Diana, princess of Wales

Diana, princess of Wales, commonly called Princess Diana, original name Diana Frances
Spencer, (born July 1, 1961, Sandringham, Norfolk, England—died August 31, 1997, Paris,
France), former consort (1981–96) of Charles, prince of Wales (later Charles III); mother of
the heir apparent to the British throne, Prince William (born 1982); and one of the foremost
celebrities of her day.

Early life and education

Diana was born at Park House, the home that her parents rented on Queen Elizabeth II’s
estate at Sandringham and where Diana’s childhood playmates were the queen’s younger
sons, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward. As the third child and youngest daughter
of Edward John Spencer, Viscount Althorp, heir to the 7th Earl Spencer, and his first
wife, Frances Ruth Burke Roche (daughter of the 4th Baron Fermoy), she was part of British
nobility. Her parents’ troubled marriage ended in divorce when Diana was a child, and she,
along with her brother and two sisters, remained with her father. She became Lady Diana
Spencer when her father succeeded to the earldom in 1975. Riddlesworth Hall
(near Thetford, Norfolk) and West Heath School (Sevenoaks, Kent) provided the young
Diana’s schooling. After attending the finishing school of Chateau d’Oex
at Montreux, Switzerland, Diana returned to England and became a kindergarten assistant at
the fashionable Young England school in Pimlico.

Marriage and divorce

She renewed her contacts with the royal family, and her friendship with Charles grew in
1980. On February 24, 1981, their engagement was announced, and her beauty and shy
demeanour—which earned her the nickname “Shy Di”—made her an instant sensation with
the media and the public. The couple married in St. Paul’s Cathedral on July 29, 1981, in a
globally televised ceremony watched by an audience numbering in the hundreds of millions.
Their first child, Prince William Arthur Philip Louis of Wales, was born on June 21, 1982, and
their second, Prince Henry (“Harry”) Charles Albert David, on September 15, 1984.

“Princess Di” rapidly evolved into an icon of grace, elegance, and glamour. Exuding natural
charm and charisma, she used her celebrity status to aid numerous charitable causes, and
her changing hairstyles and wardrobe made her a fashion trendsetter. Behind the scenes,
however, marital difficulties between the princess and prince were growing. Diana struggled
with severe postnatal depression, low self-esteem, eating disorders, and the mounting strain
of being constantly pursued by both the official media royal-watchers and the tabloid press,
particularly the paparazzi. The marital breakdown became increasingly apparent amid
mutual recriminations, tell-all biographies, and admissions of infidelity on both sides, and the
couple formally separated in 1992. Diana presented her side in Andrew Morton’s
controversial book Diana: Her True Story (1992) and in an unusually candid television
interview with Martin Bashir in 1995. After prolonged negotiations that left Diana with a
substantial financial settlement but without the title Her Royal Highness, the couple’s divorce
became final on August 28, 1996.

“The People’s Princess” and charity work

After the divorce, Diana maintained her high public profile and continued many of the
activities she had earlier undertaken on behalf of charities, supporting causes
as diverse as the arts, children’s issues, and AIDS patients. She also was involved in efforts
to ban land mines. To ensure that William and Harry had “an understanding
of people’s emotions, their insecurities, people’s distress, and their hopes and dreams,”
Diana brought her sons with her to hospitals, homeless shelters, and orphanages. To
acquaint them with the world outside royal privilege, she took them to fast food restaurants
and on public transportation. Her compassion, personal warmth, humility, and accessibility
earned her the sobriquet “the People’s Princess.”

Long one of the most-photographed women in the world, Diana’s unprecedented popularity
both in Britain and abroad continued after her divorce. Although she used that celebrity to
great effect in promoting her charitable work, the media (in particular the paparazzi) were
often intrusive. It was while attempting to evade pursuing journalists that Diana was killed,
along with her companion, Dodi Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul, in
an automobile accident in a tunnel under the streets of Paris in 1997.

Though the photographers were initially blamed for causing the accident, a French judge in
1999 cleared them of any wrongdoing, instead faulting Paul, who was found to have had a
blood alcohol level over the legal limit at the time of the crash and to have taken prescription
drugs incompatible with alcohol. In 2006 a Scotland Yard inquiry into the incident also
concluded that the driver was at fault. In April 2008, however, a British inquest jury ruled
both the driver and the paparazzi guilty of unlawful killing through grossly negligent driving,
though it found no evidence of a conspiracy to kill Diana or Fayed, an accusation long made
by Fayed’s father.

Her death produced unprecedented expressions of public mourning, testifying to her

enormous hold on the British national psyche. The royal family, apparently caught off guard
by the extraordinary outpouring of grief and by criticism of their emotional reticence, broke
with tradition in arranging the internationally televised royal funeral. The image of Prince
William, then age 15, and Prince Harry, then age 12, walking solemnly with their father
behind Diana’s casket in her funeral cortege became iconic. At Diana’s funeral Sir Elton
John performed a version of his classic song “Candle in the Wind” (originally written about
actress Marilyn Monroe) with lyrics that had been revised by his songwriting partner, Bernie
Taupin, to reflect on the life and death of Diana, including

Goodbye England’s rose;

May you ever grow in our hearts.
You were the grace that placed yourself
Where lives were torn apart.

The recording of that version of the song became the most successful pop single in history
to date, selling more than 30 million copies.

Diana’s life, and her death, polarized national feeling about the existing system
of monarchy (and, in a sense, about British identity), which appeared antiquated and
unfeeling in a populist age of media celebrity in which Diana herself was a central figure.