I find this thread very sad. I don't know where this most recent wave of hate about Diana is coming from but I heard Gyles Brandreth the other day on the radio calling her "an hysteric" and I believe he is a chum and supporter of Prince Charles.
Diana may, like many people, had some transitory mh issues, but she also had huge energy, self discipline in how she approached her work, was naturally very empathetic with the people she visited, and people forget that she was very loyal and discreet at the start of her marriage, until she found out at an incredibly young age that the whole thing had been a sham, and she was expected to pretend in public, and front of the world's media, that everything between her and Charles was fine. And her children were meant to collude in the lie too.
So she basically got burned by the establishment for not "going quietly".
I know she had affairs later on but I still think what was done to her at such a young age was very unjust. And any of us would have ended up paranoid had we been the subject of such constant and intrusive press coverage, not knowing which friends and colleagues we could trust, and the likes of Martin Bashir. It takes a strong person to withstand being followed, being sworn at by paparazzi and having cameras shoved in your face from dawn until dusk. Who wouldn't try and control the press narrative in those circumstances? And yet Diana is constantly called manipulative and not Charles, who actually paid a PR company £150,000 (if I remember correctly) to rehabilitate Camilla's image, and they did so by partially destroying Diana's.
The word "manipulative" seems to be used to describe women much more than it is men.
It almost seems fashionable to hate Diana nowadays but I was and remain a fan. She wasn't a saint. She had a massively dysfunctional upbringing for one thing. Her mother left the family home when she was eight, having married her (much older) father at eighteen and having had five children, one of whom (the baby between Diana and her brother Charles) died at 10 weeks. Her parents engaged in a bitter custody battle. Despite her privilege, Diana didn't have the most secure start in life. And she was basically subject to an arranged marriage at an extremely young age in order to produce an heir and a spare. The monarchy is ruthless when it comes to protecting its own existence.
So in answer to your qs op:
- The Queen and the RF would have been happy if Diana had been buried privately without any media spotlight, but it was obvious from the minute she died (at the time Diana was the most photographed woman in the world) that her funeral was going to have to be public, such was the sentiment from the public. So her funeral took place at Westminster Abbey. It was not a state funeral but was televised and Diana's coffin was draped in the royal standard. 2.5 billion people watched the ceremony worldwide.
- I don't know as the arrangements were private but I believe they had been on holiday together a week or so before she died.
- Yes, just as Charles reached out to Harry and Meghan in his first address, I think it would have been a gesture worthy of a king to mention Diana very briefly in his speech, perhaps in an oblique way as you suggest by saying "and William will become Prince of Wales and drawing on the good work of his mother etc etc". Yes I think that would have been a graceful thing to do and I was disappointed when he didn't.
And fwiw, I don't think anyone ordered Diana's assassination. She died in a car crash.