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=

Probably because everything was bloody well shut and sport called off so the only thing to do was watch the funeral

https://apnews.com/article/879903bcc76f304dabfb8f328467e0d5

And the ones that didn't want to shut threatened by the Diana loyalists

Recollections may vary. Businesses shut because there was no point in them opening. When the coffin went up the M1 there was no other traffic - and no, it wasn’t closed.

I guess it was the same sort of hysteria as in my country when pope died. I have a colleague though who thinks of Princess Diana as role model.

I was mid 20s at the time and remember that barely a day went by when she wasn't in the news or on the front page of a newspaper. The reporting was mostly very positive about her. Think the sm coverage of Harry's book Spare in the first few days of release, but people being positive, it was like that with Diana for years.

I also remember time public outpouring of emotion, almost fever pitch of grief. I think it's the first time I can remember this sort of thing happening and being reported. We were abroad at the time and the locals were asking us if we were going to stay up and watch the funeral

I was in my mid 30s when she died. Yes, the wailing was pretty horrible. Radio played only quiet sad stuff.

Well we can all have our different interpretations … it’s not all one or the other but a mixture of facets that make up a personality.

The education thing - it was a different world back then - women were only starting to return to the workplace in the numbers they are now. Her family had pots of money. She wasn’t expected to take education seriously as she was never going to have a serious career. But she nonetheless did pt nursery work which speaks well of her I think.

As I said, she did have bulimia which she recovered from.

She did indeed have many affairs, some with married men, who knows whether that would have been the case if her marriage had been a success - I have no idea - I guess it’s a reasonable assumption though that the injustice initially done to her by marrying Charles, meant it was then very difficult for her to go on and form proper lasting relationships afterwards.

She did call the paps at certain times yes, but anyone with that level of press scrutiny going on is wise to try and manage the chaos a bit.

As for protection, thanks to Martin Bashir’s fraud, I don’t think she trusted official minders anymore, because she had been told they were reporting back to BP. She even bypassed her own press secretary who was loyal to her for that reason. She saw her mother lose a very bitter custody battle and I think she in turn was wary of losing her sons and wanted to limit the amount of info BP had on her. It wasn’t wise but I think it was understandable.

I can’t comment on Chirac’s offer of security as I have never heard that before.

Ditto seat belts. Certainly stupid not to wear one. She presumably would have been advised on this?

She certainly wasn’t a saint and she had many flaws but that was the very thing that made her relatable to many.

You say she couldn’t or wouldn’t look after herself - maybe that’s true - but she had a pretty dysfunctional childhood and a pretty extraordinary set of events happen to her; involving rejection by her mother and then her husband. Those are both very personal and very public blows.

I think you would probably have to have had a very stable family background and huge self confidence to survive what she went through unscathed.

I visited the BBC newsroom just after her Panorama interview. They weighed the press cuttings because there were so many of them - they weighed 10lb.

I was shocked by people's reactions to her death. People I loved and respected were devastated. I don't know though how much they lived her when she was alive. The media never stopped criticizing her

I'm not a royalist but she absolutely was

She most certainly did have numerous affairs Reports with her protection officer, Barry Mannakee emerged in 1985. There were additional claims she had dalliances with city financiers, foreign royalty and some married men, among others, in her first five years of marriage

Like 99% of the RF at the time she had affairs. Right from the start of her marriage she found out her husband was unfaithful - probably thought what's sauce for the goose

As for the paps hounding her - she was the one calling and tipping them off !.

Yep RF manipulates the media

Yes, I'm sure I remember seeig an opinion columnist slagging her off before she died, criticising her for partying with Dodi and splitting up with Charles, saying she was a bad mother and it would mess the kids up... then when she died that same columnist was saying what a perfect mother she was and how well her kids had turned out!

I was long grown up when she died. As pps have said, there was some ludicrous hysteria but before her death IMO some adored her - the ultimate ‘celeb’ - some actively disliked her, but most were fairly indifferent, but nonetheless sad at such a needlessly tragic death - that could have been avoided if she’d only worn a seat belt.

@DavesSpareDeckChair , I well remember a piece in IIRC the Mail on Sunday - on the very morning she died - by some bitchy journalist slagging her off - it would have been too late to withdraw that early edition. I had heard the news at about 4 am, having set the alarm since I was picking up a dd from Gatwick at 6 ish.

People just off night flights were walking around looking dazed and asking whether it was true?

But I’ve often wondered how sick that journalist must have felt when she heard the news that morning. She must have received a ton of hate mail.

To answer your original question OP, in my experience most people (certainly people I knew, friends/family etc) were largely indifferent about Diana as they are now about the royal family.

I remember the engagement, the wedding, the children, the affairs, the divorce/downfall and death of Diana. None of it particularly interested me in the same way the royal family today don't particularly interest me now, I don't have a strong opinion on them either way. I was in London for work when it was the Queens funeral cortege. I had a look as it was very interesting, but I wouldn't have travelled there to see it otherwise.

Similarly I watched Dianas funeral because I had a stinking hangover and there was nothing else on.

Obviously there will always be a hard-core of fanatics who get wheeled out as talking heads. The sort of people who camp all night to see a royal for 10 seconds, as is their prerogative, but these people don't represent the majority of people.

My one thought from the time of her death was why the bloody hell wasn't she wearing a seat-belt, how stupid.

I will dispute the sarcastic "hysteria" comments from those who were neither born or were under adult age on that day. You dont have a fucking clue. The UK was shocked

I was 43 and living in London. 'Hysteria' is spot on. Whipped up by the media that the week before her death was slagging her off for taking so many holidays. And no, the 'UK' as a whole wasn't shocked. A lot of people were reading the papers and watching the TV and asking themselves WTF is happening here?

Why yes I am thanks. Weeping and wailing over a woman you don't know is ridiculous.

I was in my 20s and completely baffled by some people’s reactions.
My MIL phoned me really early in the morning and I thought something awful had happen- as soon as I picked up the phone she said “Diana’s dead” and I was thinking who we knew called Diana.
I had no interest in her one way or another, beyond “that’s a nice outfit” I never have her much thought at all. The reaction of some people who had never even met her was a complete mystery to me - I didn’t judge it, I just couldn’t understand it
The majority of people I knew felt the same

I think it really was hysteria.
Because it built up over the week.
Understandably people were shocked when it first happened but normal life didn't grind to halt.
Then in London at least gradually the media pushed this narrative of public trauma and people seemed to engage with it and the media reported it and people reacted more strongly.
DH and I didn't feel we could even comment in public how daft it all was by the time the funeral happened.
We were in our 20's at that point. Our older family members weren't engaging in the behavior either.

Here's why I believe there was an element of hysteria involved:

I was in my 30's when she died and living in America. A middle-aged female co-worker is telling us about how she is sending sympathy cards to William and Harry (🙄🙄). My not so subtle eye roll is noticed by my supervisor and I'm called aside and told off for being insensitive to "everyone's grief".

Everyone's " grief". So we're supposed to be literally grieving a woman who none of knew and wasn't a part of our history or culture?? Apart from acknowledging the obvious sadness of the death of a young woman leaving behind children, the notion that we should all be grieving strikes me as delusional and yes, hysterical.

But she was a global celebrity on a scale that I still can't really explain to young Americans today as they have no frame of reference. Looking back it seems surreal in many ways. I would love to see studies on this. It's rather fascinating.

I remember Take a Break magazine having a weeks-long feature about a tree on the island she's buried on - just a photo of the tree. People were writing in saying they could see faces and angels in the tree.

@TheVanguardSix ...beautifully put, I remember her from the outset too and echo your thoughts.

No. It happened posthumously. The cult of Diana sprung up and grew exponentially. Today, it is huge and would have dwarfed her fanbase had she still been alive. It filled the void left in many people's lives created by a move away from traditional forms of organized worship which no longer had to be either discreet or carefully justified. The instinct to worship a beautiful saint preserved in that state to posterity is probably deep-seated.

It happened posthumously.

It didn’t. Diana was the most photographed woman in the world long before she died.

She was an object of fascination and very much hounded and harassed. However, not many people felt the humanity which she took pains to convey publicly - only after she died did they feel that they loved her or even knew her. There was a compulsion to participate in the sport of hunting or tracking her as though she were an inanimate, rare object of high worth.

I really disagree. The outpouring that happened afterwards came from the public, not the press. The media were following behind.
I think the kind of people who like to sneer were taken by surprise at the outpouring.
If MN had existed at the time there would have been lots of threads criticising her. And MN would have been out of step.