Diana, Princess of Wales

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Diana, Princess of Wales

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1. Diana, Princess of Wales

Lady Diana Frances Spencer, (July 1, 1961-August 31, 1997) was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales. From her marriage in 1981 to her divorce in 1996 she was called "Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales". After her divorce from the Prince of Wales in 1996, Diana ceased to be the Princess of Wales and also lost the resulting Royal Highness style.

After her divorce, officially, she was called Diana, Princess of Wales.

Diana was often called Princess Diana by the media and the public, but she did not possess such a title and was not personally a princess, a point Diana herself made to people who referred to her as such. Contrary to belief, being Princess of Wales does not make one a princess in one's own right. It merely indicates that one was married to a Prince of Wales.

An iconic presence on the world stage, Diana, Princess of Wales was noted for her pioneering charity work. Yet her philanthropic endeavours were sometimes overshadowed by her difficult marraige to Prince Charles. In the 1990s she made many public revelations about the difficult marriage - her affairs and Prince Charles' affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles.

From the time of her engagement to the Prince of Wales in 1981 until her death in a car accident in 1997, the Princess was arguably the most famous woman in the world, the pre-eminent female celebrity of her generation: a fashion icon, an image of feminine beauty, admired and emulated for her high-profile involvement in AIDS issues, and the international campaign against landmines. During her lifetime, she was often referred to as the most photographed person in the world.

2. Early life

Diana was born on July 1, 1961, at Park House near Sandringham, Norfolk. Her full name at birth was Diana Frances Spencer. She was born into an aristocratic family with Royal blood in the ancestry. Her father was Viscount Althorp and her mother Viscountess Althorp. Unfortunately at the age of 6 Diana's split up and got divorced. As a result of the divorce there was a messy custody battle which left an emotional scar upon Diana. Diana later revealed how she remembers hearing the crunch of her mother's footsteps on the gravel outside as she left the house.

However it was her father Earl of Spencer who mostly brought up Diana, when he became the 8th Earl of Spencer he moved the family to Althorpe near Northampton where she lived for the rest of childhood years. Later his father got remarried to the daughter of famous writer Barbara Cartland. However there was often disharmony between Diana and her brother and their new step mother.

Diana was educated first at Boarding school before spending several years at West Heath Public School in Kent. Here she did very well in sport, especially swimming. She had aspirations to become a ballet dancer but at 5 feet 8 was deemed to be too tall. On the academic front Diana was not bright and eventually failed all her O Levels. She later recalled happy memories from her childhood years.

After leaving school she got a job as a nanny and part time cook. Later she took a assistant teaching post at a kindergarten school in Knightsbridge, London. It was whilst working as an assistant here that she was first introduced to her future husband Charles.

3. Marriage to the Prince of Wales

On the 24^th of February, 1981 it was officially announced that Lady Diana would marry the Prince of Wales.

The wedding took place at St Paul's Cathedral in London on Wednesday 29 July 1981 before 3,500 invited guests (including Mrs. Parker Bowles and her husband, a godson of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother) and an estimated 1 billion television viewers around the world.

Diana was the first Englishwoman to marry the heir to the throne since 1659, when Lady Anne Hyde married the Duke of York and Albany, the future King James II (although, unlike Charles, James was heir presumptive and not heir apparent). Upon her marriage, Diana became Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales and was ranked as the third most senior royal woman in the United Kingdom after the Queen and the Queen Mother.

The Prince and Princess of Wales spent part of their honeymoon at the Mountbatten family home at Broadlands, Hampshire, before flying to Gibraltar to join the Royal Yacht HMY Britannia for a 12-day cruise through the Mediterranean to Egypt. They also visited Tunisia, Sardinia and Greece. They finished their honeymoon with a stay at Balmoral.

The Prince and Princess of Wales had two children, Prince William of Wales on 21 June 1982 and Prince Henry of Wales (commonly called Prince Harry) on 15 September 1984.

4. Charity work

As Princess of Wales, she was expected to make regular public appearances at hospitals, schools and other facilities, in the 20th century model of royal patronage. The Princess developed an intense interest in serious illnesses and health-related matters outside the purview of traditional royal involvement, including AIDS and leprosy. In addition, she was the patroness of charities and organisations working with the homeless, youth, drug addicts and the elderly. From 1989, she was President of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. In the same year, Diana became President of the British marital advice organisations, which she ended in 1996.

The day after her divorce, she announced her resignation from over 100 charities to spend more time with the remaining six.[56] Following her divorce, she remained patron of Centrepoint (homeless charity), English National Ballet, Leprosy Mission and National AIDS Trust, and President of Great Ormond Street Hospital and of the Royal Marsden Hospital.[57] In June 1997, the Princess attended receptions in London and New York as previews of the sale of a number of dresses and suits worn by her on official engagements, with the proceeds going to charity.[36]

During her final year, Diana lent highly visible support to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a campaign which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, only a few months after her death.

diana princess royal charity

5. Divorce

In the mid 1980s her marriage fell apart, an event at first suppressed, but then sensationalised, by the world media. Both the Prince and Princess of Wales allegedly spoke to the press through friends, accusing each other of blame for the marriage's demise.

The Prince and Princess of Wales were separated on 9 December 1992; their divorce was finalised on 28 August 1996. The Princess lost the style Her Royal Highness and instead was styled as Diana, Princess of Wales. However, since the divorce, Buckingham Palace has maintained that Diana was officially a member of the Royal Family, since she was the mother of the second and third in line to the throne.

6. Princess Diana and Landmines Campaign

Perhaps her most widely publicised charity appearance was her visit to Angola in January 1997, when, serving as an International Red Cross VIP volunteer [1], she visited landmine survivors in hospitals, toured de-mining projects run by the HALO Trust, and attended mine awareness education classes about the dangers of mines immediately surrounding homes and villages.

She is widely acclaimed for her influence on the signing by the governments of the UK and other nations of the Ottawa Treaty in December 1997, after her death, which created an international ban on the use of anti-personnel landmines.

As of January 2005, Diana's legacy on landmines remained unfulfilled. The United Nations appealed to the nations which produced and stockpiled the largest numbers of landmines (China, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and the United States) to sign the Ottawa Treaty forbidding their production and use, for which Diana had campaigned. Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), said that landmines remained "a deadly attraction for children, whose innate curiosity and need for play often lure them directly into harm's way".

7. Death of Princess Diana

On 31 August 1997 Diana was involved in a car accident in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris, along with her friend and lover Dodi Al-Fayed, and their driver Henri Paul. Fayed's bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones is the only person who survived the wreckage. The death of the Princess has been widely blamed on reporters, that were reportedly hounding the Princess, and were following the vehicle at a high speed. Ever since the word paparazzi has been associated with the death of the Princess.

The initial French judicial investigation concluded the accident was caused by Henri Paul's drunken loss of control. In February 1998, Mohamed Al-Fayed, owner of the Paris Ritz, for whom Paul had worked, publicly maintained that the crash had been planned, accusing MI6 as well as the Duke of Edinburgh. An inquest in London starting in 2004 and continued in 2007-2008 attributed the accident to grossly negligent driving by Henri Paul and to the pursuing paparazzi. On 7 April 2008, the jury returned a verdict of 'unlawful killing'. The day following the final verdict of the inquest, Al-Fayed announced he would end his 10-year campaign to establish that it was murder rather than an accident, stating that he did so for the sake of the princess's children

The sudden and unexpected death of an extraordinarily popular royal figure brought statements from senior figures worldwide and many tributes by members of the public. People left public offerings of flowers, candles, cards and personal messages outside Kensington Palace for many months. Her coffin, draped with royal flag, was brought to London from Paris by Prince Charles and her two sisters on 31 August 1997. After being taken to a private mortuary it was put at the Chapel Royal, St. James's Palace.

Diana's funeral took place in Westminster Abbey on 6 September. The previous day Queen Elizabeth II had paid tribute to her in a live television broadcast. Her sons walked in the funeral procession behind her coffin, along with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh, and with Diana's brother, Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer. Lord Spencer said of his sister, "She proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic."

Elton John's performance of Candle in the Wind, done as a tribute to Diana became globally famous.

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