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.

Yujismum, hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets for Diana's funeral. I think we can safely say that most of them had never met her and even those that had met her briefly on her official visits would not have known her well. That is obviously what Ceto is saying and there is no need to go off on a wild goose chase about her dad.

Ceto how would you know your father had never met someone who turned up at his funeral?

That reads like you're saying everyone who cried about Diana's funeral had actually met her - you're not, are you?

SenecaFalls

"I'm not invested particularly; I just think it's an interesting discussion"

I think it's clear that I was asking the immoderate people here what the hell it had to do with them. I understand your interest, but I'm not sure I'd call this a discussion!

Sentences like "Pawing [sic.] and crying out, shouting and writing offensive things about the family of the dead persons children in the name of your grief is objectionable" seem to contain precisely the emotions that they condemn.

Parapan, I too have and still do work with enormously underprivileged people amongst them homeless people. We are though clearly coming to this from opposite views. Of course Diana chose her charities, as do we when we chose to work with various groups of people. We aren't wonderful ultruistic people doing good, we do things for our own reasons. It gives us something. As it did presumably for Diana. She did not have a happy childhood (waiting now for those who will repeat how privileged she was) and I think, purely subjectivily that she wanted to make a difference. However I understand that lots of people don't get why lots of other people liked and admired her and had feelings for her albeit that they didn't actually know her. Unfortunately though tolerance seems to be lacking.

OK, thanks, Borodin. I am glad that I fall into the moderate category.

apostropheuse - sorry mistook your post for another!

People do grieve for those they have never met. Just look at the threads here on the losses of David Bowie, Prince and Leonard Cohen. When the queen goes, after a long life, many will feel and express grief.
I was born the same yeR as Diana and was very scathing about her when she married as I couldn't imagine doing so at that age. Over the years she grew on me and I found the week of her death very sad. Also fascinating. I remember reading that Charles was concerned he would be pelted with fruit and veg as he walked behind the coffin and it seemed quite medieval.

I don't really buy into the Saint Di and Evil Charles either.

I appreciate that Princess Di did a lot of good in her charitable work, and she was a loving mum. However, she also had affairs and knew how to manipulate the press to her advantage.

Similarly, Charles has made mistakes and probably shouldn't have married Diana. However, he also has a lot of good, such as the Princes's Trust and I think has conducted his marriage with Camilla well. They always seem happy together.

YANBU - it was weird at the time and it's only got weirder.

She seemed nice (and pretty disturbed, but she did good work like actually treating HIV patients as human back when that was radical)... but the whole "people's princess / nation's grief" thing was ghoulish IMO.

Just the expectation that everyone was emotionally devastated by the death of someone they never met was just... insulting, to be honest. I had people telling me that it was the worst thing they'd ever known, and I remember thinking then "but when your actual mum died you spent three weeks in our spare room because you couldn't face going home! How is this worse??"

Plus I always felt so bad for William and Harry having what must have been a devastating time for them completely co-opted by tabloids whipping up a sort of grief-panic where everyone else was meant to show how sad they were.

The fact it's such a big deal even now must be awful for them too. Let them get on with their lives in peace instead of reminding them how much everyone else lost control.

I agree petal. Both of them behaved badly and had affairs.If we're going happily ever after, Charles should have married Camilla in the first place, instead of dithering. I don't know the ins and outs of why he didn't, but she is clearly the love of his life. If that had happened, we would probably be where we are now, with the Heir to the throne married to Camilla. Diana would have ended up married to some other aristo like her sisters.

Those who grieved Diana clearly felt awful. Her death didn't leave me untouched: I continued my usual routine with some melancholy. But I don't see any reason to degrade people who felt differently from me, and I hope that those who are damning them become able to express their own feelings, no matter how unacceptable they may think they are.

Yes, those who genuinely grieved her obviously did feel awful. But that was not the case for the vast majority of those ostentatiously wailing by the Mall, or proclaiming that the Queen should come to be with her people in their grief. It was very clear that their emotions were essentially those you feel when you read a sad book or go to see a weepie film - there's a degree of cathartic pleasure to be got from having a good cry at something that doesn't actually touch you that deeply and which you will have largely forgotten about within a week or two at most. It simply doesn't compare with the aching void in the lives of people who genuinely knew and loved the deceased person. So yes, they could express their feelings - but they really weren't that deeply felt.

It's really pretty offensive to assume that people must be sad, repressed individuals desperately suppressing their emotions just because they didn't do so by taking flowers and cuddly toys to Kensington Palace or threatening strangers who didn't seem sad enough or weeping in front of the TV cameras. Many, many people didn't express their feelings that way simply because that wasn't how they felt, and that was all there was to it.

Yujis, I don't understand why you can't see the irrelevance of your question how I might know that my father had never met a particular individual. The premise of my original statement was how I would feel about a person who definitely, definitely had never met him turning up at his funeral - just as the vast majority of people loudly expressing their grief for Diana had definitely, definitely never met her. It really doesn't matter how I would know it. If it would make you feel any better, put the hypothesis on the basis that I am my ghost and I am bemused because someone I personally know 100% I never, ever met has turned up and is loudly proclaiming their grief for me.

He was told he couldn't marry Camilla as she was catholic.

She went back to her previous boyfriend - Andrew PB. Apparently he cheated on her for most of their marriage.

Apparently (don't know of this is true) but Charles only rekindled his (sexual) relationship with Camilla after he found Diana was enjoying extra marital activity with James Hewitt.

In all honesty I expect the truth is much more complex.

I also quite like Camilla tbh (expect a flaming). She seems quite down to earth and not at all self obsessed.

Camilla isn't catholic- andrew Parker Bowles is.

Latest articles on Camilla claim she was head over heels for APB and he cheated on her throughout. Drove her back to Charles.

Do you not think it's weird, unpleasant, creepy and fairly poor parenting for people to take small children to lay flowers for Dead Di now? Twenty years after her death? Taking kids with you if you go to visit Great Aunt Vi's grave decades after Great Aunt Vi died can be an opportunity to teach them a bit of their own family history, sure, but encouraging your kids to 'pay their respect' to some dead famous person who was fundamentally irrelevant to most people's lives in the first place? I can't see how this would do anything other than distress and confuse the kids: either their own parents are inadequate snivellers, or they will be exposed to strangers behaving in a fucking weird manner over someone they know nothing about who has been dead a very long time. I should think it would give the poor little sods nightmares. (Remember the appalling morons who took their DC to things like the memorial compost heaps for the Soham girls? Or had kids with them when they went to bay and throw things outside the trial of Thompson and Venables? This is what I mean by being downright wary of people who talk about the importance of emotions...)

I like Camilla too. I'd bet my mortgage on C being at his wits end with Diana when he we went back to C. That's not to say it was t totally daft to marry her in the first place.

She wasn't considered that inspirational the week before she died. In fact, we (or at least the media, with no-one challenging them) generally weren't that keen on her at all. A remarkable U-turn.

I question why should she have known that PC didn't love her

Well they only met a grand total of 12 times before they walked up the aisle and said I do, he was originally to marry her sister, who said no to the gig as she said she would not marry a man she did not love. So diana agreed when Jane said no.

If she thought they were madly in love, in what, the two,or three times they met befor it was agreed they would marry, then that would be mind boggling stupidity. She knew exactly what the deal on the table was. This was no fairy tale love match, it was a marriage of convenience to breed the heir and spare and to give Charles a wife. She may have been many things, but she wasn't an idiot.

I remember my uncle crying and in my childish innocence I asked if she had been his friend, he's posh and lived in London, in my 9 year old head it was a totally logical question and I was trying to be nice, bloody hell he was angry. He slapped me, there was a whole family drama over it, it was totally ridiculous!

I couldn't understand why anyone was that upset about someone they didn't know, I still don't understand now, yeah she did a bit of charity work, so do all the royals, and anyone dying is sad but to actually grieve over a stranger? what's the point?

No, I was born in a different generation and wouldn't act like that. I can't see the attraction to go with someone young enough to be ones son, uugh! If you wish to swear at me please use the Collins Dictionary to spell correctly, you nasty person.

My sons were a similar age to William and Harry when Diana died.
I remember very clearly hearing the news and feeling desperately sad. She very obviously adored her boys and she was a mum like me. The thought of my boys having to cope with the trauma of losing their mother (in the glare of the public eye) and having to endure a very public funeral and aftermath has always made me feel very protective and sympathetic towards the princes.

I think some people do seem to perversely enjoy getting very upset and weepy over the death of someone they don't know though. Maybe it's just cathartic. Recently you've had the same with Charlie Guard and Sunderland's Bradley. People seem to feel freer to grieve over strangers than their close relatives. People seem to like the communal grieving thing as well.

I found the hysteria at the time just weird, and felt very sorry for William and Hardy.

But I'm finding this 20 year anniversary hype completely ott. My Facebook news feed seems to be 40% Diana stuff. I'm sure she did have a positive impact, but I'm not convinced she deserves this "sainthood". She was clearly a troubled person.

@SparklyUnicornPoo, It was that kind of intense emotional reaction a lot of people had that I couldn't understand. It's awful that your uncle did that to you because you asked what would be a totally logical question in a child's mind.

Some emotional reaction at tragic news is normal, especially when hearing about a celebrity's death. An obvious example would be Marilyn Monroe. I remember shedding a tear last year when Carrie Fisher died and then the next day her mother Debbie Reynolds died too. But obviously, unlike her brother and daughter, it was a fleeting tear, as my family were all alive and well.

I stand corrected by a pp - Andrew PB was catholic but Camilla wasn't.

Didn't stop my catholic DH marrying COE me at the time (aside from the fact we are both avid atheists).

Hey - but I'm not royal, I got to marry for love :-)