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.

Margaret, you said that they should have done a "statement...there was nothing". You are making things up!

At 5.35am that morning, there was the following statement from Buckingham Palace

The absolute bare minimum. A standard pre-prepared statement that they use for strangers. They did more than that when the King of Saudi Arabia died! They

I sometimes wonder whether the image would have been tarnished had she lived, whether she would have learned to harness her power positively rather than destructively.

I don't think there is any need to wonder about that, her image was already getting pretty thoroughly tarnished before she died. As pointed out above, that summer the papers were very critical of the time she was spending freeloading on the Fayeds and the fact that she had spent so little time in the school holidays with her sons. Well before then, the general view was that she'd made herself a bit of a laughing stock with the Panorama interview and her behaviour in throwing herself at married men was well known. I recall some fairly dark humour around news stories concerning tragedies, to the effect that the Royal Family were having to move fast to get someone there before Diana turned up to get pictures of herself taken emoting over the victims. Also, of course, the Mail's and Express's massed racists weren't too keen on her taking up with brown people.

It's pretty clear that, had she lived, that process would have continued. I suspect that ultimately she would have been put in the Princess Margaret category as a vaguely annoying spoilt rich woman.

Cetp: Yes, I think you're probably right about that. Before her death, people were getting pretty tired of her.
(I noticed someone upthread calling her an icon like JFK or Marilyn Monroe - dying young did both of them good, too. JFK had a vile attitude to women and ISTR there was a certain amount of dodginess going on with his presidency that was all tucked away at the time. Marilyn would probably have gone the same way as Elizabeth Taylor - not getting any more parts as she got older, and a decade or two of slagging in the press for 'letting herself go'.)

ReanimatedSGB - Diana kept on her work against Landmines after her withdrawal from public life and was partly responsible for the law that banned them. She continued to work with HIV charities.
Her involvement was worth far more to any charity than she could actually have given in money, she was lauded as Humanitarian of the year. " Her personal support is said to have been a significant factor in encouraging Britain and then other countries to support the Ottawa Treaty which sought to introduce a ban on the use of anti – personnel landmines. When Robin Cook brought the second reading of the landmines bill to the house in 1998 he made a point of paying tribute to the contribution of Princess Diana."

I worked for an hiv charity in the 90 s, at about the same time as Diana did her work for hiv , some of the people who used our services were being harassed in their own homes. Her support was incredibly helpful. I couldn't care less why she did it.

"She was stupid for gallivanting around not wearing a seatbelt' yes she made a mistake, many people do. 'Gallivanting', you mean travelling about while her dc were at Balmoral and she clearly wouldn't have been welcome?

It was considerably more than that - it was taking repeated freebie holidays from the Fayeds, making sure that she was photographed in her swimsuit on their boat, trotting off with the Fayeds to see the Duke of Windsor's house in Paris, etc etc.

"The absolute bare minimum. A standard pre-prepared statement that they use for strangers. They did more than that when the King of Saudi Arabia died!"

margaret, I see you are changing things just to suit your agenda. So we agree that it wasn't "nothing" after all then? A statement was made within 2-3 hours of Diana's death.

Bearing in mind that Diana had just suffered a sudden and violent death and that this news had not even been shared with her own children, what statement do you feel would have been more suitable at half past five in the morning?

When the King of Saudi Arabia died, it was after a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer at the age of 90. There was perhaps a little more time and warning to come up with something a little more flowery...

In the documentary, there was one woman who commented on The Queen being back in Buckingham Palace something like, "I think we all feel a bit better now." I thought that was just so self-indulgent, seeing herself as The Queen's priority, rather than two grieving boys.

There was no empathy for those boys in dragging them and their grandparents back so the public could see them grieve.

That's not true. Nobody demanded that the children do anything.

On the contrary, there were quite a lot of hysterical demands that they should be brought back to London with accusations that they were being hidden away, they should be allowed to see how everyone cared about their mother etc etc. The real motivation of course was that the Press wanted some photos and the ghouls wanted to gawp at them.

shrug. A bit of 'good works' was the bare minimum expected of rich women and still is.

Also: that survey claiming that 75% of people 'were affected' by her death: I am old enough to remember another theme of that infuriating week. There were quite a lot of reports and rumours of people being verbally and even physically abused for not 'showing respect'. This may have been mostly made up, but it was still pretty fucking alarming and probably contributed to a lot of people telling the pollsters that they were profoundly affected, oh yes, boo hoo, queen of hearts, how we will miss her. There was definitely an element of coercion and manipulation at work, and it was all about Knowing Your Place.

I'm actually quite shocked at people saying they felt the same grief as if a close relative had died. I don't understand that at all.

But your emotions, your business I suppose.

at her serious flaw in taking her rollers out too early. This must be a hairdresser speaking!

If you demand that the grandparents of children who's mother has just died come to attend to you when their father is bringing their mothers body back from a foreign country, then you are demanding something of those children. You are demanding that their grandparents are taken away from them and that they are left with nannies, staff and some uncles so that they can attend to your needs. Or you are demanding that they are dragged back to London to witness strangers pawing them and wailing, which is what happened. Wasn't there a further statement released which said the Queen was staying at Balmoral because that was where the children wanted to be? Even that wasn't enough in the end.

It was also sickening Blair and his cronies using it as a political thing.

Not really though - new labour were only recently elected with a huge majority, and didn't make any great political capital out of the tragedy.

If it had been John Major & Co. in charge they'd have dumped her body in the Thames from a rowing boat in the dead of night...

"The absolute bare minimum. A standard pre-prepared statement that they use for strangers.

At 5.30 a.m. when they had had shocking news only a few hours earlier, what else did you expect? Don't you think they were right to focus on the children rather than producing carefully crafted statements for the populace? And you can hardly claim that Prince Charles did nothing, given that he got on a plane to Paris at the first opportunity and arranged the plane and escort for her body.

What always bemuses me is the notion that someone's ex-husband's family has a duty to express massive grief at her death. She'd spent years slagging Charles and his family off as publicly as she possibly could, to say nothing of sleeping with other women's husbands. I must admit that if my ex daughter-in-law had behaved like that, I'd struggle to express a whole lot of grief.

it was all about Knowing Your Place.

I think this is rather an odd interpretation of events.
In fact, I think quite the opposite and what irked me was the idea being aggressively put forward that she had anything to do with the common man. That grieving for her was somehow 'republican'.

However, I do agree with you that it's interesting that no one has made anything of the fact that not a bean went to her charities in her will. Are you sure about this? Back in the day I had a very boring temp job and remember reading her will. I thought there was something.

Ceto and also were publicly raked over the coals by her brother at the funeral, who's own track record (not to mention her family's non-intervention/active encouragement of the match in the first place) was nothing to be proud of by a long shot.

If it had been John Major & Co. in charge they'd have dumped her body in the Thames from a rowing boat in the dead of night... Rubbish

I saw a hilarious conspiracy discussion the other day. They were all absolutely convinced that there had been a plot to murder Diana, the main motivation for which was allegedly that she wanted a divorce. Someone who obviously knew the facts was joining in to ask innocently why that wouldn't have been acceptable, and was getting ever more excitable responses about how divorce would have been utterly intolerable. And they they asked even more innocently "But why would she want a divorce, when they'd been divorced already for over a year?" and it all suddenly went very quiet.

There was a lot of press assumption that the country was close to revolution. On the other hand when I queued to sign the book of condolences - most people were sad, often young mothers who empathised with the tragic loss of a mother. The only one I heard speak negatively about the Royal family etc. was someone who seemed to be just "joining in".
To be honest Diana's life was sad - but that also made it very readable, which made most people complicit in her death.
What her brother said might have had some truth in it, and struck a nerve. BUT he was also part of that family that hadn't exactly treated her well either, and virtually sold her off to be a royal bride (with no real training as to what that would really mean).

I never knew anyone who have a toss in Scotland. It was a very English phenomenon.

When a young famous talented person is suddenly killed, full of promise and potential, then we mourn that loss

the difference is that we don't do so with such an outcry of mass hysteria.

Really Bobson? I was living abroad at the time but my dps live in Glasgow and they gave a very different picture. I think I recall them laying flowers in George Square. My df is staunchly anti monarchy but has met Diana, Anne, Charles and Phillip through work and Diana and Anne were the only ones he would describe as genuine. He particularly loathes Charles as knowing 'f&@k all' about my df's field but being very opinionated about it.

I was on a night shift the night it all happened. One of our patients had worked nights for years...so spent most nights in the dayroom quietly watching TV. He let us know there had been an accident. One of his work mates would visit him and bring the early edition of the papers. There were several articles criticizing her very strongly.

At this point, the news was she'd been injured but stable, and I remember one of my colleagues commenting that there'll be some columnists backpedaling pretty quickly. . . .

Yes it was sad that 2 young boys lost their Mum in such a sudden way but the attitude of some of the public mourners was shameful and ridiculous. I do remember wondering if this was a response to the (IMO) a strange attitude towards death in the UK.

For me I can't get away from the 'she knew what she was doing'
she.was.19 and marrying into the monarchy, Even if she had half an idea the reality of never being able to do anything freely again, ever, would probably not have occurred to any 19 year old.

The media made her- it was her choice (to some degree) to court them afterwards (she knew they were powerful and probably thought she could manage them) When her protection of the Royals was removed on her divorce, it was open season, they all behaved badly.

She was romancing a man whose father had been refused a passport many times, imagine if (and it's a big if) she'd married Dodi (it'd need to be someone rich enough to hide her out due to her position) how long could they have refused Mohammed al Fayed's request when he was step grandad to the heir to the throne?

I think she was interested in Dodi for mischief and fun- and to flick the V's at the royals. It was a tragic (yet convenient) accident.