But it is simply not true that everything was done above board as normal. The Independent article speculates that this may have happened because Diana was indeed pregnant as the newspapers were reporting in the days before her death.
I have no idea if their speculation is true or not, but it would explain the discrepancies.
The speculation is true, but not the pregnancy.
The tabloids were speculating that Diana was pregnant, starting on 20 July 1997, because of this photo. It had been taken a few days before when Diana was staying at Mohammed Al Fayed’s St Tropez villa. The 36 year old mother-of-two Diana had a bloated tummy in her swimsuit. (🙄)
When the photo was taken Diana had met Dodi Al Fayed for the first time literally just days before - he had travelled down from Paris to St Tropez after spending Bastille Day - 14 July - with his fiancée in Paris. So, at most, she had known him for five days when this photo was published.
A visible pregnancy to Dodi at that stage was clearly physically impossible. And, given their relationship was not revealed by the Press until 6 August, there was no speculation of Dodi being the father. It was just misogynistic press stories.
The inquest established categorically that Diana was not pregnant at the time of her death. Because of Mohammed Al Fayed’s stubborn insistence on this, all her friends and medical practitioners were questioned at length about when she had her periods etc (🙄 again). Plus of course the post-mortem confirmed it.
Things weren’t done as normal because the unexpected death of the highest profile woman in the world, in Paris, when she was there under the radar (the British Embassy had no idea Diana was even in Paris, for example) was a completely abnormal event!
Edited to say the photo is in the next post…