Did people really love Princess Diana that much?

[canjest]

I just wondered as I knew she was well liked but videos like this show brown men crying!

www.instagram.com/reel/CnOCMtSKK_b/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

This was the start of all the emotional incontinence we seem to see in every day life. People just went crazy. It was reported that one poor bloke got beaten up for washing his car on the morning of Diana's funeral. I'm the same age as Diana and it was a huge shock when the news broke, more because of her age, leaving 2 children motherless, and that it was an entirely preventable tragedy.
She was front page news and top story on all the TV channels for months on end.
There were people wailing and crying out her name, it was quite baffling, actually seeing it on TV, people acting as if they had suffered a personal loss.
God knows how much worse it would all have been if we had social media back then!!

I didn’t and I had a child at that point . I’m not a royal supporter anyway and don’t tend to cry about people I don’t know .

She was adored by most. I liked her and I felt sorry for her. She was not loved by anyone in her family. She got love out of her children and out of being a public figure. She was able to give the warmest smile. I could not believe that I would not see her picture every day in the newspapers.
Frankly, I still miss her smile.

I guess imagine if Will publicly cheated on Kate then a year or two later Kate died in a horrific unexpected way - it would be the same.

People didn't feel like that until she died. I think she'd just been such a constant in their tabloid reading lives that it was a nassive shock when she died in such a hugely unnecessary way. If she'd been wearing a seatbelt she would have survived...

I didn’t (still don’t) understand the mass hysteria that engulfed the country when Diana died. Hugely sad the way she died and for her family, but it was insane how people, who didn’t know her personally, wailed and cried.

Yes, she did a lot of good things and she was treated badly by the royals, but she both used and was used by the press so was not quite the ingenue that some would like to make her out to be.

I refuse to believe that you can actually love anyone you don’t know so I would say that the vast majority of people who claim to have loved or love Diana are at best deluded

Charles was very kind after she died . It was well documented that the Queen didn't want him to use the royal flight to France but he insisted and brought back her body .

I think everyone remembers where they were when she died .I was in the kitchen and heard it on the radio . I was so shocked I thought I had misheard and switched to another station where I heard it again.

She was very popular but there was mass hysteria after she died . The amount of flowers left at Kensington Palace was unbelievable , literally millions , never seen anything like it .

I just remember bemusement. Obviously people were sympathetic especially for William.and Harry, but no one seemed in the throes of grief.

However... I started secondary school that September so maybe my friends and I had more important concerns?

I didn't. She did good things but she wasn't innocent. She had affairs and she used the press when it suited her. Death just made her a saint.

I remember when she was first on the scene. She was in the papers every day. In the office where I worked I remember us all crowding round looking at her saying things like, what's she wearing today. We were obsessed with her.

In some ways it was mass hysteria, in others there was real sorrow. We all felt more human, and vulnerable. We all felt that she deserved more love in her life.
I was living in Central London at the time and everyone was shocked.
I remember a feeling of loss, suspended time.
I remember the people waiting for the Queen to speak, for the flag to be lowered on Buck P.
I worked on Pall Mall, and you could see people, ordinary people, bringing flowers.
I remember Tony Blair speech interrupting the silence.
The Queen of Hearts, who was his PR?
It was big because it was unexpected, and she was so young and so sad. And it became bigger when the little children, little robot, walked behind her coffin, behind white flowers. It was so, so sad - because we all thought: had she not married Charles, she would be alive...

She was adored by most
I think that's a bit strong. I would say most people were indifferent if anything, possibly mildly interested. There was an initial frenzy about the wedding and then the hysteria around her death, with the years inbetween punctuated by various events and scandals, but I think most people went about their every day lives without giving her much thought most of the time. I can't think of a single person I knew whilst she was alive who I would describe as "adoring" her. My SIL who was a bit of a fashionista is the nearest to a real fan I can think of, but even she was more interested in the clothes than the person.

I remember being very shocked when she died but I think that was just because it was so unexpected and she was so young and a similar age to me. I found the whole public grief thing very odd and quite uncomfortable. I was watching a documentary about it the other day and some of the people interviewed were reacting as if a member of their family had died, or at least someone they had known well. I was pretty neutral about her.

I think the fawning press coverage arose partly because the public were blaming the press for her death and so they didn't want to be seen to be in any way unsympathetic to her. As other pps have said, some of the papers were going to run stories on the Sunday which weren't favourable to her and these had to be pulled pretty smartish.

She was all over the papers and the "war of the Wales'" provided so many column inches for the tabloids. I think she did some good things with AIDS and landmines. As others have said, if you didn't live through the 80s and the stigma that was attached to those unfortunate enough to contract AIDS then you wouldn't really get the significance of her holding the hand of an AIDS victim. I was living in London at the time and had some very close friends who lost several people to the disease.

She also had her own problems and was by no means a saint and I very much doubt that if she had lived she would be viewed as such today.

I was 15 and in the south of France at the same time so was avidly looking at the glamorous pics of her in the papers, on the yacht, with Dodi that summer.

The coverage wasn't kind I seem to remember and I don't think she was adored by many.

We were on our way home when she was killed and I remember seeing the papers in a service station - obviously early editions - and being shocked they were still for sale as the front pages were not good to her.

No one I knew was affected by it. My parents made me watch the funeral as they said it would be a historical moment.
Everyone felt awful for the boys but no hysteria or chat about it very much.

It was hugely upsetting and a big shock. She was a young (albeit flawed) woman, stunning, very popular etc - the opposite of the (then) RF.

However, that whole week from the Sunday morning to the Funeral on the Saturday was mass hysteria whipped up by the press, TV etc, every song played on the radio was sad etc. Everyone was miserable. The mood of the nation was very low. There’ll be a fair few of us who’ll remember the voice from the crowd as her coffin came out on the carriage - someone called out in grief ‘Diana!!’…..
Then those two young lads, walking behind the coffin, it really was upsetting.

Most people were indifferent to her, plenty couldn't stand her.

Newspapers loved her, easy stories dressed up as news.

😄😄😄😄😄

Diana was very popular. Her death, and the manner of it, was a massive shock. I happened to be awake that night as the news broke, and there was a real sense of disbelief and concern for her children.

What followed over the next two weeks was an outbreak of mass hysteria which I have never seen before or since. The internet hadn’t gone mainstream back then, and there were no smartphones or social media, but the TV & newspaper reaction was on a similar scale to the Queen’s death. While public reaction to that was generally restrained & respectful, because she was a very elderly lady and her death wasn’t a complete shock, so many people really lost their minds over Diana. It was a very weird and very unsettling thing to witness.

🤣very true

Yes. It was bizarre. I remember going into Specsavers and the receptionist was in floods. This was about 3 days after the death so not an initial shock thing.
The weird thing was sobbing in public that week was so normal she just got sympathy. No one even asked what was upsetting her, everyone knew.

As a lifelong republican it was very weird to see. Clearest run up the A1 I've ever done on the day of the funeral. It was deserted. Bliss.

There was literally mass hysteria. I had little interest in the rf or her.
But I think that people were struck at her young age, leaving her sons motherless etc.

I didn't. I thought it was bizarre at the time, the huge amount of public grief.

I was 24, travelling in Australia at the time and remember where I was when I heard the news. Had read the Australian issue of the mirror the day before and seen photos of her frolicking on a yacht with Dodi. I was pretty much the only English person where I was working and people kept coming up to me and asking how I was, and if I was going to go home for the funeral, it was crazy. My dad who was in the UK said everyone lost their minds, he jokes he was scared to say what he thought for the fear of being lynched!

An important thing for people who are too young to remember Diana to bear in mind is that from the day her engagement to Charles was announced until several years after her death, she was the unchallenged, undisputed world champion at selling newspapers. The tabloids were utterly obsessed with her and she would be on the front pages day in, day out. The hysteria after her death fed on itself because the more the papers printed about her, the more copies they sold.