This Wednesday marks 25 years since the British woke up to a state of emergency. On the morning of August 31, 1997, the news channels reported that Diana, Princess of Wales, had been killed in a traffic accident in Paris that night. The country went straight off the shaft. The usually tight-lipped islanders wept openly in the streets. The bouquets of flowers outside the royal palaces quickly grew into huge seas. People all over the world mourned Princess Diana, including in Norway. Floral tributes were laid outside the British Embassy in Oslo a few days after Diana’s death. Photo: Erik Johansen / NTB No other news penetrated the airwaves. It seemed to be one thing everyone was talking about, one thing everyone was thinking about. How could one individual have come to mean so much to so many? The then Prime Minister Tony Blair read the zeitgeist correctly and gave an emotional speech about the “people’s princess”. The then Prime Minister Tony Blair at Diana’s funeral in London on 31 August 1997. Photo: MARTIN HAYHOW / AFP But on the rest of the political left, there were many who scratched their heads. Diana came from the country’s top aristocracy, and was born to money and privilege. As someone who had achieved position and fame the old-fashioned way, through marriage, she was not an obvious heroine for feminist voices. But the British people, and especially British women, felt a strong and intense bond with the divorced princess. Thousands upon thousands had experienced Diana as an exalted twin soul, a glamorous avatar. She wore tiaras and designer clothes, met heads of state and movie stars, but talked about the kinds of problems any human could have. “I’ve always felt closer to the people at the bottom than the people at the top,” as she famously said. Princess Diana in Angola where she talks to victims of landmines. Photo: Joao Silva / AP She was just nineteen when she married Prince Charles in 1981, in a wedding that was a global mega-event and planted princess dreams in the minds of little girls around the world. But in reality, the princess dream was more like a nightmare. Charles was an uptight 32-year-old, uncomfortable living in his mother the Queen’s shadow. He had long found a romantic haven in the relaxed, experienced Camilla Parker Bowles, but she was married and out of place as a wife. Now he had been pushed in Diana’s direction by the family, who thought she was perfect: Beautiful, unblemished and classy. The wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana was a mega media event. But the dream wedding turned into a nightmarish marriage. Photo: Nyhetsspiller / AP Diana entered the marriage with great fragility. She was the child of a harrowing divorce, where her grandmother had testified against her own daughter in the child custody case that followed – so that Diana and her three siblings would stay with the noble father. She was shuttled between two unhappy parents whom she worked hard to please. She started developing eating disorders early on. This young girl, with a strong need for tenderness and closeness, was married to a man who was always on his way out the door to fulfill his thousand missions. She entered the British royal house, which was characterized by strict etiquette and an expectation that the royals performed their duties without flinching. Picture from 1981 when the engagement between Prince Charles and Diana was announced. Photo: NTB She felt isolated. There was little praise to be had, and little consolation, when the press began to follow her wherever she went. Prince Charles was hurt at being overshadowed by his wife, and at being met with “oh no, we got him” when he and Diana went to separate parts of a crowd. Soon they were arguing so that mirrors and windows were broken. And the ghost of Camilla Parker Bowles constantly hovered over the unhappy marriage. As the marriage moved towards breakdown, Diana increasingly began to bond with the public. In 1992 came “Diana: Her True Story”, written by the journalist Andrew Morton, but with Diana herself as the main source. Princess Diana sits and talks with a volleyball team that has injuries from landmines during a visit to Zenica in Bosnia. The picture was taken about a month before she died, in August 1997. Photo: Ian Waldie / AP It was a story about eating disorders, about self-loathing, about feeling exposed, about being trapped in a marriage where she didn’t feel loved or respected. In her speeches, she addressed herself more and more explicitly to women, to those who are “constantly broken down by the expectation that they should exist only for the sake of others”, as she put it. This was a time when no one talked about eating disorders in public, when women’s problems in marriage and family were not high on anyone’s agenda. Many felt that Diana put into words their most forbidden thoughts, that she signaled that precisely what they were most ashamed of was the reason they were attached to her. It was a powerful cocktail. And that’s part of the reason Prince Charles could never win the battle for history. When Charles and Diana’s story is retold today, as in the TV series “The Crown”, it is largely Diana’s story that is the basis. She is the sensitive and misunderstood heroine, the loving mother, tried to be jacked down by her husband and invaded by the press. Princess Diana was strongly identified with the role of mother, and her two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, have spoken of how strongly they were affected by their mother’s death. Photo: Stringer Spain / Reuters Diana was all this. But she was more too. She was a very skilled media operator who knew how to stage situations and photographs so that she herself came out of it advantageously. Sometimes she was chased by the paparazzi, who crowded in on her and yelled obscenities at her, so she would start crying – thus making the photos more desirable. Other times it was she who contacted them, to say where she wanted to be – because she wanted to send a message out to the public. The princess maintained close contact with selected tabloid journalists and leaked information to them about other members of the royal family, not always correctly. Some of the claims in “Diana: Her True Story” do not stand up well to a fact check. Princess Diana meets paparazzi before boarding a plane in Johannesburg in January 1996. Photo: Giovanni Difideni / AP The drama surrounding Diana also unfolded at a time when television channels began to broadcast around the clock, some of them around the world – but there there was rarely enough material to fill all the airtime. The handful of glitzy, global celebrities were extremely sought-after, and none was glitzier or more global than the Princess of Wales. Diana was able to use this to her advantage, to make sure that it was her version that stood as the conclusion – and not the version that came from the much more powerful, much more resourceful House of Windsor. Kongestoff is often considered frivolous, like gossip exchanged over the lunch table at work, not as something deserving of deep feelings or heavy analysis. But when Diana died, her story became a true tragedy, a phenomenon that still stirs confusion, wonder and grief decades later. It is as if she still calls out from the grave and demands to be heard, and still we stop and listen. Outside the royal palaces, large seas of flowers spread in the days after Princess Diana’s death. Photo: KEVIN LAMARQUE / REUTERS
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“It is as if she is still shouting from the grave and demanding to be heard” – Statement
