Was Princess Diana really as saintly as Harry (in particular) and the media make her out to be?

[Nosleepforthismum]

Just curious really to hear from those that remember the news coverage from when she was alive. I was only a kid when she died but some of her behaviour i.e. the Martin Bashir interview seems a little … dare I say, twatty? Is it not a basic unwritten rule that when you have kids with someone and then you split/get divorced you don’t slag off the other parent? I find it an interesting decision that she did that interview despite knowing the global interest it would generate and seemingly not giving a damn about how it would impact her kids.

I remember all the Will Carling and Julia Carling stuff. It was reported that Diana may have had a part in breaking up their marriage. There was also all the stuff with Oliver Hoare who was also married. I think there were allegations at the time that Oliver and his wife were receiving a lot of strange phone calls in the middle of the night from Diana.

Of course not. She was well intentioned, vulnerable and flawed. No saint, but no worse than any of the others.

No, she wasn't saintly. She had good points and bad points.

She learned how to use the Press to her advantage. She learned that she could bring publicity to good causes. She learned how to look like a million dollars. She was a good dancer and she could have lovely fun.

She learned how to upstage and undermine Charles. According to J. Dimbleby's biography of Charles, she could be quite awkward about his arrangements to see the boys at weekends, changing her mind at the last minute and so on. Obviously I don't know how often this happened.

No-one on this earth really knows what went wrong in the marriage, probably not even Charles or Diana, if she were here. I often wonder if any divorced couple can really put a date/reason down. I think it's very complicated.

In any marriage both partners make vows. Here's a thought: just because one partner fails one of the vows doesn't mean that the other must do.

She made quite a lot of having to care about her boys, as if their Granny England wouldn't have enough in the housekeeping money to keep them in food or clothes.

She put the boot in on Charles in the Bashir interview by saying that she didn't think he'd ever be king. They both behaved in a bad way towards their sons with their TV interviews. Do you behave like that if you truly 'love' your children?
Should their children forgive them? Yes.

She came out with that schmaltzy old rubbish about wanting to be the 'Queen of People's Hearts'. Pass the sick bucket, Mabel.

She wrote nice letters to people she'd met and remembered.

She was a highly privileged, rather dim, border line psychiatric, manipulative, international clothes horse who seem unable to use the common sense she was born with.

Quite what she thought she was doing playing games with the paparazzi by messing about with some wastrel play boy is anybody's guess.

She wasn’t so saintly when it came to men either.

Chirac offered her his own presidential security but she climbed into a car, driven by a drunk at nearly 80 mph through a 30 city centre limit, without bothering with a seat belt.

Harry is dim as his mother and the jury are still out on both of them.

Never liked her. never bought into the hype about her looks (being tall, slim and blonde isn't eveything), and had no time for her playing the victim. She was still a mother though, and one who clearly loved her children. Of course Harry sees her in the best light, what motherless child wouldn't?

In my lifetime I think that the Queen is the only royal family member to escape any criticism of any kind (except when she wouldn't come back from Balmoral after Diana died)
I think that for many years there really wasn't that much interest in the Queen. The era which included the fire at Windsor was, I think, when she was thought least of, and then as she got older the nation seemed to grow to love her again as they had when she was a princess and a young queen.

I remember Diana as being an apparently loving mum (although it appeared that she leant heavily on William and may have offloaded onto him things that he was too young to hear), but very troubled in other areas of her life. She came from a dysfunctional family and married into another. She had numerous, well documented affairs. Although I think she was very good for the charities she supported, I'm not sure she was good for the royal family, any more than they were good for her.

What I found odd is the media reported Diana died from massive chest injuries, but harry specifically said it was a head injury that she died from.

which makes sense as she had no seat belt on, and we’ve all seen the adverts showing what happens.

but I can’t grasp why the reports say chest, and harry said head. I’d assume harry was correct. He’s hardly likely to get it wrong. The media reports said chest, with concussion, but harry is saying something very different.

What, in 1997? all those articles criticising her for having holidays back to back and not seeing her children for weeks that when she died were rapidly pulled in favour of ones describing her as a saint living among us?

I do know that for a lot of us in summer 1997 the world went collectively batshit and if you dared to dissent you risked actual physical violence. I recall as well a few articles in August 1998 saying 'what the hell happened came over us last year?'

Very 'early covid'

No she wasn't. She had multiple affairs which seems to be conveniently ignored whilst people vilify the King. She courted the press and tipped them off whenever she was going anywhere that provided a good photo op, remember how she was "such a good mum" for taking her kids to Thorpe Park? No the paparazzi shouldn't have chased her in such a dangerous manner that night but I bet you anything they'd been told where she was going to be - and where were they going at that time? They were at a hotel owned by the al-Fayeds. She used her pre-teen and teen son as a best friend and confidant. I believe she also framed him for the silent phone calls she made to the wife of one of her conquests.

She was a naive 19 year old girl with a wealthy yet very unstable background. She married a man 14 years older than her that was in love with someone else. She never stood a chance.

I don’t think she was saintly I think she was quite a messed up in many ways, which isn’t surprising given everything she had to endure form a very young age!

Her life was tragic and just as she was starting to get things back on track the worst happened.

She didn't stay a naive 19 year old girl, did she? she grew up and she learned fast. People forget that she was perfectly capable of manipulating the press for favourable coverage. She forgot what a double edged sword that is.

She was a lot like Harry I think, both went to an expensive school but not terribly bright, both came out with a nice speaking voice but no qualifications and little ambition career wise, and I I think both assumed that life would be mapped out and all fall into place without much effort .

I think her pigeons came home to roost early on in the marriage , she managed to get through it, but I sometimes wonder what her future would have held , would she have drifted from affair to affair until the GBP grew tired of her? I think it is interesting that Harry is at a similar stage of life, under forty with another forty or fifty years to mooch about doing sod all. It will be interesting to see what , or if, he manages to achieve with the rest of his life.

Of course she was not at all saintly; she was a very damaged woman.

She was much more beautiful, much better dressed, and a far better actress than her DIL. She possessed an amazing natural instinct to engage any audience and play it to the hilt. Even when we'd all seen her technique so often we knew she was shamelessly playing to camera, it was so compelling, you just couldn't take your eyes off her.

Nobody who ever saw it, will forget that photo of sad Diana alone at the Taj Mahal.
Diana lowering her eyes and saying softly on prime time TV "There were three people in this marriage, it was a bit crowded".
The Revenge Dress.

Yes, I remember this too. There was a lot of criticism of her for ‘partying all the time’ and not seeing her children much over the school holidays. Then it all disappeared.

I'm no RF watcher but I do remember liking Di a lot back in the day. She was spunky and obviously very charismatic.

She was probably the last 'dynastic sacrificial child bride' in a very messed-up, inhumane system (see the current Japanese RF for a point of comparison) and how she turned around to work for good with AIDS victims and against landmines was very courageous and admirable.

People calling her dim I think are wildly incorrect.

She of course did have affairs but didn't throw the first stone, Charles thought he could have a mistress and a subservient wife who wouldn't say boo and he called that wrong. I think it's unfair to criticise adultery when it's in response to adultery by the other spouse!

One interesting thing I found out randomly this week (Guardian link: www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jul/02/princess-diana-bodyguard-sequel-kevin-costner) is that there was a script for a feature film sequel to The Bodyguard that she was signed on to play the lead role in opposite Kevin Costner! It was all happening and only stopped because she died... Can't explain how wild that seems to me - but I'd definitely have paid to see it in a cinema if it had been made.

Also, my mum died young and I definitely deify her. I think it's normal when a child is grieving a parent who has died young.

I agree with this.

She was generally a good person but made some mistakes along the way. She loved her boys fiercely but it is also clear from accounts after her death that she relied on them emotionally. At 15 and 12 they were way to young for that.

I didn't think she was especially likeable or behaved well at the time. Affairs with married men, using the press when she wanted to, and she came across as a bit of knob to me-which isn't to say she wasn't treated horribly by Charles and obvs had her own MH issues. I didnt see much evidence of her having a Great deal of discretion over her personal life which would be fine except she had two boys who were exposed to it as much as to their Fathers behaviour-and none of that can have been great for them.
I never understood her beatification once died tbh.
Did she do much more charity work than any of the other royals etc? Idk.
It was horrible that she died and how she died but I don't think she was the saint she has since been made out to be.

No. She wasn't a saint, she could be pretty nasty herself, she told the press Sarah Duchess of York had veruccas for example.

She also by her own account put an unacceptable burden on her children, especially William, treating him as a friend and confidente rather than a child, exposing him to her own mental health issues and her own relationship issues.

She was basically given by her family at 19 to an older man who had no intention of ever being faithful to her. She behaved badly, but I would say with provocation.

Multiple non anonymous accounts from palace insiders (including her equerry/ private secretary) have detailed her violent rages inside the palace

and let's be blunt - she almost certainly wouldn't have died if she had put a seatbelt on.

She was not a bad person but neither was she a saint. Privileged upbringing but that had it own challenges. Maybe not the sharpest tool in the box but she meant well and seem to recall she and Fergie had some secret nights out in London (in disguise) I think.

She tried to manipulate the press into a battle with the RF, did not always go her way and could be seen to have led to her downfall. Harry is sort of following in her footsteps.

This is my recollection too. She loved to present herself as the best, most devoted mother in the world, but her kids were in full time boarding school from 11, and all the pictures of her cartwheeling on the beach etc, they were with their father/nannies most of the holidays so she had plenty of time for gym, free holidays, mad affairs - Will Carling, and that heart surgeon that she ended up stalking, I remember.

My parents got the daily fail, and the df were always cataloguing where she was and how many holidays she'd had during school holidays but without her boys - there were lots of judgy columnists.

I think the rf didn't really know what to do with her, and she didn't know what to do with herself, because no one ever expected them to divorce.

The most negative article I read after her death was about her will - that her godchildren got a single ornament each, and she didn't leave any money to charity.