Diana, Princess of Wales

"Diana Spencer" redirects here.

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Diana, Princess of Wales (Diana Frances Mountbatten-Windsor, née The Lady Diana Spencer) (July 1, 1961 – August 3, 1997) was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, and heir to the British throne. Her two sons, Prince William of Wales and Prince Henry of Wales are, respectively, second and third in line to the British throne.

From her marriage in 1981 to her divorce in 1996, she carried the title Her Royal Highness, The Princess of Wales. After her divorce from the Prince of Wales in 1996, Diana lost the resulting Royal Highness honorific (see style.)[1] As the former wife of the heir to the throne she received a moniker based on her personal name. Elizabeth II, under British law, (‘’letters patent’’) then bequeathed to her the official title, Diana, Princess of Wales. In the press and to the public she is most popularly referred to as Princess Diana.

An iconic presence on the world stage, Diana was beloved by her British subjects and admired the world round for her far reaching charity work. She was pre-eminently the most admired and sought after celebrity of her time: a fashion ingenue, an image of feminine beauty, admired and emulated for involvement in AIDS issues, and the international campaign against landmines. She was the darling of the media; the camera captured endless pictures of her shy, self effacing smile. She was on the cover of People magazine more than any other person of her era. Her life story generated articles, books, television movies, and endless speculation about her love life.

The princess delivered a much needed human touch to the reticence of reigning British royalty. She was often referred to as the accessible princess and was the first known celebrity to be photographed touching a patient with AIDS. In the 1980s the royal monarchy was criticized by British citizens over the issue of taxation The aristocracy, many of them noted for their philandering perhaps more than for their philanthropy needed not only a face lift of their public persona but real reform as well. The modernization of the monarchy would prove to be a daunting – if not unattainable task - for young Royals like Diana.

Ultimately mounting pressures and a blow-by-blow account by the press of Charles and Diana’s divorce left no private moment unexposed for them. At one point even their telephone transmissions (to others) were tape recorded. Despite the public scrutiny, Diana’s growing disenfranchisement from the Royal family, and her personal struggles she continued forward with her charity work. Diana was remarkably privileged in life, however, she suffered losses herself during childhood and always imbued empathy to those less fortunate. She used her prestige and power to advantage where and when she could especially for women and children.

Her detractors have insistently pointed to her many deficiencies including her battles with bulimia and depression. During her protracted divorce proceedings tabloids and scandal sheets often had a field day with the "War of the Waleses”. Ironically the hounding of Princess Diana by the press was a contributing factor in her tragic death in a car accident, when her driver sped away from a paparazzi car.

Early Life

Diana Frances Spencer was born as the youngest daughter of Edward Spencer, Viscount Althorp, and his first wife, Frances Spencer, Viscountess Althorp at Park House on the Sandringham estate. Partially American in ancestry - a great-grandmother was the American heiress Frances Work - she was also a descendant of King Charles I.

Diane’s parents divorced when she was old, The divorce of her parents was a bitter one and Diana's childhood suffered from it as did her siblings. Diana’s mother, Lady Althorp had an affair with wallpaper heir Peter Shand Kydd which precipated the divorce from Diana's father and resulted in her losing custody of her children, Diana, Sarah and Charles. When Diana’s grandfather died, Albert Spencer, 7th Earl Spencer, in 1975, Diana's father became the 8th Earl Spencer, and she acquired the title of The Lady Diana Spencer. The family, minus its mother presence, 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 The Spencer children’s adjustment to their new home and a new stepmother in a short period would prove to be a tumultuous time for them.

Diana attended school at West Heath Girls' School Sevenoaks, Kent Academics were not her strong suit and she reportedly failed all of her O-level examinations. In 1977, aged 16, she left West Heath and briefly attended, a finishing school in Rougemont, Switzerland. Her extracurricular talents, included singing, and sports. She purportedly love ballet and was an excellent dancer. Her favorite band during her teen years was allegedly Duran Duran. Although not trained towards a career or in the practicalilties of a secular life she followed the suit of other young aristocracy who worked with children and prepared themselves for marriage. The young Diana could not have foreseen the challenges that awaited her in marriage given her endless royal duties and overnight fame

The man who would be King

The Prince's numerous romances and dalliances were unending fodder for the press throughout his young adulthood. His mother, the Queen seemed despairing of his ever settling down and getting on the business of producing heirs for the throne. Nearing his mid-thirties, he was under increasing pressure to marry. Legally, the only requirement was that he could not marry a Roman Catholic; a member of the Church of England was preferred. His great-uncle, who he shared a close relationship with, and Lord Mountbatten of Burma, who was assassinated in 1979, had advised him to marry a younger 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 be Protestant and, preferably, a virgin. Diana seemed to meet all of these qualifications.

The storybook wedding

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The Prince and Princess of Wales return from their wedding at St Paul's Cathedral

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. Although she would not be Queen by birth but instead through marriage she would be known as Queen Consort.

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.

Buckingham Palace announced the engagement on 24 February 1981, to much fanfare and public expectation. Diana said of this time, "I had many hopes in my heart." 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. 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 and Charles wedding ceremony, from the much talked about romantic wedding dress down to every detail, captured the imagination of the public as no other royal event in recent times has.

Marriage and family life

The Prince and Princess of Wales had two children within three years of their marriage, 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 postpartum depression.^{[citation needed]} She had previously (before her marriage) suffered from bulimia nervosa, which recurred, and even before the birth of Prince William, she made some 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). Others 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.

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Diana dancing with John Travolta at a White House dinner on 9 November 1985

Divorce: under a spotlight

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.^[1] Diana had an affair with her riding instructor James Hewitt and perhaps later with James Gilbey, her telephone partner in the so-called Squidgygate affair, while Charles resumed his old, pre-marital relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles. Diana later confirmed the affair with Hewitt in a television interview with Martin Bashir for the BBC program Panorama. Although no charges were considered, adultery with the Queen consort or Princess of Wales has been high treason in England at least since the Treason Act 1351, so if she were prosecuted and there had been a trial and conviction of the Princess for adultery with Hewitt, both guilty parties would have been subject to execution by hanging. (The closest precedent to such action was the 1820 attempt of George IV to divorce his wife, Caroline of Brunswick, and have her stripped of her royal title by Parliament on grounds of adultery. Nevertheless, the prosecutors did not seek to have her tried and declared guilty of treason or other crimes. Even so, the Pains and Penalties Bill 1820 failed in Parliament, embarrassed the government, and aroused popular resentment toward the King because he was widely believed to be guilty of adultery himself.) Another supposed lover was detective/bodyguard Barry Mannakee, who was assigned to the Princess's security detail, although the Princess adamantly denied a sexual relationship with him. After her separation from Prince Charles, Diana became involved with married art dealer Oliver Hoare, to whom she allegedly made a series of anonymous telephone calls, and with rugby player Will Carling. She also publicly dated respected heart surgeon Hasnat Khan before her brief involvement with Dodi Al-Fayed, and is said to have made repeated telephone calls to Khan during his working day and to have parked her car outside his home on more than one occasion.

The Prince and Princess of Wales were separated on 9 December 1992; their divorce was finalised on 28 August 1996. The Princess lost the title 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.

Legacy

Starting in the mid-to-late 1980s, the Princess of Wales became well known for her support of charity projects. This stemmed naturally from her role as Princess of Wales and also as an interested supporter of various health causes newly arisen in the UK. Diana is credited with some influence in campaigns against the use of landmines and helping the victims of AIDS.

AIDS

In April 1987, the Princess of Wales was the first high-profile celebrity to be photographed knowingly touching a person infected with HIV. Her contribution to changing the public opinion of AIDS sufferers was summarised in December 2001 by Bill Clinton at the 'Diana, Princess of Wales Lecture on AIDS', when he said:

In 1987, when so many still believed that AIDS could be contracted through casual contact, Princess Diana sat on the sickbed of a man with AIDS and held his hand. She showed the world that people with AIDS deserve no isolation, but compassion and kindness. It helped change world opinion, and gave hope to people with AIDS with an outcome of saved lives of people at risk.

Diana also supposedly made clandestine visits to show kindness to terminally- ill AIDS patients. According to nurses, she would turn up unannounced, for example, at the Mildmay Hospice in London, with specific instructions that these visits were to be concealed from the media.

Landmines

Perhaps her most well-publicised charity appearance was her visit to Angola in January 1997, when, serving as an International Red Cross VIP volunteer [1], she visited landmine survivors in hospitals, toured de-mining projects run by the HALO Trust, and attended mine awareness education classes about the dangers of mines immediately surrounding homes and villages.

The pictures of Diana touring a minefield, in a ballistic helmet and flak jacket, were seen worldwide, although mine experts had already cleared the course of her walk. In August that year, she visited Bosnia with the Landmine Survivors Network. Her interest in landmines was focused on the injuries they create, often to children, long after a conflict is over.

She is believed[2] to have influenced (though only after and perhaps as a result of her death) the signing, by the governments of the UK and other nations in December, 1997, of the Ottawa Treaty, which created an international ban on the use of anti-personnel landmines. Introducing the Second Reading of the Landmines Bill 1998 to the British House of Commons, the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, paid tribute to Diana's work on landmines:

All Honourable Members will be aware from their postbags of the immense contribution made by Diana, Princess of Wales to bringing home to many of our constituents the human costs of landmines. The best way in which to record our appreciation of her work, and the work of NGOs that have campaigned against landmines, is to pass the Bill, and to pave the way towards a global ban on landmines. [3]

As of January 2005, however, Diana's activities regarding landmines had borne little fruit. The United Nations appealed to the nations which produced and stockpiled the largest numbers of landmines (China, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and the United States) to sign the Ottawa Treaty forbidding their production and use, for which Diana had campaigned. Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), said that landmines remained "a deadly attraction for children, whose innate curiosity and need for play often lure them directly into harm's way". [4]

Diana's interest in supporting and helping young people led to the establishment of the Diana Memorial Award, awarded to youths who have demonstrated the unselfish devotion and commitment to causes advocated by the Princess.

The controversial car accident

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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.

Diana was experiencing a modicum of privacy and happiness with new boyfriend, Dodi Al-Fayed when they were involved in a fatal car accident on August, 30, 1997. Their driver,[[Henri Paul] was believed to be fleeing a paparazzi car in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel when their Mercedes crashed on the thirteenth pillar of the tunnel.

Fayed's bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones was closest to the point of impact and yet the only survivor of the crash, since he was the only occupant of the car who was wearing a seatbelt. Henri Paul and Dodi Fayed were killed instantly. Diana, unbelted in the back seat, slid forward and died later at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital hospital from internal bleeding. It was reported that cameraman from the Italian magazine Chieven at the horrific scene of the accident clambered for pictures of her. The British media publicly refused to publish the images, with the exception of [[The Sun]. Her funeral on 6 September 6, 1997 was broadcast and watched by over 1 billion people worldwide.

The death of Princess Diana has been the subject of widespread theories, supported by Mohamed Al-Fayed, whose son died in the accident. These were rejected by French investigators and British officials, who stated that the driver, Henri Paul, was drunk and on drugs. Among Mr Fayed's suggestions were that Diana was pregnant by Dodi at the time of her death and that Dodi had just bought her an engagement ring, although witnesses to autopsies reported that the princess had not been pregnant and the jeweller cited by Mr Fayed denied knowledge of any engagement ring. Nonetheless, in 2004 the authorities ordered an independent inquiry by Lord Stevens, a former chief of the Metropolitan Police, and he suggested that the case was "far more complex than any of us thought" and reported "new forensic evidence" and witnesses Telegraph, May 2006.

Final resting place

Princess Diana's final resting place is said to be in the grounds of Althorp Park, her family home. [5] The original plan was for her to be buried in the Spencer family vault at the local church in nearby Great Brington, but Diana's brother, Charles, the 9th Earl Spencer, said that he was concerned about public safety and security and the onslaught of visitors that might overwhelm Great Brington. He decided that he wanted his sister to be buried where her grave could be easily cared for and visited in privacy by her sons and other relatives.

Lord Spencer selected a burial site 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. In the water there are several water lilies. White roses and lilies were Diana's favorite flowers.[6] 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. [7] An ancient arboretum stands nearby, which contains trees planted by Prince William and Prince Harry, other members of her family and the princess herself.

Styles

The Honourable Diana Frances Spencer (1 July 1961–9 June 1975)
The Lady Diana Frances Spencer (9 June 1975–29 July 1981)
Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales (29 July 1981–28 August 1996)
Diana, Princess of Wales (28 August 1996–31 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 Letters Patent issued by The Queen on the same date of the signature of the divorce settlement, although she could not be called "Her Royal Highness." Even the style "Princess of Wales" would have lapsed had Diana remarried.

During her marriage, 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.

Lineage

Diana Spencer is a thirteenth cousin once removed from George W. Bush. John Dryden of Canons Ashby is the 14th grandfather of George W. Bush through his daughter Bridget Dryden. John Dryden of Canons Ashby is the 13th grandfather of Diana Spencer by his son Erasmus Dryden. [8]

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 [9]. 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.

Footnotes

↑ 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.

Critics

IDENTIFYING THE REAL SAINT The Princess in a Mercedes or the bare-foot Nun?

Princesses of Wales

Camilla (styled Duchess of Cornwall)

Diana Spencer (1981–1997) · Mary of Teck (1901–1910) · Alexandra of Denmark (1863–1901) · Caroline of Brunswick (1795–1820) · Augusta of Saxe-Gotha (1736–1751) · Caroline of Ansbach (1714–1727) · Catherine of Aragon (1501–1502) · Anne Neville (1470–1471) · Joan of Kent (1361–1376)

Credits

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[1] 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.

[1]