To still not understand the Diana "thing"?

[TeaCake5]

As William and harry said they were bewildered by people who didn't even know her acting in the way they did. Yes it was sad that she was killed but to hand around kensington palace for days crying? Ridiculous.

DamnFine - no, not until she got divorced - she was the youngest, and as a girl, all the family money to her brother Charles. There was enough to keep her going until she married well, but she was of a generation and class who were expected to marry money, rather than have or earn her own.

She got a huge amount in the divorce, which was actually well invested so William and Harry are minted, but as a young woman and during her marriage, she didn't have a lot.

Such nastiness.

I think people forget the intensity of the news coverage of her when she was alive. Apart from the left wing broadsheets there was a big story about her every single day, often more than one. And news sources were so much more limited it was hard to get away from. She was a regular topic of conversation, everybody had an opinion on her, good or bad. People knew where she was, what she was doing, who she mixed with, what she wore, how she exercised, what she ate. People often knew more about her life and what she was doing than they did about their own relatives or neighbours. It was natural people felt a connection to her. I thought it was very sad and understood it to a point, although the suggestions of a sainthood were always ridiculous. Especially as she was an Anglican and we don't create new saints and haven't since the reformation. I didn't lay flowers but I understood why people did. Although my mother was absolutely mortified getting on a train to my Gran's house with flowers for her because she thought people might think she was doing it.

Diana said " A queen IN people's hearts", not a queen OF people's hearts.
She did play with fire in the years before her death, and the press did turn on her, then they stirred everyone up during that week.
I think a lot of people, especially women, could identify with the way Diana had been hurt by Charles behaviour, and she had to do her growing up, etc in public, and she did behave in a way a lot of us have, but we didn't have paps in our faces everyday. I liked her, she was no saint, she was flawed person, just like the rest of us, and did feel very sorry for her sons, and her mother, and I felt sorry for Dodi's family as well.

if she was still alive these days I believe she'd hardly be mentioned in the papers - the nation has an actual princess/future queen to creepily fawn over now.

I don't believe that for a second. I think the press would love playing them off against each other and suggesting guess and disagreements. And I suspect Kate would probably be posting on here about her nightmare MIL. I don't think she would have been an easy MIL.

I'm the same age as Prince William and remember the media circus over her relationship with Dodi in the weeks leading up to her death. All I could think of was how mortified and embarrassed I'd be if my mother was cavorting baojt like that in public. It was all just so icky and attention seeking.

Then she died, and it seemed like everyone went a bit mad. I was shocked when it happened like everyone else, but the public hysteria was disturbing and creepy. Not all that dissimilar to how people in North Korea behave when their great leaders snuff it.

Such nastiness

I don't think there is any nastiness on here. It seems more a realistic discussion to me.

DamnFine - no, not until she got divorced - she was the youngest, and as a girl, all the family money to her brother Charles. There was enough to keep her going until she married well, but she was of a generation and class who were expected to marry money, rather than have or earn her own.

That's not quite right. Firstly she wasn't the youngest, her brother was. Secondly all their daughters had good trust funds. The flat in Colherne Court was hers outright.

I think some of the tiny minority of people doing the weeping and wailing live in a fairytale book, where the hansome Prince meets a beautiful young girl, falls immediately in love and they all live happily ever after. Whereas in reality, if you want an aristocracy and a Royal family, then the point of them is to propagate their line and keep power. There is love and romance only if you're lucky and seems to be the preserve of the women (Victoria and Elizabeth II) for some reason. Charles and Diana's affairs and disastrous marriage meant the Royals hadnt done the fairytale properly, when all they were doing was what they had done since the beginning of time, but in secret.

derxa
Such nastiness

Why do you consider it nasty?

I think discussing people's looks in this way is nasty. I thought that was verboten on MN.

I do think this thread has gone quite nasty. Where is the empathy? Yes, people wailing in the streets over someone they don't know is over the top, but they often do it because it resonates with them, and they have empathy for the children losing their mother.

When a close friend of mine lost their mother, I was distraught, even though I didn't know their mother I was deeply empathetic to their situation, and projecting how I would feel if I lost my darling Mum. I was so upset for them because I could imagine how I would feel in that situation. It's heartbreaking and a lot of people who did grieve for Diana were doing it because of how sad they felt for the children left behind.

wigan
To me empathy is those poor boys. What must they be going through. What a tragic way to die. It must be awful being hounded by the press when you're grieving. Maybe having a moment when you contemplate that you could lose a loved one. She did a lot of good in the world. I'll go and lay some flowers or show my respects for the funeral.

Hysterical screaming, crying, wailing, camping out in the early hours for a glimpse of the coffin as it gets moved, running covers lambasting the queen for spending time with her family days after a death, reaching out scrambling to touch her children, screaming 'diana' as the coffin passes you in the street and her 2 children are the ones behind it etc isn't empathy in my opinion. It's bizare mass hysteria.

How is it bitchy to say someone is "thin and expensively made-up"? It's a fact.

The several times I was in the same room as her, she wore expensive obviously), beautifully fitted clothes and shoes, expensive makeup, and was immaculately groomed. She was slim rather than thin.

It isn't remotely mean to say that her looks were enhanced by having the money to spend on herself. Most of us would look amazing in those circumstances.

I have to smile when I see so many people now openly embarrassed by the world wide grief during that week. I was one of them, so were many of a similar age to me ( same age as Diana) both male and female that I knew. It wasn't embarrassing at the time. It was a very unique experience and not one I think would happen again.
I guess it's the same way that people are openly embarrassed about their love of 80's fashion at the time !
It happened. It happened for a reason and was the first time that the public grieved so deeply and openly. Maybe it was the first time that many cultures had been 'allowed' to express grief so loudly. It wasn't embarrassing at the time.
Very easy to have been 10 years old in 1997 and look back and laugh at the coverage now. But times change. There's no place to laugh at people in grief. Whether that grief was for themselves or for Diana, it really doesn't matter. It happened

^^
Yes exactly. Who thought that two children hearing their dead mother's name being screamed out would make it better? And there was a man who shouted abuse at Prince Charles too, apparently. Their only living parent. Well done those people. You really made their lives better that day!

t's heartbreaking and a lot of people who did grieve for Diana were doing it because of how sad they felt for the children left behind

And now those children are grown men who have spoken and said how awful it was for them at the time, the pressure it put them under, how incomprehensible it was to them, how they felt dazed as their mother had just died and people were doing this, how they had to stand there stoically as people wept and wailed and tried to touch them.

it was as incomprehemsinle to them at the time as it was to the vast majority of the population. There was no empathy for those boys in dragging them and their grandparents back so the public could see them grieve. The media and those weeping egging each other on in s vicious circle. In turning on their grandmother who rightly had them squirrelled up at balmoral, no empathy or respect shown to those boys, their father and their grandparents at all.

None whatsoever.

Yes Margaret I think people have forgotten how famous she was and how intense the coverage. That fame wasn't mass hysteria. People around the world were fascinated by her. My dh is from a middle eastern country and his family aren't very pro Britain. However they thought Diana was wonderful. I remember when I got married dh's grandmother and great aunt thought I looked just like the 'Ameera' (princess) Diana which they considered a great compliment. (I'm short and a brunette btw!)
Living with such intense fame was very difficult. In her last years she was a bit erratic but she was lonely and didn't really know what her role was. I think if she'd had a stronger more supportive family it might have helped. Charles Spencer is a bloody hypocrite.

I think discussing people's looks in this way is nasty. I thought that was verboten on MN.

It was in response to certain posters going way over the top and calling her "the most beautiful woman ever". Nobody told that poster off for discussing looks.

t wasn't embarrassing at the time

But that's the point of the thread. All of us posting remember it too, I was 28, I remember it vividly and myself and many others posting feel it was. Embarrassing, needless, mass hysteria that further traumatised two young boys.

William has called his grandfather an 'absolute legend' .Not the words you would use for someone who had not done their absolute best for you in your time of need. Yet they were forced away from that by the media and public gawping.

MargaretTwatyer Thu 31-Aug-17 12:00:25

I don't believe that for a second. I think the press would love playing them off against each other and suggesting guess and disagreements. And I suspect Kate would probably be posting on here about her nightmare MIL. I don't think she would have been an easy MIL.

x1000 yes.

She hadn't seen her boys for a month because that's what the Palace wanted. It wasn't a very equitable custody arrangement. That's something the Royal Family can be criticised for. She didn't spend her last Xmas with them either I think because of course Sandringham trumps everything else.

I think discussing people's looks in this way is nasty. I thought that was verboten on MN.

I can only speak for myself and the piece of the Hilary Mantel essay I quoted up the thread but there's nothing 'nasty', surely, in acknowledging that if Diana had made the kind of ordinarily 'good' marriage expected for girls of her background, she'd plausibly have spent decades dashing about a country estate in a knackered Barbour and wellies and no make-up, scrubbing up for London or weddings, but not being hailed as anything more than an ordinarily nice-looking woman, rather than as a beautiful, doomed goddess? Or that it was marrying into the royal family, to a man that made no pretence of fidelity, and then divorcing him, that was the single most definitive thing that determined her adult personality, otherwise she'd have been another nice, not very well-educated, well-born Sloane?

And I think HM (Hilary Mantel, not Her Maj ) is right to argue that to dismiss the reaction to Diana's death as 'mass hysteria' is a bit simplistic -- we live in a time now where sadness is pathologised as 'depression', where we no longer wear mourning clothes that signal we're bereaved and in grief, and where we're supposed to ping back to normal after the death of someone we love, probably while blogging about it, and Diana's death seems to have allowed people to vent private griefs there isn't an adequate public language for in this country....?