Fifteen years ago next Friday, at 12:23 a.m. Paris time, the Mercedes carrying Diana, Princess of Wales and her Egyptian lover Dodi al Fayad, crashed in a brilliantly lit tunnel. The paparazzi hunted them down, from the Ritz Hotel. The world mourned. Diana became a tragic icon.
I remember that night well. I was attending an ominous repertoire of Symphony Under the Sky, at starlit Hawrelak Park in Edmonton, with my mother. At intermission, the crowd was buzzing. Even in Aug. 1997 we were hi-tech savvy. Some heard by their cellphones that Diana was grave. I stayed awake all night with hot tea, biscuits, cheese, fruit, the BBC, CBC and CNN. I was shocked. How could we lose a woman so humane, so at the peak of her healthy life, so seemingly ready for the next chapter of it?
Some Canadians believe the royals are outdated purveyors of pomp, circumstance and highbrow roles, of little significance in the globalized world. Pierre Elliot Trudeau brought in the Constitution Act in 1982 and political scientist Frederick Vaughan wrote, “Canadians were severed from their ancestral monarchical foundations.” I am no royalist, though I have long admired our industrious, decent Queen and her charismatic but steely Scottish mother.
To them, Diana was a rebel. She was the first royal to publicly express hatred of her husband’s mistress, bemoan a marriage gone wrong (she loved him, not the other way around) and televise how “the men in grey suits” (the Royal Family’s system) destroyed her.
Diana the elegant fashionista did not own the tremendous fortitude of frilly Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon and her firstborn daughter. Diana was an urban career chick with issues. By the time she died at 36 years young, the moody and flawed princess suffered bulimia, depression and divorce.
Yet rebel Diana changed the Royal Family’s image by being so normal. Diana shunned grey suit traditions and shopped, hit the gym, played tennis, did McDonald’s with “mah boys” and hung out at San Lorenzo. She had as much in common with Her Royal Highness and the Queen Mother as a high-strung border collie has in common with a pug. Even so, Diana was more aristocratic than the German-infused Windsors. The Spencer family tree goes back within the Peerage of Great Britain to Nov. 1, 1765.
I was a contemporary of the Princess. I sobbed when she died too young. I felt for Mohamed al Fayad, whose tricky relationship with the Royal Family is known, and I grieved with Wills and Harry. Their charming, caring personalities are a testament to their mother, though we cannot forget that Charles raised them too. I miss the Diana I never really knew, and I have wondered what her life would have become. Would she have finally found peace and true love? Might she have retired quietly to the U.S.? Would she have remarried, perhaps to a calm, older gent of tremendous money and influence?
Since Aug. 31, 1997, 9/11 occurred, the Internet grew, and the royals had to change, too. The Queen goes online, was given iPhones by the grandkids, and sits stoically through music that Wills and Harry find cool. Life continues. But Diana modernized the Royal Family, as no royal had before. She was a manipulative, media-worthy humanitarian. Many still have no clue she paid middle-of-the-night vigils to AIDS patients and the homeless.
We should remember this wonderful woman who did not live to see her sons grow up, or the world surge forth into the new millennium. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.”
Historians have documented Diana as a privileged, albeit troubled woman – no heroine. But her greatest legacy is that she was so human. Diana boldly revealed that a royal can be imperfect, hence, red blooded.
Diana was the royal rebel par excellence.
Barbara Jane Sowak respects Queen Elizabeth II for her fortitude and work ethic, and the Prince of Wales for his compassion and concern with environmental issues. Barbara thinks Wills and Harry are fab, and have further modernized the Royal Family so their late mother would be proud.
