Diana and Charles Questions

[AdoraLovesCake]

So this is not a AIBU but it's an ATBU for are THEY being unreasonable.

I have seen a lot of you tube shorts marking the 25 year death of Lady Diana Spencer/the princess. They say she was a devoted mum and participated in the boys' school events, gave them macdonald's ect. Was a lovely, normal mum. I don't dispute that. Even though she died just before I was born so i hardly know anything about her, i think she is amazing and did not deserve to die. That brings me on to how some people said she wrote in her diary that she thought Charles was planning to kill her (staging an accident) so he could marry Camilla and that she knew something was wrong with the brakes in her car. For any of you who don't know, she died in a car accident in Paris on August 31rd 1997.

She was the people's princess and adored by all, she was one of us as her children went to public schools, she dressed casual. ect.

I also have some questions:

• Where was Diana buried, I know she had a state funeral thing?
• Did Diana see her kids much after the divorce?
• If Diana was alive now, what would her position be?
• Charles did not mention Diana in his becoming king speech - he could have said 'And the boys' mother who taught them so much' or something - do you think he should have?

YABU: They are being unreasonable and Charles did not order Diana's murder
YANBU: They are not being unreasonable and Charles did order Diana's murder

She had a sizeable monetary settlement, plus the right to live in part of Kensington Palace - it's got different apartments within it. She couldn't have sold Kensington, but she could easily have bought somewhere else.

She wasn't living in a house on a street with the press looking through the windows, and she wasn't penniless and dependent on her brother. If she wanted a quiet bolt hole she could have bought one easily.

Of course it could never be normal but it did seem she was determined to not do the distant stiff upper lip royal parenting that Charles experienced.

Anyway they should've never married eachother, she was so young!. And he was always in love with someone else. It's really quite sad

It was sad, she was in love with him at first or at least her idea of him, he was a romantic fairytale Prince Charming to her.

Yeah,it really is.

I don't think anyone would deny that she adored her children and tried her best to give them a vaguely normal childhood

How is going on national TV to trash your kids’ father and discuss your respective extra marital affairs giving your kids a “vaguely normal childhood”? I don’t doubt that she loved those kids, but she did very little to protect them from the psychodrama she created. I think the time they had at Eton was probably the closest thing they got to a “normal” life.

In terms of the conspiracy theories about Harry's dad ... just do a Google image search for "Prince Harry Prince Philip" to see how much Harry looks like his paternal grandad when he was young!

strawberrykat · Today 07:14
I was 15 when she died. I remember all the awful press coverage of her before her death and I can see why her boys were so angry at the press and why they are so protective of their families. I think Harry looks far more like Charles now than William.

strawberrykat - yes, there's so much rubbish about Harry being the son of the dashing, red-headed cad, James Hewitt. But as many people have pointed out, the dates don't fit!

I remember watching the Spencer family (Diana's relations) in a recording of her wedding and it struck me that basically, Harry is a Spencer. He's got the colouring (both Diana's sisters are red-heads) and the facial resemblance. Look up Earl Spencer (her father and also the current one, her brother) and her sisters, lady Sarah Fellowes and Lady (can't remember her first name) McCorqodale. Mystery solved, I think!

Agree with other posters that Diana did many good things but was a damaged person and could be horrible as well as saintly. Had form for totally cutting friends for perceived slights and was very prone to jealousy with very little basis in fact. I think both she and Charles were victims of their circumstances to a large extent.

There's a theory that Diana's real love-of-her life wasn't the sleazy Dodi (yuk) but a prominent heart surgeon, Hasmet Khan. But he didn't want to marry her - he could see that would be a nightmare, I think - and she went off with Dodi on the rebound. Before Diana died, she had made an enigmatic statement that 'The next thing I do is going to surprise everyone.' It's just my theory that what she was going to do was to convert to Islam, as her close friend Jemima Khan had done when she married Imran. I think she wanted to show commitment to Hasmet in order to make him reconsider. Just my theory!!

I agree. She seemed far more beautiful than she actually was because of her charm and glamour. This isn’t an isolated phenomenon, eg Marilyn Monroe. Diana wasn’t more attractive than Catherine imo. Both attractive women. Camilla was also beautiful in her time. I am sure some will disagree and I think she still is actually. Her beauty is part of her grace and kindness.

I too suggest Wikipedia as it has a lot of the info you wanted.

Diana had two older sisters and a younger brother. Also a stillborn brother born before her. Her mother was under a lot of pressure to produce a son and heir and Diana's birth was a great disappointment apparently. Not the best start in life despite her wealth. Her parents had a messy divorce when she was still young (her mother left the family which was usual in the aristocracy as the father would just hire nannies etc) and both remarried.

She is buried on an island surrounded by a lake in the grounds of Althorp, her ancestral home. There were rumours that in fact she isn't buried there as the ground is too marshy and she is actually buried in the vault of Althorp Church in the village but this was kept quiet to avoid it becoming a pilgrimage place for Diana fans. Some brick and stonework was carried out there the week of her funeral but no idea if any truth in the rumour.

She didn't have a state funeral but it was a very grand/public ceremonial one in Westminster Abbey - televised live. I have to say until I watched the queen's funeral this week I wouldn't have known the difference between state v ceremonial.

As another poster has said her position/ title on divorce was amended to Diana Princess of Wales (not HRH). I imagine she would have retained that for the rest of her life unless she remarried. Then she would have reverted to Lady Diana (her born title). It would have been quite awkward for Charles to remarry if Diana was still alive as there would technically have been two Princesses of Wales, even though Camilla never used the title. They (charles and camilla) had to have a civil wedding ceremony because the official position of the church of England is not to marry parties who still have a living former spouse. By that time Diana was conveniently deceased but Camilla's former husband was (and still is) alive. Otherwise they could have had a full church ceremony despite their earlier divorces.

If Diana had lived I don't think she would have remained as iconic. The tragedy of dying young and suddenly helped retain that image. I think she may have remarried, possibly had more children and possibly moved abroad once public interest in her waned. It would have been nice to see her in a happy marriage. She and Charles barely knew each other and were never compatible. She was chosen for him because she ticked all the right boxes including never having a boyfriend, being a titled lady etc.

By all accounts she was a warm affectionate and fun mother but she did spend a lot of time away from her kids. They went to boarding school and she travelled a lot (sometimes with them but more often without). That's not to say she wasn't a good mother but the lives of the aristocracy are so different to ours. She definitely wasn't "one of us". Yes she wore casual clothes when off duty but so do all the royals. They weren't from Primark though!

I would have been very surprised if Charles had mentioned her in his speech. Most people would not have considered it appropriate. Talking about the love and pride he has for his sons was as close as it got.

I don't agree she was universally adored and admired. She wasn't perfect (who is?) and many people thought her courting the press and "Queen of your hearts" stuff was cringey and manipulative. She was not very bright (which she freely admitted) and traded on her looks and touch-feely compassion. Many people absolutely loved that though. Again I wonder if she would have reduced in popularity as her youth and beauty faded.

I don't think she was murdered. It was quite convenient but they were already divorced. It would have made more sense to bump her off earlier and avoid the public separation and divorce. She was already "out" of the family and doing her own thing. If she had been murdered it would have been done much more discreetly, not with the three potential witnesses plus a pack of press in hot pursuit. The driver was drunk and speeding and only one person was wearing a seat belt (who survived). A horrible accident.

This is the best summing up re Princess Diana I've ever read. Bravo 👏 👏

Yes, wasn't a theory though iirc, I think everyone knew she was with the heart surgeon. I agree about converting. She'd already covered to Catholic (Catholicism?) hadn't she?

That's why I said she 'tried her best' to give them a 'vaguely' normal childhood.

But at the end of the day she was an unhappy young woman from a dysfunctional family who had entered into a disastrous marriage at a very young age. She was never going to be able to provide a normal and stable childhood for her children but she did make sure to show them more open affection than was usual in the Royal Family at that time.

The RF didn't need to do away with Diana, she was doing a perfectly good job of trashing her reputation with all the affairs with married men and unsavoury men.

Her death turned her into 'Saint Diana'. Had she survived the car crash the tabloids would still be revelling in slagging her off rather than portraying her as the people's princess.

She was never going to be able to provide a normal and stable childhood for her children but she did make sure to show them more open affection than was usual in the Royal Family at that time.

She showed more open affection in front of the cameras, maybe because she didn’t feel as constrained by Royal protocol. We have no idea - none - about the affection shown behind closed doors in a family context.

The media interest clearly wasn’t in her control. But she really whipped it up to get one over on Charles - seemingly without any thought for how awful that would be for her kids, old enough to read about it and caught right in the middle.

Given that Paul Merton on Have I Got News For You referred to her constantly as “the overblown tart”, claims she was universally adored are a nonsense.

She was more popular overseas than here. She did some good stuff and some awful stuff, and like many I couldn’t be arsed with her.

It was dying young, leaving those poor boys, that rehabilitated her reputation. She was making herself pretty unpopular in the mid 90s.

As the Hamilton lyrics go:
”all she had to do was die - that’s a lot less work; we ought to give it a try”

Why does anyone think that Harry would be anything other than he is? He's a child from a seriously dysfunctional family with parents from seriously dysfunctional families. His parents were awful role models who lived out their sordid affairs in the public eye. He is just as entitled as they were to have his say on what he went through and how it affected him. And he has been vocal about it since he was a teenager, his narrative is not new or since Meghan.

How Charles can judge him when he went on national TV and did exactly the same is hypocritical and controlling. As for public opinion, it's worth squat because we know exactly zilch about what did or didn't happen or what was said to or by anyone. Harry isn't slating the royals, he's slating his family who, in his eyes, let him down.

But everyone makes mistakes, rifts can be healed for some or permanent for others. A bit of distance between them all might be useful.

If someone came on here and told his story he would be told to go no contact and to work through his issues as he sees fit because it's not up to others to decide what he does.

thanks all

Thank you for this post.

Some of the hatred on this thread is shocking, particularly in relation to mental health. I doubt many 19-year-olds could cope with the scrutiny Diana faced when she entered her sham marriage and afterwards. I'm surprised she didn't have a full breakdown tbh. I would have done.

Sorry my post was in response to this one.

@nokidshere You make an interesting point, and we don't know which way William would have gone had he not been 'adopted' into a seemingly very stable, loving, supportive and discreet family in the Middletons while he was still at University. I don't doubt that they've been his port in many storms.

The one thing which might have made a difference to Harry is that he'd have had a different education. He wasn't intended to go to Eton but when Diana died they thought it was better to keep him with William. He supposedly didn't like it at all.

I think the Middletons have been the royal family's greatest asset in recent years. They have produced a grounded daughter and remained involved and supportive throughout her marriage. They have also shown William what a normal loving family looks like and he has recreated that with Kate. I think she's been a stabling influence in a family beset with problems.

Absolutely not! If there had been a plan to kill her does anypone think that it would have happened in a foreign country where jurisdiction was with the local police? Fayed, father of Dodi, started to scream this from the outset because it was his son who placed her in danger, she had also dumped the security provided by the RF and got into a car without wearing a seat belt, even when a high speed chase ensued. It was a very sad set of circumstances all round, the whole marriage, it should never have happened, there was too much pressure placed on Charles to marry a naice girl. He should have been allowed to marry Camilla, she may have had a 'past' but so did he! I honestly think that the late Queen Mother interferred in that and she was also the reason why primogeniture wasn't changed before William's birth.

Diana isn't some virtuous woman where "we" all lament her loss.
She was manipulative and an overwhelming whirlwind of emotions.
She courted the press and would let them know where she would be etc for a photographic opportunity, then in the next breath claimed she was hounded.
Far less "Shy Di" for me she was Fly Di meaning she was calculating.
She definitely didn't deserve to lose her life this way and she did love her boys even though she hadn't seen then for almost a month before her death.
Charles should not have mentioned her in his speech, I believe he is married to the love of his life now and the past should be left in the past.

It was dying young, leaving those poor boys, that rehabilitated her reputation. She was making herself pretty unpopular in the mid 90s.

So true! The Sunday papers were all very quickly rewritten after her death, must have been hell in the newsrooms! The following week Private Eye got hold of all the original newspapers and they had been very critical of her.