare, to whom it was discovered that she had made anonymous telephone calls, and with rugby player
Will Carling. She also publicly dated respected heart surgeon
Hasnat Khan before her brief involvement with
Dodi Fayed.
The Prince and Princess of Wales were separated on
9 December 1992; their
divorce was finalized on
28 August 1996. The Princess lost the style
Her Royal Highness and instead was styled as
Diana, Princess of Wales. However, since the divorce, Buckingham Palace has maintained that Diana was officially a
member of the Royal Family, since she was the mother of the second and third in line to the throne.
In 2004, seven years after her death, the American TV network
NBC broadcast
videotapes of Diana discussing her marriage to the Prince of Wales, including her description of her suicide attempts.
 |
The Flame of Liberty, which sits above the entrance to the Paris tunnel in which Diana died. The public fly-posted the base with commemorative material for several years. This material has since been removed by the French authorities. |
On 31 August 1997 Diana was involved in a car accident in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris, along with her new lover Dodi Al-Fayed, and their driver Henri Paul. Their Mercedes crashed on the thirteenth pillar of the tunnel.Fayed's bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones was the only survivor of the crash (and the only occupant of the car who was wearing a seatbelt). Henri Paul and Dodi Fayed were killed instantly. Diana, in the back seat, was fatally injured and died in the hospital, where lengthy resuscitation attempts failed.
Such was the reach of Diana's iconic impact worldwide that news of her death became a milestone in personal history, comparable to such as the death of President John F. Kennedy.
The death of the Princess has been widely blamed on reporters, who were reportedly hounding the Princess, and were following the vehicle at a high speed.Controversy
By contrast, her death has never been accepted as an accident by some, notably Mohamed Al-Fayed, and a range of theories have formed as to the manner of her death, drawing on the apparent tainting or destruction of evidence, and claimed lack of consistency in certain statements.
A 2004-06 coroner's inquiry by Lord Stevens, a former chief of the Metropolitan Police, has announced the finding of "new forensic evidence" and witnesses Telegraph, May 2006, and commented that the case was "far more complex than any of us thought" and that some questions asked by al-Fayed were "right to be raised". [2] The inquiry is expected to report its findings in 2007.
On 13th July 2006 an Italian magazine "Chi" published photographs showing Diana in her "last moments" despite an unofficial blackout on such photographs being published. The photographs were taken minutes after the accident and show the Princess slumped in the back seat while a paramedic attempts to fit an oxygen mask over her face. The photographs [3] were also published in other Italian and Spanish magazines and newspapers.
The editor of Chi defended his decision by saying he published the photographs for the "simple reason that they haven't been seen before" and that he felt the images do not disrespect the memory of the Princess. The British media have refused to publish these images.Final resting place
Princess Diana's final resting place is said to be in the grounds of Althorp Park, her family home. [4]The original plan was for her to be buried in the family vault at the local church in nearby Great Brington, but her brother, Earl Spencer, said he was concerned about public safety and security and wanted his sister to be buried where her grave could be looked after properly and visited in privacy by her sons.
Lord Spencer said he had decided she would be buried on an island in an ornamental lake known as The Oval within Althorp Park's Pleasure Garden. A path with 36 oak trees, marking each year of her life, leads to the Oval. Four black swans swim in the lake, symbolizing sentinels guarding the island. Charles Spencer saw this vision in a dream. In the water there are several water lilies. White roses and lilies were Diana's favorite flowers.[5]On the southern verge of the Round Oval sits the Summerhouse, previously in the gardens of Admiralty House, London, and now serving as a memorial to Princess Diana. [6]An ancient arboretum stands nearby, which contains trees planted by Prince William and Prince Harry, other members of her family and the princess herself.* The Honourable Diana Frances Spencer (1 July 1961â€"9 June 1975)
* The Lady Diana Frances Spencer (9 June 1975â€"29 July 1981)
* Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales (29 July 1981â€"28 August 1996)
* Diana, Princess of Wales (28 August 1996â€"31 August 1997)
The style "Princess Diana" was always incorrect, though often used by the public and the media. With rare exceptions, as in the case of Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, only women born to the title (such as Princess Anne) may use it before their given names. After her divorce in 1996, Diana was officially styled "Diana, Princess of Wales", based on a provision in the divorce settlement signed by the Queen, although she could not be called "Her Royal Highness." Even the style "Princess of Wales" would have lapsed had Diana remarried.
During her marriage to Charles, her full title was Her Royal Highness The Princess Charles, Princess of Wales and Countess of Chester, Duchess of Cornwall, Duchess of Rothesay, Countess of Carrick, Baroness of Renfrew, Lady of the Isles, Princess of Scotland.Prior to her marriage, much research was done into Diana's lineage by genealogists. It was much publicized that her ancestry included links to individuals such as 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 more closely related; both he and Diana, Princess of Wales are descendants of Frances Work, a late 19th-century American heiress who was briefly the wife of the Hon. James Burke Roche, later 3rd Baron Fermoy.
*Frances Shand Kydd Princess Diana's mother
*Spencer family
*British Royal Family
*Squidgygate
*Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund
*Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain
*The New School at West Heath, Mr. Al-Fayed's Princess Diana Memorial
*Burrell affair
*Diana Memorial Award
*Death of Diana*Belfast Telegraph Inquiry set to shock
*Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund
*Diana, Princess of Wales illustrated
*The Royal Family Tree of Europe
* Princess Diana Death Documentary about the death of Diana.
*Tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales
*Last Will
