C5 Documentary: Harry and Meghan, Rise and Fall

[IsoldeWagner]

Anyone watching this? It's on My5. I thought the first episode was interesting. I was reminded of how popular they were and how much support they got.

No - I remember the Sloan Ranger days very well - and I know exactly what a group of upper class girls sharing a flat in London in those days would be up to - to be fair in many ways a lot more innocent times than now with the internet and social media etc - but these were grown up young women having fun in London and the home counties. Not sheltered teenagers.

You’ve bought into the manufactured press myth of Diana - compounded by the ridiculous portrayal of her in The Crown.

Are you American? London public (as in private school in UK terms) school girls are notorious - Diana may have been sweet natured but she wasn’t sheltered, not by any means, especially with her family background and her parents’ disastrous marriage.

I am hyper critical of H and M but wondering what are people’s opinions of James O Brien claims H and M should be admired for standing up to the press?

https://x.com/qiyyah18/status/1825891436509675574?s=61&t=JdkndO417wUfB5xJiVIJww

@wordler I am British. You really think most Sloane Rangers sharing a flat with friends would not have had a single date? Or would you agree that would be unusual?
There are always differences in populations. For example for every university student partying, there are others living a more sedate life.

Not all upper class girls of that age behave the same way.

@GorgeousTulips Exactly! Diana had never had a date before Charles.

OMG I am sure KC wants to have a relationship with his son and grandchildren, but his son and DIL are preventing that!!

Wise up!!

And she was paranoid, because of the shit she was being fed!!

I see some people believe the Crown version and not the actual truth. I knew a couple of Sloane rangers. What I did at university pales compared to them!

No, but they all socialise at the same events and parties so they see how everyone else is behaving - including their own families.

They know what is what, and what is the norm, and what is going on with everyone else.

Just because you haven't had sex doesn't mean you are some naive innocent.

If you have ever been to social events in the season you will know that you don't need to be 'dating' to have experiences and to see everyone else having experiences.

There are multiple parties and events during the season where everyone is drinking, doing drugs and having an amazing time. It's not 'dating' so it 'doesn't count' but you are very naive if you don't think that a 19 year old doesn't have a lot of experience even if just visual and on the sidelines - for god's sake a 15/16 year old in those circles knows what is what.

Come on - you don't actually believe that a woman who had grown up in the aristocracy and had been around her relatives and closest friends meeting up for sporting events, hunts, parties, house parties, skiing holidays, boarding school, etc etc didn't have a very good grasp of real life and what was happening simply because the current 'legend' says she hadn't had a date?

It's complete propaganda to buy into the weird press/Crown TV show story about Diana.

Some people believe "The Crown" is a documentary, don't they?

I think she was a very sheltered girl who was emotionally damaged with rather naive ideas about life, yes. This was late seventies early eighties. No internet, different times. I don’t know why you assume that there were a lot of drugs either .

Some people believe the earth is flat so, yes, they probably do

The flat earthers beliefs are not pertinent to this current discussion. The Crown content is.

🤣

lol - you really don’t know that social circle!

@wordler - I agree with you! Diana was no academic, but she was very canny. She knew the score.

The C5 documentary - I didn't glue myself to every moment of it. It was on and I was pottering about, hearing a lot of it and sometimes watching for a few minutes. To say what I really think of it I would want to see it again.

One of the things which I remember is something that is not usually mentioned but it was on this programme. After H and M came back from SA there was an announcement. I don't know how long after. In the autumn we were told that they were having a break and they were going to the USA for about 6 weeks. (Now, that was mentioned by C5.) I thought fair enough, they're a bit weary, M is from the USA, Doria is there, good idea to go and see her. I wasn't on SM or reading a newspaper regularly.

Was there a further announcement that they weren't coming back for Christmas here? Whatever, I remember thinking that it was a good thing if they spent one Christmas here and the next there, alternating. Yes, there was the Sandringham summit but I think H came after Christmas for that. On the surface, to me, without reading and hearing every opinion on it all, it seemed not all that dramatic, but a great deal was going on under the surface, and it all turned out that it was a bit dramatic after all.

Agree. I think it is very unfair to Diana to see her as a one dimensional ingenue. She was a complex woman who was capable of behaving badly (eg affairs with other people’s husbands) but who also had genuine compassion. She was also a strong supporter of the monarchy and would have been appalled at Harry and his antics

She was not the fictional figure portrayed in The Crown either

What's that phrase I read about Diana?.
"She was an aristocrat to her fingertips".
The aristocracy understand the deal, from being very young. She was also a monarchist. She would not have supported anything which undermined William's future.

Oh dear

The War of the Waleses was an almost entirely one-sided war. Waged by a BBC employee who wanted the scoop of a generation.

Diana believed she was being briefed against because of Bashir
As PW says, that belief made everything so much worse during the divorce.

It has now been found in Court to be false, and deliberate manipulation. To an utter staggering extent (won't repeat them here, because some third parties have won considerable damages because Bashir used their names in the fabrications, but easily found on google)

Yes, it took in a lot of people, including the press, because everyone wanted to believe Diana. And look like they were "in the know"

No-one can point to any articles which hint at Diana as a "crazy wife" that are meant to have come from the Palace. The source for everything that suggests she had MH issues (potentially beyond unhappiness) are her own words, in the manipulated interview and the book written around the same time.

Charles always spoke of Diana with respect - no-one has been able to show otherwise.

So this smear moves on to "well everyone knew there was private briefing" - and the answer to that is, no we don't. We know Bashir fabricated it.

And no-one can point to anything in addition to that.

I don't think the full extent of what Bashir did is properly taken in to account.

I very much agree that Diana would be horrified by H&M's antics and particularly their effect on William, both as her son and as the next King.

@WinnieTheW0rm excellent points.
Of course Earl Spencer and William believe that wretched Panorama interview should be shelved. Talk about manipulating a woman! Awful.

Yes

The article is from 20 years after his death, and 12 years after his remarriage (so not leaked as part of what the tabloids liked to call the "war" of the Waleses).

It states that the correspondence found she was not the "crazy wife" as she had no MH issues, rather deep unhappiness.

So it's quite the opposite of evidence of a "crazy wife" campaign.

It is however also evidence that the RF takes MH issues seriously, does not brush them under the carpet, and seeks medical input.

Immedately after the Bashir interview went to air one of Prince Charles' people was intervied (I think on the BBC?) and said something like, You do realise that Diana is crazy, or words to that effect.
I think, given the timing, and given that nothing similar was ever said again, it's clear that Charles hadn't approved this being said and didn't allow anyone working from him to talk about Diana like this again.
Diana herself is the only person who spoke publically about behaviour that is symptomatic of mental illness: self harming, purging. I think she struggled with alot of demons at the same time as being a conduit of warmth and acceptance for the hundreds of strangers she was able to form empathic bonds with in her work.

I also think one of the big cultural changes that has happened since the early 1980s is that aristocratic women who wanted to keep marriage to the future king on the cards were unashamedly and very publically chaste!