Can I ask a question about Diana please?

[allmylifewheretheygo]

If Diana was alive now and divorced from Charles, I just wonder what effect it would with a monarch having an ex wife alive and well.

Would Camilla as Queen consort risk being overshadowed by her DH's ex wife?

Also, if Diana remarried what effect would that have on her royal status, would she move out of where she was living at Kensington Palace do you think?

The media is misogynistically unpleasant to ageing beauties who don’t go gracefully. I think Diana’s coverage would be likely to have become increasingly prurient, especially if she didn’t ‘settle down’ and liaisons with unsuitable or unavailable men, the cod-spirituality, the mad stuff like showing up to observe Hasnat Khan’s surgeries in glam makeup etc might have led to her being viewed as a joke as he looks faded.

I hope William and Harry don't allow her to be "faded", I don't think they will. She was truly remarkable and I've thought many times this last few days about when she died. This is as it should be for a Queen of 70 years, but the shock, anger and grief of that week must live forever with anyone who remembers it. It was almost frightening in its force, rightly or wrongly.

But she wouldn't have remained beautiful and charismatic, fairly obviously. She would have become one of those rather groomed upper class women with lots of make-up, struggling to keep the wrinkles and the craggy neck at bay.

By the time she died she was really getting quite unpopular with a lot of adverse press, particularly resulting from the changing relationships and the multiple holidays at other people's expense - it was quite funny in a way how the press did a screeching U-turn and made her into a saint as soon as she died. If she had ended up marrying someone like Hasnat Khan, she would unfortunately have born the brunt of the right-wing press's innate racism. At best they'd have got bored with her, at worst they'd have continued to spread gossip and begun to demonise her å la Meghan. So she really wouldn't be viewed as charismatic by now.

But it's not a term that was used for, for instance, Queen Mary or Queen Alexandra who simply carried on being known by their names. It seems incredibly unlikely that it would have been revived.

I don't think Charles would have felt able to Marry again with Diana still
Alive

@CPL593H I was deeply shocked, as were many of us at the time. I was young and absorbed in work and life and I don't know if I really processed it at the time. It's only years later that I feel sad about it. If I look at old footage I find myself wishing she was here still. I know she had her faults, but she never turned away from suffering, she was willing to engage from the heart, with simple human warmth, in a way I have never seen any other famous person do, including the Royals. I think you are right, that her son's will try to protect her memory.

Diana was always contentious but she loved that William was going to be King and she wouldn't have done anything to jeopardise that. She'd have married again, moved country and became a mix of Angelina Jolie (high profile causes and charity work) and Princess Margaret (host of renowned parties).
She knew the crown couldn't just skip to William so she would have bitten her tongue and seen King Charles as one step closer to having her son on the throne. She'd have taken a dim view of anything or anyone that tried to threaten that. She wouldn't have overshadowed Camilla and Charles because she understood the monarchy and the media.

Genius

@Novum

I haven’t grown up in the U.K. and in my home country she is really loved. I don’t know what her perception was here when she was alive but she was really loved and revered all over the world.

“But she wouldn't have remained beautiful and charismatic, fairly obviously”.
and why not! Why would her charisma be any less because she was older?

It is, indeed, unlikely as it's rather archaic but, like Diana, Margaret Beaufort was the only example I could think of where the King's mother hadn't previously been a Queen.

By the time she died she was really getting quite unpopular with a lot of adverse press

^ this, in a nutshell.

If she hadn't died she would never have been put on a pedestal, never become the 'people's princess' or had anything like the following she still has. The press would have carried on with their antics. She could never go anywhere without being hounded by them.

I don't think she was that popular at the point of her death though. The media was chasing her to get juicy gossip to bring her down rather than because she was special. She had an awful lot of bad press at the time, and was not dealing with it well.

I always felt that a good amount of the outpouring of grief was trying to mask the guilt that people felt after pouring over the gossip pages to find bad things about her, which was, after all, why she had died-fleeing from the press who were trying to get some pictures to "shock" their readers.

Death, as often happens, meant people forgot the bad and sainted her in their imaginations.

That’s not true. The title Queen Mother has been used a few times for a (dowager) Queen who is also the mother of the monarch.

The mother of a King could also be known as Queen Mother. Diana obviously wouldn’t be as she would never have been Queen - there are of course plenty of monarchs in history with mothers who were not Queens.

But it’s not correct to say the title was invented for the most recent Queen Mother, nor that the title would be ‘Kings Mother’ for a widowed Queen whose son is King.

I genuinely don’t think the boys would have been able to marry the women they have. Diana, in spite of everything, believed in the “firm” and her death changed the way they did a lot of things, including who people were allowed to marry. They saw how badly they did her wrong, and realised they could not make those mistakes again.

Charles and Diana were on friendly terms over the year before she died. She would have carried on with her charity work because she found it rewarding and, sadly, she would always have overshadowed Camilla. She just had that aura. I think Camilla would be probably happy to stay at home with her gin and fags and just do her charity work for which she gets very little credit.

I doubt that Doana would have kept making digs at Charles but she was such a mercurial character, you couldn't predict what would set her off.
Whether intentionally or not, she'd have been a thorn in his side, no doubt about it.

I suspect you're right, sadly.

One is HRH The Princess of Wales

The other is Diana, Princess of Wales. So no, not the same title. She was given her version alongside the divorce settlement and could keep it until any future remarriage.

Had she not divorced, and had Charles died in 1997, then at some point William would (or could) have become Prince of Wales, and then you'd have had two, HRH the dowager Princess of Wales (or couls that alternatively be HRH Diana, Princess of Wales?? ) plus HRH The Princess of Wales (wife of the current one

I think she would have remarried and be living somewhere hot and exotic giving not two shiny shites about Charles. Probably California sharing grandma duties with Doria.

Really?

Why is that so hard for you to believe? Beyonce is on Tiktok. I can imagine Diana would make videos on there if she was alive.

Precisely what Diana has in common with Beyoncé I fail to recognise.

Honestly, what adult woman of any calibre is doing on bloody twattok is beyond me.

I wonder if she’d have better hair or would she stuck in a hair rut?

Anyway…

I suspect she'd love the joke!

"My great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-great-grandfather, so how about it?"

I agree with PP who say Charles could not have married Camilla if Diana hadn’t died.

As he would become (and now is!) Head if the CofE he could only marry Camilla as he was a sort of widower rather than divorced. Til death do us part and all that. Am I right in thinking they had more of a civil ceremony with a blessing type thing? Guess that was partly optics and partly Camilla’s divorced status.

I imagine they’d have done all possible to get her to move abroad. Her royal status and any public role would have gone with re-marriage. She’d have been Lady Diana married name.

Hopefully she’d have ramped up her charity work and been happy. But everyone would have had to have moved on an awful lot for it not to have been awkward for Charles and Camilla.

A picture of her and Charles holding the boys as toddlers at highgrove popped up today on some feed today, and I did think it is so sad they are so estranged, I’d imagine it would have broken her heart.

*One is HRH The Princess of Wales

The other is Diana, Princess of Wales. So no, not the same title*

It is the same title. Katherine is as you say, HRH The Princess of Wales but she's not Princess Katherine. If her name is being used she's Katherine. Princess of Wales

Diana was never Princess Diana that was what the media etc called her

If she was still alive & Charles & Camilla hadn't married she'd have lost the PoW title when William was made Prince of Wales