Thinking of Diana since Crown 6

[Sowhatsnext123]

Anyone else? I absolutely LOVE the crown. Mainly because of the powerful, haunting music. But since watching it this evening I feel really sad and nostalgic. I was only 13 when my mum woke me up crying. I remember it was thundering where I was the day after Diana died and it just felt so eerie. I didn't really like her when I was a kid because my Dad and Nan thought she was too rebellious and so I assumed the same but I was gutted when she died and so were they, as if they were sorry. I remember thinking well she was 37 she was quite old anyway! I'm now 2 years older than she was. She was far from perfect but she was such fun, such a lovely young woman. Thinking about her a lot tonight and her poor boys. I do wonder where she would be today had she lived. I don't think for a second she'd have been with Dodi for very long.

Bloody hell, good job this forum is anonymous 🤔

I am of the Diana generation, and remember 1997 vividly. But please be aware that The Crown is heavily fictionalised - there are definite mistakes, plus nobody can ever know what happened in private conversations. Diana had actually become quite unpopular in the summer before her death, so most of the press had to do a smart about turn when she died.
What is true is that the reaction of (a minority of) the public was a bizarre form of mass hysteria.
The reality is probably that sympathy was due to everyone involved (her family, friends, and yes, her in laws) but that it really is time to let this story retreat back into history.

I think this series should not have been made. Let Diana rest in peace.

I was still reeling after my mums death 10 mnths earlier. I remember feeling quite angry at people’s criticism of the Royal family. They were doing what every family does after bereavement and that’s protect the most vulnerable. Imagine having to parade around in front of thousands of strangers who had never met your mother and were weeping and wailing. It’s very difficult to understand grief thieves, empathy is one thing but the utter drama was ridiculous.
Many people forget that the Queen lost her own father when she was very young, of all the family she could relate to what the princes were going through.
Although I enjoy The Crown, it is very tongue in cheek and portrays the family as very wooden. It’s pretty clear from the younger generations that they are tactile and loving towards each other. They are also much more savvy with regard to the press as seen with the Queens death. It was very much the “firm” working as one. They ran the show not the public.

I remember my mum waking me up and saying "Di's been killed". It was such a shock and every channel on the tv was playing sad music. Very surreal.

I remember I was playing the piano and my mum came home from church and told me Diana had died. I was only 16, and we didn't have social media in those days, so I didn't really read or hear stories about her because I didn't watch the news or read the papers. It was easier not to know as much about people unless you were looking, I suppose.

Anyway, I didn't feel particularly bothered as I knew very little about her. The subsequent grief displayed by others was confusing to me, I suppose. I was doing A Level English Language and we were using newspaper articles about the crash and funeral and aftermath to talk about elements of language. We even studied the lyrics to the version of Candle in the Wind!

I was working on a kid's camp, and it was the penultimate day. We were having a before waking the kids up meeting which we did every morning. This turned into a debate whether we told the kids (teens) or not. One person thought we should tell them, so we could support them if they were upset. The other thought we should let them finish their holiday and enjoy it. They were definitely beginning to get het up when one of the kids came running downstairs shouting "Princess Diana's dead!" which solved the argument, although it then turned into a "how did they know" - turned out one had brought his radio, which they weren't meant to. :)

The thing I particularly remember:

1. The change in everyone's attitude towards her. She wasn't loved. She was pretty much hated really. She was constantly in the papers because people wanted to hear the next bit of juicy (nasty) gossip about her. If she'd lived then I don't think she'd have been the popular beloved figure that people now refer to her as.
2. Tony Blair. Boy did he use it to boost his own popularity. I never had much thought about him before, but I really disliked the way he played on her death to whip people up against the royal family and push himself up. I think he was as much to blame for the treatment the Princes had, as the press were, and he had children similar age. Absolutely disgraceful.
3. The funeral was sad though. Especially the flowers saying "MUMMY". That's what got me.

I vividly remember the daily updates in the media on Diana’s movements in the weeks leading up to her death, and having friends to stay, would have been awake when the crash was first reported but we didn’t have the TV on.

I drove to work with a CD playing (!) so still didn’t know till a colleague met me in the car park and told me the news. I thought it was a joke and got back in the car and put the radio on.

I guess with the ‘ghost’ scenes in The Crown they were trying to find a new angle as it’s all been covered so comprehensively before.

If you’re old enough to remember the royal wedding in 1981, you’ve seen almost all of Diana’s adult life played out in minute detail in public. Which was a royal first, so people felt they knew her. She did things differently than the expected royal traditions and showed people less pretty aspects of royal life from her perspective. That’s just my personal theory as to why, rightly or wrongly, people felt so attached to her.

I was in my mid 20s and the whole thing was a very surreal experience.

I'd been out the night before, I think I must have been 18.

I remember walking downstairs and all my family were watching the telly intently which was weird for that time of the day.

My mum cried and everything felt very surreal.

I was 18. My mum woke me up too and I was really annoyed. Had no desire to have my lie-in interrupted. It meant nothing to me or any of my friends. I remember us all being annoyed the radio was still playing only sad songs for ages. As my friend said when she picked me up one day and her car radio was on BRMB, "it's still just Diana pants".

I also remember that some of the order of service and the funeral procession route had been published in the media beforehand. But the appearance of the boys midway, to follow her through the streets on foot was quite a shock.

I'm sorry that she died so young and I'm sorry that her children were deprived of their mother at such a tender age. It must have been difficult enough having their parents' toxic marriage and split played out in public but then to lose their mother as well... I wonder if William and Harry would have fallen out if she was still alive? We'll never know.

I don't for a minute believe that she would have married Dodi. I think she was having fun with a playboy and possibly relishing the outrage from Buckingham Palace at their relationship. I rolled my eyes whenever I saw the 'Diana and Dodi forever' messages after she died.

I regret that she didn't go on to meet a kind, loving man who loved her for who she was and not for her fame, beauty and glamour. It would have been lovely if she could have enjoyed a stable, loving relationship after the travesty of her sterile marriage.

I was working a breakfast shift at a posh hotel, hungover and not happy after 5 hours sleep! It came on the radio and my dad was visibly upset and I was quite shocked and felt sad for her DC.

Got to work and one guest was bemoaning the lateness of the morning papers she wanted to read over morning coffee. I told her they were delayed due to the sad news and hopefully they wouldn’t be much longer. She snootily demand to know ‘what sad news?’ I simply replied ‘Diana’s dead’.

The guest was clearly a fan as her hand went to her brow, she nearly collapsed and started shouting ‘Princess Diana’s died, Please lord no, not Princess Diana’ I stood there 😬😳 as she started shouting it to all the other guests arriving! I thought she was a bit OTT but lots joined in, weeping and wailing and saying they couldn't possibly eat, one elderly man escorted his wife back to her room as ‘the shock was too much’.

I thought I must be totally lacking in empathy until I went back to the kitchen and saw everyone scoffing the uneaten sausages like ‘Diana would've wanted’

Sad but surreal reactions.

TBH I think the martyrisation of Diana is absolutely absurd.

I know you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead but I cannot bear the whole St Diana The Wronged rhetoric.

Firstly this ‘lamb led to slaughter’ guff. She wasn’t some normal woman who FTW up on an estate - she was part of aristocracy and grew up with the Royal Family. Her family members were close with them - she will have been raised to know the score that the most coveted position an aristocratic young woman like herself can find is to marry the future King. I don’t believe he loved her but I’m not for a second buying that she was hopelessly in love - she was there for the ultimate prize. 99.9% of us can’t relate because very few people grow up that way, but the mindset to the rest of us is on an entirely different level.

I also think her parenting should seriously be taken into question. She used William as a crutch for her MH issues which is deeply horrific for a child to go through. He used to slip notes under the door when she locked herself in her room to cry because he was worried she was going to hurt herself. She blamed him when she was harassing Charle’s girlfriend. He was a child FFS. I also think the effect on the boys is alarmingly overlooked when She went on national TV and aired the dirty laundry of their dad - imagine how mortifying it must have been for those poor boys and the stick they’d have got at school. Imagine YOUR parent doing that. But no St Diana the Wronged just had to have her say and have her little win over Charles - fuck whatever her children must have felt about it. They were 11 and 13 and had to listen to that, and know the world was listening.

And the whole whining about “Well there was three of us in this marriage” - yeah Diana and the rest. Why pretend she wasn’t shagging half of Sloane Square? I wonder what Will Carling and Barry Manakee’s wives had to say about that little gem.

Then the shameless attention seeking and courting of the press after her divorced and introducing her kids to whichever flavour of the month caught her eye. I don’t care that her marriage was shit - if that was a working class woman introducing her kids to new men all the time there’d be outrage. Just because it happened on a yacht it doesn’t make it acceptable

Can I also just point out she wouldn’t have died had she worn a seatbelt.

I also think people forget how much the tide was turning against her round the time of her death - the press certainly have collective amnesia of what they wrote about her. In a way, as macabre as this sounds, her death saved her reputation. If she lived she’d be a worse clinger-on than Fergie and would probably have had a stint on In A Celebrity by now.

Yes the OTT grief was something else wasn’t it.people going on the radio saying they felt worse than when their own mother died 🙄 I was 12 I think and remember being totally baffled. But I think the element that upset people was that she left two sons behind.

Yes well said!! The fact some people actually cried about how sad THEY were to a 12yo who’d just lost his mum was horrific. Keeping them at Balmoral and not parading them round London was absolutely appropriate and the ghouls who shouted they should be back at Buckingham Palace need to have a fucking word with themselves.

Incidentally my friend’s mum died suddenly the day before the Queen and I know she was angered by the outpouring of grief for a woman people didn’t even know and it really eclipsed her own grief because all people wanted to talk about was the Queen. Terrible

Even if you weren't an avid fan she was a HUGE part of British culture at the time.

I was 14 and stood at the top of the stairs in my dressing gown about to go down for breakfast and heard the radio in the kitchen announce she had died. It was like time stopped for a few seconds.

She was, sure, but for largely silly, ‘public soap opera’-ish, tabloid-fodder reasons.

People were sad because a source of stories about the inner fucked-up-ness of the RF ended abruptly. They identified with her because she was a silly, confused, well-meaning, under-educated, deeply needy, privileged woman living out the consequences of a dreadful childhood and some appalling early decisions on a grand scale in the public eye. Now there weren’t going to be any more stories.

I feel like I'm in a tiny minority of people who weren't affected by it at all. I couldn't understand the outpourings of grief from people who never met her. I remember the day she died, I was 12, reading in bed when my grandma rang to tell us and my mum came up the stairs saying "Princess Diana's died" My reaction was "Who murdered her?" I assumed she'd been shot or something.

In hindsight I think the public behaved pretty badly in the days after her death, particularly towards the Queen, Duke of Edinburgh and Princes William and Harry. The baying of the crowds insistening that two kids had to come down to legitimise that section of the public's faux grief rather than being left to mourn their mother in peace was grotesque.

Yes it was not a good look for the British media was it! No wonder Harry doesn’t trust British press as far as he can throw them. And who can blame him.

Oh her struggles were well documented, so in that sense it wasn't really a surprise, but her being so young and in the spotlight and then gone. That was shocking. Nobody expects a 27 year old (one of the biggest pop stars in the world, and arguably the most publicised in the UK at the time) to die.

I'm Irish and I loved Diana! I wasn't alone. I used to play with some girlsvon my road and when they got married, the girls told me they couldn't play as they would be watching Diana's wedding. I said "is that your aunt?". They set me straight. Plenty of people loved her, to say nobody gave a shiny shit is a blanket statement.

My husband also cried. I think it was lunch time where we loved and we were watching the news when it was announced and he just let
out a groan and started crying.

my mum came up the stairs saying "Princess Diana's died" My reaction was "Who murdered her?"

Phillip, according to the internet 😛