The Princess - Sky Documentaries

[CheeseCakeSunflowers]

I have just started watching this, I was very close to Diana in age and followed her story throughout the 80's and 90's. I have only reached the wedding so far but it is reminding me of the fairy tale I, along with so many others thought we were watching. Now I find myself shouting at the TV, don't do it, and to Charles, go and find Camilla. I feel sorry for both of them. Anyone else watching?

Diana has became a falsely worshiped icon. Flawed and much derided at the time
However in death has acquired a devotion and fawning worship in a revision of events

Which bits of the documentary did you think we're a revision of events. I have finished watching it now and I thought the choice of clips, many of which were not so well known, told the story much as I remember it.

I saw it in the cinema and thought it was cleverly done. It made me feel sad. Some of the clips weren’t well known. But the story and narrative was the same.

Diana has became a falsely worshiped icon. Flawed and much derided at the time
However in death has acquired a devotion and fawning worship in a revision of events

I disagree. I think people, especially those of us who were the same age as her or slightly younger, and followed events in her life as they happened, still remember her with huge affection precisely because she was not perfect and she was flawed. She struggled with life and the challenges that were thrown at her and yet had huge energy, warmth, natural charisma and intuition and was extremely good at her charity work.

Her personal staff have since written that she was highly organised, quite disciplined in fact about the way she conducted her life, and she was naturally happy, not the angst ridden unstable person that Charles and his friends would have us believe. I think people embraced her faults and also responded to the huge injustice that was done to her when she was nineteen.

She’s falsely revered and her persona and narrative has been reinvented
she gave up her patronage of a number of charities and was criticised for doing so
The relationship with Dodi Fayed was unpopular and criticised at the time
in death she’s been elevated to a revered and iconic status

I think the "don't speak ill of the dead" idea is something we humans do with both celebrities and people we know personally so although there is an element of that with Diana I don't think it's any more than many others. She had her fans and her critics in life and she still has today.
I do remember the night before she died one of the tabloid newspapers had some TV ads for the Diana and Dodi story it was running in that weeks Sunday paper, I think it may have been The news of the World, I remember saying to DH I don't think that relationship is going to last, probably only a couple of hours before the accident. It was too late for the newspaper to stop the critical story going out and by the time the news broke they ended up looking bad for publishing the story on the day the country heard she had died.

@Zone2NorthLondon do you remember events at the time or are you younger?

I haven't encountered anyone pro or anti Diana who thought she wasn't without flaws.

Regardless of whether you liked her or not (and let's be honest, none of us 'knew' her) you can't deny the huge amount of gaslighting that poor woman endured.

Tbh I think the huge response to her death was in part due to the fact that people felt guilty about the way she had been treated in the papers and vilified in the press. She was at the time the most photographed woman in the world who was always there, and then, all of a sudden, she wasn’t. It was sad and shocking but I don’t think she was falsely revered at all; all of her faults had been scrutinised and laid out in detail in public endlessly. People felt for her sons and for a full life cut short.

Yes. Photographers used to shout obscenities so she would look up all shocked and they would say 'another photo of miserable Diana'. They were total bastards to her. One photo made them a huge sum.

I watched it yesterday, I thought it was really well done.

Interesting to see how a woman said " Look after the boys" and Philip snapped "We have been!" There was always that narrative that it was only Dian who cares about them and suddenly they were on their own.