to think the common idea that Diana was murdered is absurd

[makkapacca]

Heard a journalist on the radio the other day speculating it was not an accident and heard others saying the same. AIBU to think people like this are complete idiots?

@TroysMammy

It's a ridiculous theory only believed by idiots. I'm sure other ways would have been used to murder someone as a car crash could go either way. What if she had survived the car crash? Would there have been other attempts to kill her until she was finally dead?

People are not idiots to believe it. Mohammed Al Fayed was not an idiot. He firmly believed it.

@Wizzbangfizz

I think that to claim the world was losing interest in her is wholly incorrect - it anything to frenzy was growing - particularly if as heavily speculated she was going to announce an engagement and pregnancy.

Exactly she was the most photographed royal at the time. This was before the days of internet. She was in all the newspapers everyday.

@maggiecate

If you’re going to assassinate someone you need to know where they’re going to be and when. The trip that evening was a spontaneous one that Dodi suggested and organised at the last minute. The driver was drinking because he thought he was done for the night. It would have been impossible to plan for the accident to happen because the whole event was unplanned. There were other routes that could have been taken, they couldn’t have anticipated that the driver would be speeding, that the passengers wouldn’t be wearing seatbelts. The odds of pulling it off and getting away are astronomical - far too high for any professional setup like the security services to attempt.

And the idea that the royal family would have put the boys through that trauma - after having themselves endured the grief of the Mountbatten assassination - is frankly ridiculous.

Why would it be traumatic for them? It would be more traumatic for them to have her alive with all the secrets she knew (Paul Burrell was aware of these) and the new relationships she was having was causing them problems.

An Australian crime journalist talked to crash investigation experts & found the still existing gouges on the tunnel entrance wall match with the car hitting it then ricocheting into the tunnel.The same journalist also interviewed a French woman who saw a white Fiat with Paris plates collide with Diana's car at the tunnel entrance. She rang Police after the crash but was ignored. She described a young, dark haired Fiat driver with a huge black dog in the back seat, wearing a bright orange muzzle. The man has been traced. His own father said he resprayed his Fiat red, just hours after the crash. He's refused to speak to anyone re the crash.

The press and the racists are the ones who made a fuss about Fayed being an Arab, and Fayed senior made much of his son going out (for which read, possibly having sex a few times) with a divorced ex-member of the royal family.

Exactly this. People just parrot nonsense. It's depressing.

@bubbleblower85

I think the people who overlook the strange things around her death are ridiculous. Why were all the cameras in the tunnel turned off? Why wasn't she taken to the hospital which was very nearby immediatly? Why did they embalm her against the law? Why was the white fiat punto found burnt out and the driver killed? Why the nonsend about Henri Paul being drunk, his level of blood alcohol would have left him paraplegic but he was fine on all the CCTV camera's and his family have said he wasn't a drinker. Why wasn't Charles asked about why his wife said she fears she would be killed in a staged car crash by him, at the inquest? If this was a ordinary Mr Smith/Jones they would have questioned him in an inquest. There are other things that raises eyebrows.

I guess we will never know exaxctly what happened but I think the car accident was just setting the stage for something neferious afterwards (i.e in thhe ambulance/hospital) and then it gives them plausible deniability i.e she died because of a car crash.

Exactly all of this. Also the photographers at the scene all had their houses raided and all their images taken from them.

@Itsnotover

The people who say that Diana was murdered because she was going out with a person of colour are the ones who are racist. Because they've dreamed up the idea in the first place and assume others would perceive it to be a problem that would cause someone to be murdered!

What a load of rubbish. The reality is that 25years ago times were different. The future king of England having a half sibling that was Muslim would have put the Queen in a difficult position. She is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

@MorningStarling

I have a hard time understanding why people think she was murdered. The method was a rather silly and unreliable one, and the peak of her ability to cause embarrassment to the Royal Family had already passed. When you factor in the drunk driver and lack of seat belts, plus speeding through the streets in the early hours, the murder argument makes less and less sense.

Still, I suppose there are people who deny that the Holocaust happened, so it takes all sorts I guess.

But many argue that the driver wasn't actually drunk. He wasn't staggering to the car. There was video of him tying his shoe laces up before got in the car.

It's laughable.

Look at who stood to gain what by her death (nothing) and then consider who had what to lose if what they'd 'done' was ever
uncovered (everything).

The woman was none-too bright. Charles' PR people had already painted her as a whackadoodle, and she helped them. The Panorama interview did her absolutely no favours. Once the label of 'mad' has been attached to someone - nearly always a woman it's interesting to note - then their voice is effectively removed and nobody takes a word they say seriously. For modern-day examples look no further than Charlene of Monaco and Britney Spears.

Nobody cares who she was dating or the nonsense she was spouting. In time, had she lived, she'd probably have become persona non grata and a laughing stock like Fergie.

@MarieIVanArkleStinks

It's laughable.

Look at who stood to gain what by her death (nothing) and then consider who had what to lose if what they'd 'done' was ever
uncovered (everything).

The woman was none-too bright. Charles' PR people had already painted her as a whackadoodle, and she helped them. The Panorama interview did her absolutely no favours. Once the label of 'mad' has been attached to someone - nearly always a woman it's interesting to note - then their voice is effectively removed and nobody takes a word they say seriously. For modern-day examples look no further than Charlene of Monaco and Britney Spears.

Nobody cares who she was dating or the nonsense she was spouting. In time, had she lived, she'd probably have become persona non grata and a laughing stock like Fergie.

Not at all. I remember those days. People didn't view her as a mad woman. They had great sympathy for her after the Panorama interview. She was a really popular figure that was becoming more and more defiant against the royals.

What a load of rubbish.
The reality is that 25years ago times were different. The future king of England having a half sibling that was Muslim would have put the Queen in a difficult position. She is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England

@Sweetpea2021 so how do you explain that the Queen was fine, supportive even, of Diana dating Hasnat Khan? You're the one talking rubbish. How exactly would it have put the Queen in a difficult position? You've proved my point that it is sentiment such as yours that is racist.

Old man Fayed was a bit mono-manic about the whole business, what with one of his employees being directly responsible for the death of his son but dead himself and beyond punishment. He had to blame someone, anyone but the driver who actually did it and was beyond reach of his vengeance, and avenge Dodi somehow. So he did, in all directions and no matter how loony any given accusation. (I slightly wondered whether the royal family had even noticed that Dodi existed; he was a summer fling for three and a half weeks for someone who was no longer really of any great interest to thm; he simply would not have been important enough to them for them to bother to want him dead. And their killing two complete innocents in a very hit-and-miss way in order possibly to quash one nuisance seems somehow unlikely.)

I do like the idea of a Fiat Uno ( between1,567lb and 2,006lb curb weight) having the leverage to deflect into a crash a reinforced Mercedes-Benz W140 (between 4,542lb and 4,938lb curb weight plus extra for armour-plating) in a glancing collision, though. The Fiat would bounce off and the Mercedes would continue on its course pretty-much unknowing. In a head-on, the Fiat would be crushed and the Mercedes would probably have a damaged crumple-zone. If the Mercedes had by some strange ballistic frek been caused to alter course, spin and all the rest of it by collision with a Fiat, there is no way the Fiat would not have been in a worse state, still on the scene in an undriveable condition.

“The British take the racial purity of their royal family very seriously.“

Count me out of that please!

@Itsnotover

*What a load of rubbish. The reality is that 25years ago times were different. The future king of England having a half sibling that was Muslim would have put the Queen in a difficult position. She is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England*

@Sweetpea2021 so how do you explain that the Queen was fine, supportive even, of Diana dating Hasnat Khan? You're the one talking rubbish. How exactly would it have put the Queen in a difficult position? You've proved my point that it is sentiment such as yours that is racist.

It's not my sentiment that's racist it's the reality of the times 25 years ago. Mohammed al fayed said also that it was because he was Muslim.

I guess (on a smaller scale) it's just like say some Muslim families don't like their children marrying Christians etc

Things are different now. Times have changed (which is brilliant).

Because the future king of England would have had a half sibling who was potentially Muslim. Massive problem for the Queen.
What/who is the King/Queen of England?

@Sweetpea2021, the press coverage of Diana was turning negative before her death it was no longer quite so possible to view her as the innocent young victim of Charles and Conniving Camilla, or the suffering young ingenue in the hands of the grey men of the Palace. The gutter press is cruel towards women as they age and I think it's likely she would have been viewed as increasingly irrelevant and silly as she hit 40, in part depending on whether she remarried and who, or whether she continued to be viewed in terms of glamorous holidays and vaguely unsuitable men.

The future king of England having a half sibling that was Muslim would have put the Queen in a difficult position. She is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

She'd been having a fling with Dodi Fayed for a few weeks - it was hardly grand romance of the century.

If the religion thing was going to be an issue then it would have come up during her realtionship with Hasnat Khan, not waiting until then.

The only reason that came up is because Mohammed Al Fayed started coming up with conspiracy theories months, and sometimes years, after the crash to deflect from the fact that his driver and head of security was drunk and caused the crash.
He was also in a massive sulk over losing his royal warrants from Harrods.

It's not my sentiment that's racist it's the reality of the times 25 years ago.

No, it's really not.

Mohammed al fayed said also that it was because he was Muslim.

Mohammed Al Fayed said a lot of things.

She wasn't even serious about Dodi - he was a fling as far as she was concerned.

@TheMarzipanDildo

“The British take the racial purity of their royal family very seriously.“

Count me out of that please!

Why would the later child of a woman who had had a divorce from a member of the royal family have anything whatever to do with the racial purity of the royal family? She was not part of it, and the child would not have been part of it.

Even if there were such a thing as "the racial purity of the royal family" in the first place which on the whole there isn't. It would be pretty silly to object to people of another race in the royal family, given the fact that they've been marrying people from all over Europe for centuries. For instance Prince Philip, or Prince Albert. What is really surprising is that none of Elizabeth's children found a spouse outside this country even on the second try, and that William also married someone from England.

I think actually that 25 years ago the British were less afraid of the Other than they are now; Brexit hadn't happened, 9/11 hadn't happened, and the terrorists setting off bombs in this country were Irish, not Muslim; Blair had not yet decided that unlike any other country in Europe, we would allow anyone European at all who wanted to come here to do so. The nastiness of racism was on the wane, not on the increase as it feels at present.

Actually I think it’s highly offensive for anyone to be talking about ‘racial purity’ and saying it’s important to the RF🤮 it’s completely made up.

The RF are, no doubt a bunch of snobs. They prefer people from aristocratic backgrounds or with aristocratic links in their family . Which doesn’t have anything to do with race.

It really is a commonly held belief, absolutely everyone i know thinks she was murdered by the Royals! I personally think you need to be stupid to think that and people find it hard to accept that she died in such a mundane way via the hands of a drunk driver. A car crash is not a guaranteed way to kill somebody, no special forces or spies or whoever all the nut jobs believe killed her would use such a tactic.

wanttomarryamillionaire
A car crash is not a guaranteed way to kill somebody, no special forces or spies or whoever all the nut jobs believe killed her would use such a tactic.

I think the thing which really makes it unlikely from my point of view is that it happened in France, where neither the British royal family nor the British government nor any branch of the British security services has the power to control anything in particular. Would I, if I wanted to arrange the death of someone, arrange it in a place where I had no way to do anything about it if something went wrong with my plot? No, I probably wouldn't.

The future king of England having a half sibling that was Muslim would have put the Queen in a difficult position. She is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

Why would it have mattered?

As others have said, her 'relationship' was nowhere near the marriage stage. Diana told friends it was just a bit of summer fun.

Besides, if she did remarry, she would no longer be able to call herself Princess of Wales and any resulting child would not be a member of the royal family. Hardly a constitutional crisis.

The royal family benefited from her dying. She was embarrassing them (as the mother of the future King of England) by having lots of different relationships.

They really wouldn't care about this. Look at the history of the family - even if you only go back to the beginning of the last century, it's littered with scandal. An ex-wife making an idiot of herself would be utterly trivial, if anything it would be welcomed because it would put Charles in a better light. No-one particularly cared about Fergie's money troubles, for instance. If she'd lived, William would simply take care to distance himself from her, and by the time he got to be king, she would, at the very least, have been well into her 60s and relationship scandals would be past history.