AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
The death of Princess Diana on August 31, 1997 is a date that, like the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, people recall where they were when they heard the devastating news. The tragedy of her death after a high-speed chase by paparazzi in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris was summed up poignantly in her brother Charles Spencer’s oration at her funeral.
“Of all the ironies about Diana perhaps the greatest of was this – a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was in the end the most hunted person of the modern age.”
Hunted and now haunting, for nearly 30 years later the aftershocks of the story of Diana’s betrayal and unhappy marriage to Charles continue to rock the foundations of the British Royal Family. The latest seismic revelations come in Earl Spencer’s book, ‘Swan Song’. If her brother held back on things he might have said at the time of her death, the full extent of his visceral feelings about the Royal family’s treatment of his beloved older sibling are now laid bare in print.
The most shocking revelations focus on Charles’, then Prince of Wales, reaction to Diana’s death and the Windsor’s insensitivity in the aftermath of her tragic fate. According to Spencer, Charles said: “Rest assured we will forget her soon enough,” in an argument with Spencer over whether his sons William (15) and Harry (12) should walk behind Diana’s coffin. Spencer was opposed to subjecting the boys to such an ordeal. The way Charles lashed out was appalling enough, but in the story fraught with exploitation and lack of empathy, laid bare in Spencer’s book, it was devastating.
With hindsight the first clue of what amounted to a conspiracy of deceit was there in Charles’ and Diana’s 1981 engagement interview. Asked were they in love Charles replied: “Whatever in love means.”
His affections were engaged elsewhere, to Camilla, whose racy past had ruled her out as a royal bride. Charles was under pressure to marry at 32 and father heirs to the throne, and innocent Diana (20) was seen as a suitable match.
‘Swan Song’ reveals that Charles told Diana on the eve of their wedding that he was happy to marry her but was not in love with her. How cruel was that? But the demands of monarchy often make royalty and love bad bedfellows. Look at the fate of Henry VIII’s wives and the abdication of Edward VIII over his love for divorcee Wallis Simpson.
Having produced an ‘heir and a spare’ as Diana put it, she found herself in a ‘crowded’ marriage when Charles’ affair with Camilla resumed. What might have been acceptable behaviour in the past, given a royal penchant for mistresses, was a cruel blow for a vulnerable young woman in need of love and security. The fairy tale story was doomed from the start in a situation where monarchy came first, regardless of the impact on individuals.
Diana, despite being the mother of the future king, had been stripped of her HRH title on divorce from Charles. In the aftermath of her death, the Queen offered, via Spencer’s courtier brother-in-law Robert Fellowes, to restore it. What was the point? The hurt had been inflicted and now Diana was dead.
You have to wonder, though, why four-times-married Earl Spencer has chosen to rake up the tragic story of Diana’s death again. Charles had accused him of having “no sense of duty” in the argument over the funeral procession. Doesn’t Spencer have a duty of care towards the feelings of his nephews William, king in waiting, and Harry, facing a difficult return to England, when both were cruelly damaged by their mother’s loss?
In reopening old wounds, Earl Spencer’s personal account of Diana’s fate comes hard on the heels of other seismic events that point to failure in the 1,200-year-old monarchy.
The scandals surrounding disgraced Andrew Mountbatten and his association with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein could have been nipped in the bud long ago. The circus surrounding Harry and Meghan’s controversial departure from Britain, their revelations while in the US, abrupt return and removal of their children from school after just two days over security concerns hardly inspire confidence in a family that hastily changed their German name Saxe-Coburg to Windsor during WWI.
