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?

But it increasingly negative coverage, she was being criticised for her lifestyle

Absolutely this. People were pig sick of her cavorting round Europe on a playboy's yacht.

Her death was a combination of unlucky circumstances. I'm not a royalist (!) but even I don't think the royals planned it or could have carried it off without someone flapping their gums before now. I do agree they might well have been relieved to have a tidy ending to what was fast becoming a soap.

I can't help wondering though what happened to the lone survivor who barely commented before apparently dropping off the face of the earth despite having the story to dine out on until the end of time.

Changed his name, living in Shropshire, working as a security advisor, playing a bit of rugby...

Reconstructing his face took over a hundred bits of titanium to replace the shattered bits of bone, and they kept him in a coma for ten days while they did it.

He did write a book after Fayed started accusing him of everything under the sun that Philip didn't arrange, just to put the record straight as he saw it. All the money from it went to defending himself from Fayed's lawsuits against him (none of which succeeded; makes one think of Trump, somehow).

I can't help wondering though what happened to the lone survivor who barely commented before apparently dropping off the face of the earth despite having the story to dine out on until the end of time

he got married after to a teacher and had kids. I saw him in a few interviews and saw him recently popped up in the Sun in a pic of him walking with his family. The reason he didn't say much after the crash is because he remembers nothing of it due to the head injury.

I think if Markle were to die the Queen would also breathe an inner sigh of relief today

Really? Leaving her grandson devastated and 2 very small children without a mother? I know the Royals are odd but I don't think HMQ is that odd.

@alittleje

Unless you have insider knowledge, which I very much doubt, IMO it’s despicable to suggest that the Queen was ‘relieved’ that two young grandsons were left without their mother

meh in an ideal world yes but people are complex, I think if Markle were to die the Queen would also breathe an inner sigh of relief today.

I thought I couldn’t be surprised by the awful things people say now, but you’ve managed it.

Bonkers- there is no credible narrative that doesn't conclude that a drunk driver, a high speed journey, a badly lit tunnel led to the very sad death of a mother and two other men.

If any royal scandal would have resulted in assassination surely they'd have bumped off Wallis. She was much more dangerous.

I don’t think she was murdered but I’m not convinced it’s impossible.

History has shown that there were plots/plans behind some situations that were thought to be coincidences at the time.

The number of people who have got up their noses that the royal family has not bumped off is enormous. The wild rumour that there might be one such person, a rumour started by someone with very good motives for not wanting attention focussed on the fact that his employees were heavily involved and whose son had also died, and kept alive by people with an excellent motive for not wanting to have their own behaviour examined too closely, is just that: a rumour. Not even a very coherent one, certainly not cogent.

I do slightly despair of people who assume that the Queen is a psychopathic monster on no evidence whatever, though. Also those who think that if MI5/Prince Philip's friends/whoever had decided to kill her off before she sank herself without a trace, as she was going the right way about doing, would have made such a shoddy job of offing her: they would have had to be amateurs at a Danger Mouse level to come so close to failure. Oh, and that two French hospitals, the French legal system and all the medics at the scene would have been bought off in advance, and kept their silence for all this time.

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!

I think if Markle were to die the Queen would also breathe an inner sigh of relief today

No she wouldn't. Because again, Meghan would be sainted. The mother of 2 young children dying, perceived (by some) as treated poorly by the RF. Harry would be forgiven (by the public) for anything he does, in grief, going forward.

It would cause the RF a far bigger problems than a Oprah interview. As it stands H&M have had their say, it didn't go down as well as they had hoped. They are universally loved and missed.

There's no fountains or statues to Meghan around London.

Diana dying made things infintly worse for the RF, particularly the Queen and Charles and Camellia. Meghan dying would cause them more issues also.

Plus the Queen is a person, a mother, grandmother and Great grand mother she wouldn't be happy her Grandson and his children lost their wife and mother.

So it makes no sense. Even if she is an unfeeling bitch, she wouldn't want it to happened because it would cause more problems. It's likey she is not an unfeeling bitch and would not want that pain felt by her family.

No sense at all

@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!

Noticing racism doesn't make you racist. And you are dreaming if you think this wasnt an issue (albeit not one worth killing over) when Diana was going out with Dodi. Just as it was when Harry married Meghan. The British take the racial purity of their royal family very seriously.

@Porcupineintherough that is rubbish. The Queen was supportive of Diana's relationship with Hasnat Khan.

Can't believe that 50% of voters think that the drunk driver and failure to put on seatbelts was contrived. If she'd worn a seatbelt, she probably would have survived - as the only person in the car wearing one did.

@VickyEadieofThigh

Can't believe that 50% of voters think that the drunk driver and failure to put on seatbelts was contrived. If she'd worn a seatbelt, she probably would have survived - as the only person in the car wearing one did.

I can't - but then I can't believe a lot of popular things.

It might have been ‘convenient’ (I’m not sure why...) but it would also be an incredibly unreliable way to murder someone.

@makkapacca

i think the queen gave an internal sigh of relief and the royals in general as she was a loose cannon especially after the panorama interview. Her death was therefore convenient but I still think it was an accident. She was under a shoddy security team.

I don't think her death was remotely convenient for them, which is why I find the suggestions that the royals were involved in it so baffling.

Her death and their handling of it brought them to their point of lowest popularity in modern times. She still hangs over Charles and Camilla like the proverbial bad smell that they'll never, ever shift.

Some of the papers were starting to turn on her for her holidays and the likes, people would have got irritated with her interviews and always selling the photos eventually. Especially as more and more came out about her behaviour with things like basically stalking Hasnet Khan and her affair with Will Carling. Being dead she can do no wrong and that's not good for the royals.

Plus her decision to refuse Met police protection is so often cited as the royals "removed" her security so they get the blame for the shoddy security.

I think they know they'd have been far better with her still alive as she'd have fallen in and out of favour with the press and public, just as they do, rather than being held up as some weird saintly example as she is now.

Do so many people really think that the Queen is so sociopathic that she would be glad about close relatives dying? I can't stand the royal family but even I find this quite peculiar.

Porcupineintherough
Noticing racism doesn't make you racist. And you are dreaming if you think this wasnt an issue (albeit not one worth killing over) when Diana was going out with Dodi.

It seems not to have been an issue at all for the royal family who a] appear to have been delighted when she went out for two years with and talked about marrying a Pakistani Muslim and b] know better than to think that a 47-day acquaintance (during more than half of which the two people have not seen each other) is so serious that anyone needs to think about it at all.

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.

It might not have been an issue for the rotal family bit it was very much an issue for quite large sections of the British public (and ironically particularly more so in quarters where the royal family are considered important) and yes, whipped up by the media. That in no way means it was murder, although it may have contributed to the eagerness of the press to get a photograph on that night which precipitated the accident.

Yes, it was an issue for the racists. Saying it was an issue without emphasising that does lay the person saying it was an issue open to the suspicion that they themselves are racist.

And yes indeed, if it was a murder it was a singularly inept one. A bit like Hamlet causing the deaths of eight people including himself just in order to kill a man he could easily have stabbed in private but didn't take the opportunity when it offered.

@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?

I think it's absurd to think she wasn't.

@TerribleCustomerCervix

Why on earth would Diana being pregnant with another man’s baby be any threat whatsoever to the RF?

Surely it would be a relief to them that she had “moved on” and totally irrelevant.

Plus they’d recently weathered the total embarrassment of Fergie and the toe sucking and managed not to assassinate her.

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

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.

@layladomino

I have never had a conversation about Diana with someone who thought she was murdered. And I think this is on account of:

-Noone benefitted from her dying
-If she'd worn a seatbelt she would't have died - that was her choice
-there is no evidence (and yes I have watched a documentary).

If you get in a car with a driver who's been drinking, don't put on a seat belt and then the driver drives at speed, it's an unfortunate but quite predictable ending I'm afraid.

The conspiracy theories are so outlandish that most people see them for what they are. There are always those who love a conspiracy though.

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. She also did the Panorama interview and disclosed 'secrets' about the family. She also was privy to a lot more secrets that the Royal Family do not want disclosed.

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

So what? They wouldn't be part of the Royal Family by blood, they wouldn't be in the line of accession. Even if they were, as a Muslim they wouldn't be able to become king anyway.