The People’s Princess, The Queen of Hearts, England’s Rose… Princess Diana may have only graced the world’s stage for a mere fifteen years or so, but by God, did she leave an impressionable mark not just on the British monarchy but on the public as a whole.
Tomorrow will mark the 25th anniversary of the death of the Princess of Wales. For the last few weeks, I’ve witnessed an onslaught of glossy magazine tributes and memorabilia filling up the shelves of newsagents and supermarkets to mark this "momentous" occasion.
I was only five years old when Diana died so my memories of her are rather patchy and only really stem from that late August morning in 1997. I remember waking up, expecting to watch my cartoons but being very disappointed to discover that they had been replaced with rolling news coverage of her death on all four TV channels. I can remember seeing on TV the sea of flowers that had amassed outside the gates of Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace that week and then going to place our own bouquet alongside other floral tributes that had gathered in the old market building of our hometown.
I remember watching the coverage of her funeral a week later and asking my mum why we weren’t crying as I equated death, even that of someone I’d never met, with sadness and tears. My prominent memory of that day though was seeing all the people lined up on the streets, throwing flowers at the hearse as they drove the Princess’s body out of London to her childhood home in Althorp, Northamptonshire, her final resting place.
I was too young to comprehend it at the time, but I had witnessed probably the biggest historical and cultural event to occur in my lifetime, barring 9/11 four years later. The seismic impact Diana’s death had was unfathomable, with it nearly sparking the downfall of the monarchy and the British public baying for blood.
What was it about Diana though that we found so enthralling? It wasn’t as if this was the first major tragic death to have occurred during the latter half of the 20th century – the outpouring of grief for Elvis’s sudden passing in 1977 or the brutal murders of JFK in 1963 and John Lennon in 1980 embedded themselves into the public consciousness, making the question of "Where were you when you heard (insert celebrity) had died?" a classic dinner table conversation piece. What made Diana’s death particularly unique though was that coincided with the advent of the internet and the 24-hour news cycle, which helped to further intensify the coverage of the tragedy.
The public has always held a fascination for tragic icons. You only have to look at the slew of biopics and cable channels dedicated to rehashing the stories of Hollywood legends, to know that there is a real appetite for this kind of entertainment. I myself am guilty of indulging in this – I have always been intrigued by the folklore of celebrity deaths and the sad back stories behind them.
You don’t have to look too far to see how much our obsession with tortured souls or those who died under tragic circumstances permeates into our culture – our idolisation of heroes like Michael Jackson, Freddie Mercury, Heath Ledger and James Dean are just a few names that spring to mind. Or the creation of the notorious "27 Club", with its members consisting of popular entertainers who died at just twenty-seven, like Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.
Then there’s our captivation with stars who succumbed to drug addictions like Judy Garland, Edie Sedgwick and River Pheonix or the tragic stories of parents and children who died in eerily similar ways like Whitney Houston and her daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown, Peaches Geldof and her mother Paula Yates and Anna Nicole Smith and her son, Daniel.
It would be a mistake though to believe that our morbid obsession with celebrities who died far too young is solely reserved for those who were white – Billie Holiday, Selena, Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G, Aaliyah and Lisa "Left Eye" Lopez are amongst just some of the names etched into the Hall of Fame of tragic icons.
We have embalmed these stars in immortality and canonised them in the church of celebrity legends. They may no longer physically exist, but their entities remain forever preserved in the films, music, photography and artistry that they leave behind and their stories are continuously recycled for our viewing and listening pleasure. We place these figures on pedestals and elevate them into martyrdom as a small compensation for a life cut too short or for enduring an unhappy existence while they were in this mortal realm. Diana’s own unhappy childhood followed by a loveless marriage, mental health troubles and pursuit by an unrelenting press, all for it to only end in a horrific car crash in Paris, makes her a perfect candidate for modern-day sainthood.
When you then have charm, beauty, talent and popularity added into the mix, you have a pretty potent recipe on your hands. Within all of us, whether we admit it or not, there is a hope that we ourselves may acquire just a sliver of the outpouring of grief and touching tributes that these fallen celebrities receive in death – to be remembered in great fondness en masse, or at the very least, not to be forgotten.
The flourish of imagery that Diana’s life continues to inspire a quarter of a century after her death is a testimony to just how loved she was. She is often painted as a breath of fresh air that modernised a stuffy, archaic institution and the ray of sunshine to the Windsor’s cold demeanour and aloofness with the public – and each other. She transformed from the timid royal mouse of the early 1980s to the emancipated single woman of the 1990s who discovered her voice – and wasn’t afraid to use it. Her touchy-feely approach and willingness to tackle issues and causes that were deemed "controversial" at the time – such as AIDS, leprosy, landmines and homelessness – distinguished her from any kind of royalty we had ever come across before.
The only figure, in my opinion, that comes anywhere close to capturing the hearts of the public as Diana did, is Marilyn Monroe. The screen icon and the old Hollywood glamour that we have come to associate with her are still seen everywhere from the hundreds of professional lookalikes emulating her to the numerous copycat renditions of 'Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend' to the hordes of memorabilia you can buy with her image emblazoned on it. Marilyn’s own mysterious death, sixty years ago this month, still generates plenty of conspiracies over the nature of how and why she died, with rumours awash of the Mafia and even the Kennedys potentially having a hand in her death.
What I find compelling though are the many parallels that can be drawn between Diana’s and Marilyn’s lives. Both died at the age of 36 (and two months, to be exact) in the month of August, with Diana being born just a year before Monroe’s death in 1962. Both experienced childhood trauma when their respective mothers abandoned them and were then plagued by mental health struggles with both reportedly suffering from borderline personality disorder (BPD). Both women were sensitive souls who turned to marriage and men as a solution to the unhappiness and loneliness that they had felt since they were children – only to discover disappointment and heartbreak, time and again.
Lady Diana Spencer, daughter of an Earl, transformed herself from shy Sloane Ranger into a glittering princess and Norma Jeane Baker, a brunette, rose up from poverty to become the ultimate blonde bombshell and sex symbol. Their charisma, warmth and down-to-earth nature drew in us mere mortals, but it was their nobility and breathtaking beauty, with their halos of cropped blonde hair and big blue eyes, that would put us in awe of them.
We admired them for bravely standing up to the institutions that had first welcomed them with open arms and then cast them out – in Diana’s case, The Royal Family, and Monroe’s, Hollywood – along with their refusal to be silenced, hence the numerous rumours of foul play that shroud their deaths. They were exploited by both the press and the people around them, and the child-like vulnerability that they exuded inspired a feeble need in us to save them – but sadly, to no avail. Most of all though, they were both flickering beacons who burnt too bright for this world and who were cruelly snuffed out before their time – a metaphor that was perfectly captured in Elton John’s 'Candle In The Wind', originally penned in tribute of Monroe in 1973 and then re-written for Diana’s funeral in 1997.
A whole new generation has now been introduced to the late princess (many of whom weren’t even born by the time she died) thanks largely to Emma Corrin’s portrayal of her in Netflix’s The Crown. The show’s sympathetic portrayal of a troubled princess is only a drop in the ocean compared to the plethora of documentaries, films, songs, and even musicals that have been inspired by Diana’s incredible life.
On the silver screen alone, there has been an abundance of depictions of the Princess of Wales; Diana (2013) documents the last two years of her life, and in particular, her secret love affair with Pakistani heart surgeon, Hasnat Khan, and Spencer (2021) is a fictional re-telling of the last Christmas Diana would spend with the Royals before separating from Prince Charles a year later in 1992. Although we don’t see Diana at all in The Queen (2006), apart from in some old footage and newsreels, the film entirely focuses on the events that unfolded during the week of Diana’s death and the lead-up to her funeral.
The "Diana renaissance" hasn’t just been restricted to a hungry arts industry, eager to cash in on her legacy.
Over the years, we’ve had the Concert for Diana, the unveiling of numerous dedications to her such as the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain and Playground in Hyde Park and statue in Kensington Palace, The Diana Awards, exhibitions of her dresses, commemorative coins, a porcelain Princess Diana doll and even a Princess Diana Beanie Baby. I’m surprised we haven’t yet seen a range of perfumes to expand the Diana brand portfolio, but alas, watch this space.
The problem with all of this though is that this sense of entitlement and ownership that we believe that we have over our fallen idols comes at the expense of those who actually loved and knew them. You only have to see the footage of the young princes walking behind their mother’s coffin with crowds of people wailing for a woman that they’d never even met, to grasp the trauma that those two boys must have experienced, not only from losing their mother but from the weight of an entire nation on their shoulders.
The tragic narrative that continues to be spun nearly 25 years after Diana’s death is still so intoxicating though. A young innocent who became a beautiful princess loved by all the people in the land, but who perished before her time, is still a fable that continues to fascinate many of us. But it is an insincere narrative, spun by both Diana herself and those who wish to profit from her good name. It is an over-simplified account of recent history that doesn’t acknowledge the complicated and flawed character behind the virtuous persona – Diana could be immature, manipulative, cunning, enjoyed courting the press to her own end and was notorious for cutting ties with friends and lovers at the drop of a hat.
It's all too easy to depict the Royals, particularly Charles and Camilla, as 2D villains, responsible for Diana’s misery and to some extent, her untimely death. We all desperately want someone to blame – a victim and a villain – but by doing this, we rob Diana of all authority and responsibility, treating her like a helpless invalid rather than the complex, dynamic woman that she truly was. And that is how she should be remembered – not as an idealised abstract notion of lightness and goodness, but as a complicated human being with her shortcomings, just like the rest of us.
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