Thoughts on Prince William's speech?

[Aspiringmatriarch]

I've been musing on this, I'm not sure I agree with the idea that the Bashir interview created a 'false narrative'. Obviously Diana was lied to, which is appalling, and I'm sure that fueled some of her paranoia but isn't it true that she was spied on at times e.g. with the squidgygate tapes? And she'd already collaborated with Andrew Morton saying many of the same things, and apparently wanted to do an interview after Charles gave his.

I don't know... it just feels odd to me that William is essentially asking for it to be struck from the record. He was apparently angry with her after the Bashir interview and was teased about it at school, which must have been horrible. Is he trying to protect her memory or is there an element of trying to tidy it all away?

If that's the case, does that mean it's OK if William has affairs too?!

I don't really agree, Diana was a young woman and her life was destroyed by the fact he never really loved her. I am not a huge Diana fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I do think Charles behaved abominably.
And of course there hasn't been a ripple since, there daren't be given he's married to the woman he was having an affair with.

“Right now the Palace and the press are happy to promote the narrative that Kate's the perfect princess who's never put a foot wrong, “

Yes, we’ve airbrushed out the incidents of her flashing her bare arse “accidentally” when getting in and out of helicopters.

[quote Nishky]@Skiptheheartsandflowers I raised my eyebrows at the ‘unquestionably honest’ comment - when she recorded tapes for Andrew Morton she failed to mention her own affair[/quote]
Which affair? Apparently there was a revolving door to her Kensington Palace apartment. She was no angel. She didn’t care about Will Carling’s marriage when she slept with him.

How do we know he never really loved her, there are some informal photos of their early marriage that show lots of affection

@Blossomtoes I said affair because I can’t recall the timing of the tapes and whether it was just James Hewitt at that stage!

Did she have an affair before charles though? I thought he had one even when they were first married.

The facts are blurred as hell and quite frankly if they were any other family it would be considered none of our business

William has been hurt by this massively so, potentially more than Harry as she was using William as her confidant at one point normal stable parents do not do this me and my husband divorced you don't catch me discussing it with my 12 year old the ins and outs of it all yes ive had to explain a couple of things to him but he is protected by me not confided in

You are correct Nishky, nobody knows anything really. But I suppose I'm thinking that carrying on a friendship with your ex girlfriend and the bracelet thing days before the marriage, means your heart isn't really in it perhaps.

It's the response to his speech that I find interesting. There's a concerted effort by some factions to ignore history and replace it with a Netflix view of Charles and Diana. So everything is rewritten to imply Diana was an innocent ingenue and Diana's own words; the views of her family and friends at the time - are somehow considered less worthwhile than the views of randoms on Twitter and social media.
Not to mention the constant attempts to undermine Prince William; Charles and Camilla. It's all starting to look quite calculated. It begs the question which outside forces are throwing all this money at destabilising the monarchy because the UK republicans aren't that organised and the IP addresses aren't UK ones.

Neither diana or Charles behaved well. But she was very young when they married and he treated her bady, I don't think anyone can disagree with that.
I think both her sons will have been badly affected by it all. Most likely they will have different memorys, that is normal with siblings.

@ohforarainyday I must say that you have written the best piece about the RF. I agree with every word. If only the media were able to express themselves as well as you do.

It begs the question which outside forces are throwing all this money at destabilising the monarchy

Amazing timing these past couple of weeks, all things considered.

Right now the Palace and the press are happy to promote the narrative that Kate's the perfect princess who's never put a foot wrong

Very true, but then given the mess so many of the others have made I'm not sure they have much choice - they need to have someone to burnish their image and W&K are probably the safest bet
Which, as I've said before, possibly helps to explain their relative lack of work; it seems they can have and do whatever they want just so long as they keep the show on the road

I agree, though, that if things ever went wrong she'd be thrown to the wolves just like the rest

Whatever Bashir did, Diana's own written letter makes clear she was not manipulated into it

That letter was dodgy to say the least.

Agree with this - it doesn't come across as a genuine or professional way for such an established organisation BBC to seek a disclaimer, rather amateur in fact. Maybe at the time MB thought this was enough to cover him in future.

I agree, though, that if things ever went wrong she'd be thrown to the wolves just like the rest

Yes, and this is what worries me with Kate. Who knows if she's really happy or not? I hope so, but she must be well aware that things will not go well for her if she ever wanted to leave.

Charles' interview (1994) was in response to the publication of Diana's book by Andrew Morton (1992).
Diana then responded with her interview (1995).
I think she would still have given her interview to, maybe, another reporter, but her interview may have been a bit more 'measured', instead of lambasting Charles with a vengeance, and saying he should never be King, etc.
She was clearly out for revenge, and if she thought all her aides, secretaries, drivers, prtotection officers were all spying on her, then clearly, this would have a different tone.
Their last tour together before they separated was obviously an ordeal!
But this last interview was the last straw for the Queen, who then asked them to formalise their separation (ie Divorce). The Queen obviously did not want them to keep sniping at each other.

It's easy to blame Charles' affair with Camilla and obviously that was a major factor but I think people forget how young and innocent Diana was when she married into the RF and the HUGE pressures associated with that. I have a twenty year old daughter, just as innocent and unworldly as Diana - her gap year and going to uni scuppered by coronavirus, so she's been at home, with a good job thankfully, but not a sniff of a boyfriend, she's pretty much equivalent to Diana (not aristocracy though ) I can't imagine her marrying a man of 32 and taking on that role, all the public duties, learning to make speeches, the massive crowds and barrages of cameras, being in the public eye at all times. I doubt she'd last a week tbh.
So that probably contributed to Diana's bulimia and other problems and Charles wasn't up to the job of looking after her. I've often thought if he'd just paid her regular compliments and given her more attention, and if she'd been able to more or less be a SAHM for the early years, things may have panned out differently.

Yes, Diana was 19 when they got engaged, she turned 20 a few weeks before their wedding and had her first child less than a year later.

Charles was actually quite ick doing that when he was in his 30s. Diana's mum was only 18 when she married Earl Spencer and became his brood mare.

Then Diana's brother allegedly treated the mother of his 4 children badly when they were married.

Diana really had some awful men in her life.

[quote Roussette]@Blossomtoes

See?! We can agree!

There is always common ground somewhere! 😂

This is an interesting discussion and I, too, wonder what the RF would be like if Diana had lived. She had such an enormous impact on them during her lifetime and that would've no doubt continued.[/quote]
Honestly, I think she had more impact on the RF by dying than by continuing to live. If she’d lived on, having relationships with dubious playboys like Dodi Fayed and the like, or married men like James Hewitt or Barry Mannakee, or moved to Pakistan and married Hasnat Khan, and got old and flawed and ordinary, I think her impact would have lessened considerably. As it was she died young, beautiful, in shocking circumstances, leaving young children, and remains an icon and a figure that commands huge popular affection.

Will somebody please join me in noting that the RF should not nab the right to rewrite their history as they see fit. Let them complain about the interview as much as they like but removing it from the record, as with the earlier RF at home film, is not on. Let it stand.

@longwayoff
So agree with you
It is what it is. No one can pretend it didn't happen

I think it takes the emphasis off the news, makes them still look relevant as a lot would see them gone.
Good PR i'd say.

@Aspiringmatriarch I think Kate is a completely different woman with a completely different support system. She dates William for an age before marrying him. She has a solid family who support her. Even if William was shagging half of the Turnips I don't think Kate would make a show of herself in an interview. She'd never put her kids through that. Diana chose her own need to air her side over the well being of her sons. If Kate ever did divorce William I think she'd pull a Katie Holmes and she'd be lawyered to the teeth with a watertight plan.

@longwayoff I agree. That's what doesn't sit right with me from William's speech. I'm totally sympathetic with his perspective in terms of how horrible it was to deceive Diana, but he went several steps further than I think is justified. I don't know, I just see an agenda there, but maybe I'm cynical.

It begs the question which outside forces are throwing all this money at destabilising the monarchy

I really don't agree with that, and it feels weirdly conspiracy theory-esque to suggest that anyone who doesn't care for William or Charles must be a paid foreign bot. It comes up on Mumsnet constantly, even with posters who have been frequent posters here for years - say anything slightly critical of Charles or William, and you're immediately accused of being a foreign bot or a PR plant working for Meghan Markle. It just comes across as troll hunting and it actually makes me question the motives of the posters determined to shut down any criticism of the RF.

Because the RF are their own worse enemy. All that money for PR and they're totally rubbish at it. They fail on PR every time, no matter how many expensive crisis managers they bring in.

Meghan Markle could have been an amazing ally for the RF - she's clearly hugely ambitious and hard working and the first biracial major royal would have been great PR in across the Commonwealth. No she was never going to be Kate, but they could have utilized her ambition to be mutually beneficial. Instead they attacked and smeared her, and not only drove both of them away but gave them material to weaponise for their own purposes.

The whole thing with Jason Knauf, Melissa Touabti and Christian Jones's partner giving/selling stories to the press: sheer amateur hour, and places the RF and especially the Cambridges in a dangerous position. Fortunately the British media don't care (at least not right now), but there's already plenty of evidence of corruption and who knows what other dodginess has been hidden. Who knows what will come out in decades to come?

Ditto Diana. The RF were so threatened that the Crown would dredge up the past they decided to go on the attack, but being so aggressive in basically launching a media smear campaign against Netflix drew far more attention and made it look like they had something to hide. If the RF had simply ignored the Crown, no one would have cared.

Same with the Bashir thing. Stop dredging up the past! Issuing video statements calling your mum "paranoid" and demanding that your own mother's words and opinions be essentially censored and ignored (especially when Diana made so clear that she'd felt voiceless and she fought so hard to give her side). A simple written statement saying they decry Bashir's actions would have been plenty, without dragging Diana's mental health back into public consciousness because these statements do the opposite of what's intended.

God even the little things are PR failures. Charles and William both responding to the Oprah interview by instantly going out and doing a photo call with a black person was widely criticised by both the black community here in the UK, and internationally, as an obvious PR stunt.

Even really positive good things like the video announcing Kate's involvement with the Book Fairies wound up being inept in its delivery. They literally have an on-staff videographer, it would have been the easiest thing on earth to make a polished little 30-second video, nicely edited, with Kate introducing Book Fairies to camera, intercut with footage of her hiding the book. That's really the least you expect for branded video content. Instead they threw out some 8-second clip of Kate just awkwardly putting a book down outside her house without looking at the camera, which wasn't even edited and looked like someone handed your nan an iPhone 4. William's video giving out cookies for Anzac Day was similarly inept and basic. You're the future King and Queen - why are you releasing videos that are so amateurish they make the average 12yr old TikTokker look like Steven Spielberg? (Not a criticism of Will and Kate, but of the KP press office who clearly couldn't be arsed to do more than the absolute bare minimum.)

Gosh being a publicist for the RF must be the cushiest gig in the world.