The Imaginary Diana

Why Do Fairy Tales Always Have Such Bad Endings?

It is almost a generation ago that a young woman—married and divorced from a future King of England—perished in a terrible car wreck in Paris. Despite inquests and investigations, doubts about the nature of her death persist. On the one hand, there is considerable evidence that the wreck was an accident, just the end result of a series of bad decisions made late one night during a vacation. But, on the other hand, there are some weird details to the story that suggest more nefarious forces were involved. It is possible that some of the Diana mysteries involve the imaginary persona that the palace created for her before she even took her wedding vows.

The tabloid press in Britain and the hacks in America all bought these stories hook, line, and sinker, even though they were easy to refute. But the public relations campaign trying to make Lady Diana Spencer of the house of Spencer into a Cinderella was too powerful for the media to resist. (Also the press pretty much writes what they’re told, both here and in the United Kingdom.)

It reminds me a bit of Amanda Knox, the young American woman charged with murdering her roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy. Almost before Knox’s parents hired a lawyer to defend their daughter against murder charges, they contacted a public relations firm and shoveled out upwards of seven figures to create a persona for Amanda Knox that would be more palatable to a jury than her real identity. Amanda was painted as a naive, albeit quirky, college student exploring life in a beautiful little town in Italy. She actually wasn’t a student at all. But that’s another story for another day.

Diana got the same treatment, but she wasn’t wanted for murder. She was wanted for a bride for a future king. It’s hard to say why the palace did not like her for who she truly was, and why she needed a false identity. But maybe they thought that Charles—viewed widely as elitist, snobby, out of touch, weak, feckless, and effeminate—might need some sort of bridge with the general public if he was going to hold the monarchy intact.

Most observers of contemporary events only found out the truth in bits and pieces—if they found out at all. This is confusing because there was nothing particularly wrong with the real Diana, and it is curious why the palace preferred a made-up story to the truth.

The Diana Mythology

Diana was a commoner who was going to marry a royal. This is a statement that is simultaneously true and misleading. If you divide the world up into two groups: royals and commoners, you have a very minuscule group of royals and the rest of us are commoners. Diana was indeed born a commoner, but so was Catherine Middleton (now Princess Catherine) and the late Queen Mother Elizabeth. Diana was indeed a commoner, but this conjures up vision of a poor working class girl in a textile mill, sweating and straining over the mountains of back-breaking work she has to do to put food on the table. Or maybe it calls up the image of a little chimney sweep. The truth is that commoners are “everybody else” and Diana, although not royal, was much better off than the rest of us. She was born into the aristocracy. She was a blue-blood. In fact, Spencer bloodlines are more English and go back deeper into British history than any of the present bloodlines of the current royal family. The current monarchs were originally from the line of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha dynasty, who then got renamed the Mountbatten-Windsors until Lord Mountbatten was outed as a pedophile, whereupon they became the Windsors. Even if Diana had never met and married Charles, she was born with a title. She was Lady Diana without any help from the Germanic upstarts on the throne; the title Lady in British aristocracy is the equivalent of the male title of Earl. She was not royal, but she was not a typical commoner, either.

Diana was born in modest circumstances. Diana was born to the noble and monied family of the Spencer-Churchills, and her family is related to another Churchill that you may have heard of. When Sir Winston Churchill is part of your parents’ extended family circle, you’re not a poor middle-class kid. Diana grew up on a British estate known as Althorp which, on its ground floor, houses an art museum of Old Masters. The Spencers own the art. Anyone born and raised in a house with a built-in art museum is not living a modest lifestyle. Diana grew up with servants, private schools, ballet dance lessons, and tutors. Upon graduating high school, Diana went to finishing school on the continent. She was a rich kid.

Diana did not know much about royal life. Diana was born on a royal estate. She was born in Sandringham, a big estate in Norfolk owned by the royal family. The Spencers had a house there, since the Spencers have been tight with the royal family since the days of Henry VIII and maybe even earlier. Diana was literally born on a royal estate. She did not meet Charles until she was older, but according to one biographer, Diana knew the queen, at least distantly, and, as a young woman, she was friendly with Prince Andrew. It’s true that no one can truly understand what it’s like to be royal until they’re part of the royal family, but you couldn’t get much closer than Diana to the royal lifestyle without being a royal herself. She knew about royal protocol and etiquette, she knew about their issues with privacy, and she knew the royals lived in a bubble.

Diana fell madly in love with Charles. Diana—by her own admission—had met only 13 times with Charles before they married and one of those times was when he proposed to her. It was a whirlwind courtship, but it was more about the meeting of mutual needs than a mad love affair. Lady Diana was a social climber. Although born to a noble family with a title and money to boot, Diana, since the time she was a little girl, always wanted to be a Duchess. Duchess is the highest title a non-royal woman can hold (although there are Dukes and Duchesses who are royal as well). There are only two ways to become a Duchess: you either are born to it or you marry in to it. Diana made no secret of her dreams of marrying a Duke. Her childhood nickname was Dutch, short for Duchess, and her friends called her that long after she became a Princess. Diana was very much interested in marrying into the royal family. As for Charles, he was getting pressured by his father to marry, so he could prepare himself for his reign and produce heirs to the throne. Prince Phillip and Queen Elizabeth took royal obligations quite seriously, and Charles had a duty to marry well and have some children. Of course, royal marriages have to be approved by the monarch, so Charles was not free to just marry anyone. Diana was considered to be more than suitable—she had the right pedigree, she was young, she was pretty, she had never been married before, in fact, she had never had a serious boyfriend before. Diana was interested in the title, and Charles was interested in doing his duty.

Diana did not know about Camilla. At the big wedding of Charles and Diana, Tom Brokaw was doing some commentary for some news outlet that I remember to this day. I don’t think of Tom Brokaw as being on the cutting edge in terms of palace intrigue and royal gossip. (For pity’s sake, the man has trouble delivering political news.) But even he said that people in the cathedral on the wedding day knew that Charles had recent and possibly lingering romantic associations with another woman. Now I figure if Tom Brokaw knew, everybody knew. Diana had met Camilla, in fact. Camilla was a regular in Charles’s social circle, close enough to him that she had met Diana during their brief courtship. Diana did not associate much with Charles’ friends, because they were much older, but she knew those who were particularly close to Charles and that included Camilla. Diana may have been young and naïve, but she grew up around the British aristocracy and the royal family. She observed first hand that married couples cheated and had affairs, kings and princes most of all. Her own parents had a messy marriage and affairs. She knew that Charles had sowed many wild oats. She may not have anticipated the depth of Charles’s feelings for Camilla, but she knew who Camilla was and what she meant to Charles.

Diana was a working class girl. The newspapers told us Diana was a kindergarten teacher or sometimes it was a preschool teacher. She was actually neither; she had no credentials for that kind of work, and she never held a real job in that field. She did work occasionally as a babysitter and she worked haphazardly as an assistant at a preschool from time to time.

This merits a little explanation. There was a weird activity among the rich husband-hunting girls in Diana’s social circle—these young women were called the Sloane Rangers, named after the posh shopping district of Sloane Square where they shopped, lunched, and plotted mean-girl tricks. I don’t know if it was social activism or a prank, but these very wealthy young girls sometimes took a break from husband hunting to work menial jobs. They were never serious workers—they sort of jumped from job to job as the whim moved them. They claimed to enjoy “playing” working girls, in the same way Queen Marie Antoinette sometimes “played peasant” at the palace of Versailles. It was a goof. The Sloane Rangers, including Diana, did things like work as maids, waitresses, store clerks, and babysitters. The jobs had to be low level, the work was sporadic (they might work only a few hours a week and then quit), and it was all some kind of prank. Diana once worked as a babysitter and reported herself that she took special delight when the woman who hired her had a glimpse of her checkbook. Diana chuckled when her boss noticed her checks were imprinted Lady Diana Spencer. So there was a bit of mischief, maybe even malevolence, in these trust-fund girls slumming on the job. Diana never held a real job.

Diana was sharing a flat in London with girlfriends to make ends meet. Diana lived in or near the posh neighborhood of Knightsbridge, which is one of the most expensive residential neighborhoods in England, maybe even Europe. She had a nice big apartment there and she shared it with four or five other young women. The story was presented that these girls were just bunking together to cut costs and share expenses. That wasn’t true at all. While the other girls were rich Sloane Rangers, just like Diana, Diana owned the apartment. Even back in the early 1980s, it was valued at over $1M. Diana owned it outright; her family was rich enough to buy it for her. There is some truth to this myth: Diana did live with flatmates. These other young ladies were there for two reasons. One, they paid rent to Diana and that rent was part of Diana’s walking-around money. Even before Charles, Diana loved fashion and she loved to shop. Two, the roommates likely provided good company for Diana, who always was a people person. She likely would have hated living solo. But the story was always presented like Diana was a working class girl, struggling to make ends meet. Far from it.

Why Create a Phony Princess?

The monarchy is on shaky ground in Great Britain. With largely only ceremonial powers to justify its existence, the monarchy is outrageously expensive. Their contribution to social welfare is debated—some say it’s worth it, but increasingly British citizens are finding the monarchs useless or at least too expensive to keep.

The British monarchy is sort of like having a Real Housewives reality show going on to feed the tabloid press and internet, but it is a drama that costs taxpayers millions and millions a year. The monarchy done British style is both anachronistic, elitist, and beyond expensive. It will cave one day, the only question is when.

The late Queen Elizabeth II held the monarchy together for over 70 years, but she harbored doubts that Charles could do the same. Charles was pampered, spoiled, and lacked internal fortitude. Worst of all, he was out of touch with the people of Britain. With his esoteric interests, like beekeeping and classical music, he was not relatable. On top of that, he seemed both strangely effeminate and mean-spirited. Remember when he publicly humiliated his young bride-to-be in an interview? The couple was asked by some news outlet if they were in love. Diana replied, “Of course!” While Charles assented, he then added, “Whatever love is.” He may have meant it to be funny or witty, but it was vicious.

Nevertheless, Charles and Diana married in 1981. They divorced in 1996 after years of being estranged. Diana died in 1997.

During their marriage, Diana did a few things admirably well. She was to marry Charles and produce some heirs to the throne. Check. She was to be attractive and engaging to the public. Check. She was to be relatable to the British public. Check. And she was to keep up the ruse that she was a common middle-class girl swept off her feet by the dashing young prince. Check.

When it all fell apart and the couple starting having almost-public adulterous affairs, Diana started doing tell-all interviews and writing books or authorizing others to write books about her. At this point, Diana became a liability to the monarchy. In fact, having a snippy run-around wife was considered worse than having no wife at all. Queen Elizabeth permitted and negotiated the divorce, and Diana was a free agent. I think the royal family was hoping she would just disappear.

But there is something about royalty that makes it hard to disappear.

The Pont D’Alma Mystery

When it comes to accidental deaths, police investigators are supposed to first suspect foul play and rule it out, before deciding it was “just an accident” or a suicide. The idea is to treat suspicous deaths as foul play first and carry out the investigation as rigorously as murder would demand; later on, foul play may or may not be ruled out. But you start out assuming the worst. That’s protocol for all investigative work.

The first things cops are supposed to suspect foul play and look for motive and opportunity.

Of course, the Diana investigations decided almost at once that she died in an accident caused by the paparazzi. That alone makes me suspicious. I would not go out on a limb and say Diana was murdered, but, on the other hand, there remain almost three decades later some strange and unanswered questions.

Could a person be “murdered” in an orchestrated vehicular accident? Various intelligence agencies have long had the ability to commandeer a car or otherwise instigate what could be made to look like a car crash. Death by vehicular accident is practically in the M-16 handbook and it’s been done before. Diana had even suspected she would die in this kind of “car accident.” She felt this sense so strongly she wrote it out in a document (twice, actually) and deposited those letters with her attorney. One of the letters said that the car crash would kill her so that Charles would be free to marry. She got the person wrong—she thought Charles was after Tiggy, one of her children’s nannies. But in her mind, Charles wanted her gone so he could remarry.

The marriage angle deserves some clarity. Charles was going to ascend the throne one day as King, whereupon he would also become the titular head of the Church of England. That church technically does not allow divorce, but it does allow an estranged couple to go their separate ways and live apart, as long as they do not divorce, remarry, or even have other serious romantic relationships. People like Charles and Diana could be estranged, but they could never remarry as long as the other spouse was alive. For Diana, this was not much of a restriction. She was free to flout the rules of the Church of England like every other person in Britain. The United Kingdom is full of people who divorced and remarried. But for Charles, it was dicier. After all, he would be the head of the Church of England one day; he would inherit the title Defender of the Faith. It wouldn’t look good if he remarried, as long as Diana was alive. So while Diana could frolic on her merry way and even entertain marriage proposals, Charles couldn’t. Besides, there would be serious public relations backlash if he remarried while Diana was alive. Diana was vastly more popular than Camilla. For Charles to have a real Chapter 2 in his life, he needed even the memory of Diana to be out of the way.

So for Charles, the death of Diana would open the doors to his being able to remarry and still be head of the Church of England. See, royals have problems people like us never have.

But there was another thought as well. Diana was rumored to have kept a journal with explosive observations about the royal family which mysteriously disappeared when she died. It is not known if she actually kept such a journal, but what is known is that none was ever found or published after her death.

• Diana was never much of a reader, but she wrote a lot—short letters, notes, diary entries. It is very believable that she kept a journal. In fact, it would be hard to believe she didn’t have some sort of personal journal

• Some of her friends and her staff reported that such a journal did exist, and she kept it locked in a specific place that a few insiders knew about

• Some of her friends said she sometimes mentioned this alleged journal

• Obviously, Diana was privy to a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff going on in the royal family and she may have seen and heard things that the royal family would not want exposed

• Diana’s contempt for the royal family was increasingly evident in her later years. She even said once of her in-laws, “They’re not human”

As long as Diana was married to Charles, there was some degree of control over her. The royals couldn’t stop her from keeping a journal or thinking poorly of them, but the royals could block the release of her secret journals. When Diana divorced Charles, she became a free agent. She was absolutely free to publish her journals or portions of them. She even hinted on that last vacation with Dodi Al-Fayed that she was going to release some shocking information.

That was the worst teaser ever, because the shock was she was dead a few days later.

The Mystery Is Whether It Was Murder

No one has ever found Diana’s alleged journal which could mean it never existed or it could mean somebody took it. And if somebody took it, was it to destroy it or to safeguard it for some future release? A lot of years have gone by and the journal has never surfaced. It’s starting to look like it has been destroyed or never existed in the first place.

But beyond the mystery of the secret journal, did anyone have motivation to get Diana killed? Her death certainly facilitated Charles’ marriage to Camilla, but it is hard to say if this was enough to want her killed. It is hard to imagine Charles doing anything so wicked to the mother of his children. I’m not sure if Charles ever loved Diana, but I am pretty sure Charles loves his sons. Well, William anyway.

A secret journal or diary is a bit more troubling, and it could be elevated to matter of life or death, depending on what was in it. If Diana knew that Prince Andrew was a pompous jerk, or that the Queen and Prince Philip sometimes bickered in private, or that Princess Eugenie picked her nose, that wouldn’t be much in the way of shocking news. But what if she knew about Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to the royal family or about other Epstein-like characters? It is suspected that Jeffrey Epstein infiltrated the royal family as early as 1993, although the official story is that he didn’t meet Andrew and Sarah until years later. And there were other notorious figures like Jimmy Savile, involved in child trafficking and crimes that are too shameful to name. Savile was a friend, or at least acquaintance, of Prince Charles. This is not to say that Charles participated in such crimes, but Diana likely knew an assortment of colorful misfits and outright criminals and how they interacted with the royals. Did she see things she wasn’t supposed to see? Were some of these things crimes?

Diana was always a loose cannon, but a divorced Diana was like a dozen invisible live hand grenades about to explode. Diana was a walking, talking tell-all journal, the living embodiment of that “secret journal.”

After her divorce, Diana appeared to be stable and happy, but those who knew her well knew she was prone mood swings and she may have harbored grudges against her ex-husband (what ex-wife doesn’t?) She may have been angry that her divorce settlement was not even half of what she asked for. She may have felt she had a duty to tell the truth about dangerous stuff going on behind palace walls. On the other hand, Diana never suggested her children—whom she loved dearly—leave the royal family. So things could not really that bad.

Were they afraid of her? She was clearly afraid of them.