 |
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||||
July 1, 1961 - August 31, 1997), commonly, but incorrectly, known as Princess Diana, was for 15 years the wife of HRH The Prince of Wales, and was the mother of the second and third in line to the British throne, Princes William and Harry.
From the time of her marriage to the Prince of Wales in 1981 until her death in a car accident in Paris in 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales was one of the world's most high-profile, most photographed, and most iconic celebrities.
Diana was the youngest daughter of Edward John Spencer, Viscount Althorp, and his wife Frances. Known at birth as "The Honourable Diana Frances Spencer," she was thus a descendant of King Charles I of England. On the death of her paternal grandfather, Albert Edward John Spencer, 7th Earl Spencer in 1975, her father became the eighth Earl Spencer, and she acquired the courtesy title of Lady Diana Spencer. She was educated in Norfolk and at boarding school in Kent, and was regarded as an academically below-average student. At 16 she attended Institut Alpin Videmanette, a finishing school in Rougemont, Switzerland.
The Spencers, like many noble families, had been in the service of the British Royal Family for decades. That service became personal when HRH The Prince of Wales, briefly dated the Lady Sarah Spencer (the Lady Diana's older sister) in the 1970s. His 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. As a future Queen, the Prince of Wales's bride had to be of impeccable lineage, not a Roman Catholic, and a virgin. (In a concession to modernity, the Queen allowed HRH The Duke of York and HRH The Earl of Wessex to marry women who had been in previous relationships). Reportedly, it was his then (and current) lover Camilla Parker Bowles who helped him select 19-year-old Lady Diana, who was working as a nursery-school teacher. Buckingham Palace announced their engagement on February 24, 1981.
The wedding took place at St Paul's Cathedral in London on July 29 before 3,500 invited guests (including Camilla Parker-Bowles) and an estimated 750 million TV viewers around the world. The Lady Diana was the first Englishwoman to marry an heir to the throne since 1659 when the Lady Anne Hyde married the Duke of York, the future James II of England.
The Princess of Wales gave birth to two children, HRH Prince William of Wales in 1982 and HRH Prince Henry of Wales (commonly called Prince Harry) in 1984.
After the birth of Prince William, the Prince of Wales suffered from post-natal depression. She later developed the eating disorder bulimia nervosa, and made a number of suicide attempts. In one of her interviews, released after her death, she claimed that, while pregnant with Prince William, she threw herself down a set of stairs, and was discovered by her horrified mother-in-law.
It has been suggested that the Princess did not, in fact, intend to end her life (or that the suicide attempts never took place) and that she was merely making a 'cry for help' (so-called 'para-suicide'). In the same interview where she told of the suicide attempt while pregnant with Prince William, she said that the Prince of Wales had accused her of crying wolf when she threatened to kill herself. But, if the 'suicide attempts' did take place, there was certainly a significant risk that she would miscarry her baby.
In the later 1980s her marriage to the Prince of Wales fell apart, an event at first suppressed and then sensationalised by the world media. Both the Prince and Princess of Wales spoke to the press through friends, accusing the other party of adultery. The Prince of Wales had resumed his relationship with Mrs Parker-Bowles (the so-called Squidgygate affair), while the Princess of Wales had become involved with James Gilby. She later confirmed she had also had an affair with her riding instructor, James Hewitt. (Theoretically, such an affair constituted high treason in both parties.) Despite the Princess of Wales and Hewitt only beginning their affair after the birth of Prince Harry of Wales, it was rumoured that Hewitt, not the Prince of Wales, fathered Prince Harry, as Prince Harry resembles Hewitt more than the Prince of Wales. This rumour lives on as an urban legend.
Although the Prince of Wales separated in 1992, their divorce was not finalised until August 1996.
During the mid-to-late 1980s, the Princess of Wales became well known for her support of charity projects, and is credited with considerable influence for her campaigns against the use of landmines and helping the victims of AIDS.
In April 1987, the Princess of Wales was the first high-profile celebrity to be photographed touching an AIDS-infected person. 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:
Perhaps her most widely publicised charity appearance was her visit to Angola in January 1997, when, serving as an International Red Cross VIP volunteer, 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, Princess of Wales touring a minefield, in helmet and flak jacket, were seen worldwide. In August that year she visited Bosnia with the Ottawa Treaty in December 1997 (after her death) 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, Princess of Wales's work on landmines:
On August 31, 1997 Diana, Princess of Wales was involved in a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris, along with her romantic companion Dodi Al-Fayed, their driver Henri Paul, and Al-Fayed's bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones.
Late in the evening of Saturday the 30th, Diana, Princess of Wales and Al-Fayed departed the Ritz Hotel in Place Vendome, Paris, and drove along the north bank of the Seine. At 00:25 on the 31st, their Mercedes entered the underpass below the Place de l'Alma, pursued in various vehicles by nine French photographers and a motorcycle courier.
At the entrance to the tunnel, their car struck a glancing blow to the right-hand wall. It swerved to the left of the two-lane carriageway and collided head-on with the thirteenth pillar supporting the roof, then spun to a stop.
As the casualties lay seriously injured in their wrecked car, some of the photographers continued to take pictures of them.
Diana, Princess of Wales was freed alive from the wreckage, and taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital. Despite frantic attempts to save her, her internal injuries were too massive. At 04:00 that morning the doctors pronounced her dead.
In 1999 a French investigation concluded that the Mercedes had come into contact with another vehicle (a white Fiat Uno) in the tunnel. But the driver of that vehicle never came forward, and the vehicle itself was not found.
Initial media reports stated that Diana, Princess of Wales's car had collided with the pillar at over 190 km/h (120 mph), and that the speedometer's needle had jammed at that position. But it was later announced that the car's actual speed on collision was about 95-110 km/h (59-68 mph), and that the speedometer had no needle as it was digital. The car was certainly travelling much faster than the legal speed limit of 50 km/h (30 mph), and faster than was prudent for the Alma underpass.
The investigators concluded that the crash was an accident brought on by an intoxicated driver attempting to elude pursuing paparazzi at high speed.
In November 2003, Christian Martinez and Fabrice Chassery, the photographers who took photos of the casualties after the crash, and Jacques Langevin, who took photos as the couple left the Ritz Hotel, were cleared of breaching French privacy laws (Source: ).
On January 6, 2004, an inquest into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales opened in London held by Michael Burgess, the coroner of The Queen's Household.
Debate rages between those who believe she was assassinated, and those who believe she died as the result of an accident.
The French investigators' conclusion that Paul was drunk was made largely on the basis of an analysis of blood samples, which were stated to contain a high alcohol level. But the samples were also said to contain a level of carbon monoxide sufficiently high as to have prevented him from driving a car (or even from standing up). Some maintain this strongly indicates that the samples were tampered with. No official DNA test has been carried out on the samples, and Henri Paul's family has not been allowed to commission independent tests on them.
The families of Dodi Al-Fayed and Henri Paul do not accept the French investigators' findings. In the Scottish courts, Mohamed Al-Fayed applied for an order directing that there be a public inquiry, and is to appeal against the denial of his application. Fayed for his part stands by his belief that the Princess and his son were killed in an elaborate conspiracy launched by the "racist" husband of Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
Motivations which have been advanced for murder include suggestions that Diana, Princess of Wales intended to convert to Islam, and that she was pregnant with Dodi's child. In January 2004, the former coroner of the Queen's Household, Dr John Burton, stated that the Princess was not pregnant at the time of her death when he said (in an interview with The Times) that he attended a post-mortem examination of her body at Fulham mortuary in which he personally checked her womb and found her not to be pregnant.
Rumours and conspiracies aside, it must be noted that Diana, Princess of Wales, Dodi, and Paul were not wearing their seat belts when the car crashed. Rees-Jones, the only survivor, had his seat belt on.
Diana, Princess of Wales's death was greeted with extraordinary public grief, and her funeral at Westminster Abbey on September 6 drew an estimated 3 million mourners and worldwide television coverage.
More than 1 million bouquets were left at her London home, Kensington Palace, while at her family estate of Althorp the public was asked to stop bringing flowers as the volume of people and flowers in the surrounding roads was causing a threat to public safety.
Mourners cast flowers at the funeral procession for almost the entire length of its journey. The Queen notably departed from standard royal protocol in bowing as the procession passed. There was something of a festive atmosphere outside Westminster Abbey as the crowds cheered the dozens of celebrities - including singer Sir Elton John (who performed a re-written version of his song Candle in the Wind), actor Tom Cruise, director Steven Spielberg, and British tycoon Richard Branson - who filed inside. The service itself was televised live throughout the world, and speakers were placed outside so the crowds could hear the proceedings. Tradition was defied when the guests applauded the speech by Diana, Princess of Wales's brother, Lord Spencer, who criticised the royal family for their treatment of her.
She is buried at Althorp in Northamptonshire on an island in the middle of a lake on her family's estate. A allows visitors to see an exhibition about her and walk around the lake.
During the four weeks following her funeral, the overall suicide rate in England and Wales rose by 17%, compared with the average reported for that period in the four previous years. Researchers suggest that this was caused by the 'identification' effect, as the greatest increase in people taking their own lives was in people most similar to Diana, Princess of Wales: women aged 25 to 44, whose suicide rate increased by over 45% (Source: , British Journal of Psychiatry 2000;177:469-72). This effect is similar to copycat suicides.
After her death people remain interested in Diana, Princess of Wales's life. Numerous manufacturers of collectibles continue to produce Diana merchandise. Some suggested making Diana, Princess of Wales a saint, stirring much controversy.
As a temporary memorial, the public co-opted the Flamme de Liberté (Flame of Liberty), a monument near the Alma Tunnel, and related to the French donation of the Statue of Liberty to the United States. The messages of condolence have since been removed and its use as a Diana memorial has discontinued. However, the concrete mini-wall at the edge of the tunnel is still used as an impromptu memorial for people to write their thoughts and feelings about Diana, Princess of Wales. A permanent memorial, the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain was opened in Hyde Park in London on July 6, 2004.
Diana, Princess of Wales was ranked third in the (2002) 100 Greatest Britons poll sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the British public.
In 2003, Marvel Comics announced it was to publish a five-part series entitled Di Another Day (a reference to the James Bond film Die Another Day) featuring a resurrected Diana, Princess of Wales as a mutant with superpowers, as part of Peter Milligan's X-Statix title. Amidst considerable (and predictable) outcry, the idea was quickly dropped.
In 2004, the American network NBC broadcast tapes of Diana, Princess of Wales discussing her marriage to the Prince of Wales, including her description of her suicide attempts. These tapes have not been broadcast in the UK. A few weeks later, rival network CBS showed pictures of the crash taken by the photographers showing an intact rear side and an intact centre section of the Mercedes, including one of a unbloodied Diana with no outward injuries, crouched on the rear floor of the vehicle with her back to the right passenger seat - the right rear car door is completely opened. These pictures caused uproar in the UK, and spurred another lawsuit by Mohammed Al-Fayed.
The usage "Princess Diana", though commonly used in speech and the media, is incorrect. Diana, Princess of Wales herself made a point of correcting people who used it.
|
||||
| View Live Article | This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License | |
||
