Diana, Princess of Wales

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Lauren Supance

The most charismatic and publicly adored member of the British royal family, Diana, Princess of Wales not only imposed her own distinctly modern style and attitudes on Great Britain's traditionalist monarchy, but served to plunge that institution into its lowest level of public unpopularity, fueling support for Republicanism and, after her death, forcing the Royal family to moderate its aloof image. However, as a glamorous and sympathetic icon of an image-driven and media-fueled culture, Diana's celebrity status and considerable influence traveled across continents. Her fame, matched by only a handful of women during the twentieth century, notably Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Princess Grace of Monaco (Grace Kelly), made her a significant popular figure in the United States, where her visits were welcomed with the fervor once reserved for the most famous stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Diana was the most photographed woman in the world, and from the time of her marriage to her premature and appalling death in 1997, she forged a public persona that blended her various roles as princess, wife, mother, goodwill ambassador for England, and international humanitarian. Diana's fortuitous combination of beauty and glamour, her accessible, sympathetic, and vulnerable personality, and an ability to convey genuine concern for the affairs of ordinary people and the world's poor and downtrodden, set her apart decisively from the distant formality of the British monarchy. She became an object of near-worship, and her lasting fame was ensured. Ironically, the intense media attention and public adulation that came to define her life were widely blamed for the circumstances of her death. Her untimely demise, however, served only to amplify the public's romantic perception of her as a modern goddess cruelly destroyed by a faithless husband, unsympathetic in-laws, and prying paparazzi. The life and death of the Princess of Wales, is, indeed, a monument to sad contradictions and ironies.

Lady Diana Spencer was born into aristocratic privilege, the daughter of Viscount Althorp, on July 1, 1961 at the remote and spacious family estate near Sandringham in Norfolk. Her parents divorced when she was still a child, leaving Diana and her siblings in the care of her father and his second wife. She was a shy child, unhappy about the absence of her mother, and early on developed a passion for children, which led her to become a nursery school teacher in London. At 18, she re-met Prince Charles, 13 years her senior and heir to the British throne, whom she had known slightly in childhood. Their courtship became public, and she had the first taste of the media circus that was to dog her every move for the rest of her life. On July 29, 1981, three weeks before her twentieth birthday, Diana married her prince--the first English woman in 300 years to become the wife of a future English king--in a wedding aptly described by the Archbishop of Canterbury as "the stuff of which fairy tales are made." The ceremony took place before an overflowing congregation of some 2,500 in London's St. Paul's Cathedral and drew a record-breaking global radio and television audience of nearly one billion. A worldwide media event, the wedding affirmed Diana's value as an internationally marketable personality whose image soon appeared not only in magazines, newspapers, and television programs across the globe, but also adorned an unending stream of merchandise ranging from postage stamps to coffee mugs.

Diana's married life revolved around her official Court duties and, increasingly, her own public causes. Ten days after her twenty-first birthday, the princess gave birth to the next heir apparent, Prince William, and, two years later, to Prince Henry (known as Harry). She insisted on taking her young sons on "normal" outings to cinemas and theme parks and on informal holidays abroad, and she bestowed lavish affection on them in public. Her conduct represented a sharp break from the stiff conventions of royalty and contributed to her position as the media's darling and to the discomfiture of her less demonstrative mother-in-law. On the one hand, Diana seemed determined to protect her sons from the harsh glare of public scrutiny; on the other, she kept the people abreast of the family's life by granting interviews and making numerous public appearances. She fed the media's hunger even while expressing despair at its persistence.

By the mid-1980s, rumors of a rift between Charles and Diana were growing, accompanied by whispers of infidelity and reports that the princess was far from well or happy. By the end of the decade, it was public knowledge that Diana was suffering from bulimia, a fact that she courageously admitted in public in hopes of helping other sufferers; that Charles had resumed his long-standing love affair with Mrs. Camilla Parker-Bowles early in his marriage; and that Diana had sought solace in an affair with an army officer named James Hewitt, who co-operated in a scandalous tell-all book about their relationship.

For a time, Diana was cruelly treated by the media and criticized by the public, who simultaneously relished and disapproved of a spate of further revelations. When, however, Charles consented to an in-depth television interview with his biographer Jonathan Dimbleby, and confessed to the Parker-Bowles affair, Diana retaliated with her own interview that effectively put the knife into the royal family and re-established her position in the public affection. To the evident distress of the queen, the couple announced a separation in 1992, the year in which Britain and America were agog at the publication of Andrew Morton's book, Diana, Her True Story. The royal divorce followed four years later.