June 25, 2007
Princess Diana: Death
of the Fairytale
We
had best brace ourselves in good British fashion. The Diana Deluge is
upon us.
Lest we suffer from Paris Hilton withdrawal, the media stand ready to
provide a new celebrity fix, so be prepared, and accept my apologies for
contributing to the torrent. Starting July 1 with a concert in London to
mark what would have been her 46th birthday, through the 10th
anniversary of her Aug. 31, 1997 death, we may well be treated, if that
is the right word, to a nonstop recap of the storied life and tragic end
of yet another blonde.
Lady Diana Spencer, her name and title before her 1981 marriage to the
heir to the British throne, was no saint, although she did lend her name
and aura to some worthy causes. The word that describes her best is
vulnerable. Before she became engaged to Prince Charles, Lady Diana had
no experience of the frenzied media pack-hounds that have always preyed
on British royalty, sniffing desperately for any morsel of juicy news
that would fetch large sums from a tabloid. She was the proverbial babe
in the woods.
After Lady Diana became Princess Diana, she remained vulnerable because
she was an outsider to the royal family, one her husband never really
loved. Too busy having phone sex with Camilla, Prince Charles did not
seem to have interceded on his wife’s behalf to insist that she be
treated with respect and dignity by the ossified staff of royal
administrators and courtiers. So they chewed her up and spat her out to
bleed in full view.
Even as Princess of Wales, Diana initially was at a loss to find her
place in the palace pantheon, growing slowly, painfully and very
publicly into her role without much apparent support or guidance from
her new family on how to define or fulfill said role. She was vulnerable
because she had to sort that out pretty much on her own, in all her
isolation and emotional immaturity. Cast into the royal fishbowl, she
damn near drowned before she learned to swim. “The Princess of Wails,”
one newspaper dubbed her early in her marriage.
Yet she had an ace up her designer sleeve. Unlike the stiff, formal and
unexpressive Windsors, Princess Diana easily touched people’s hearts.
She wasn’t feigning or condescending when she reached out to shake hands
and speak with on-lookers during royal visits and tours. By the simple
act of cradling an AIDS-ridden child in her arms, Princess Diana helped
make what was then a mystery ailment an acceptable topic for discussion
back in the 1980s, when the disease was still ignored if not downright
taboo. She also took on land mines, campaigning vigorously to achieve a
worldwide ban (which the United States refuses to sign to this day).
Almost as much as her beauty, her vulnerability touched us because it
reassured us that she cared, that she kept her heart in that rare
atmosphere of royalty. As noted by that most English of poets, William
Shakespeare, “They do not love who do not show their love.” Photos and
film depict Princess Diana greeting her two sons with all the open,
unaffected feeling a mother can muster. She’s delighted to see them
again and lets them know it with her smiles, kisses and tight hugs.
Don’t we all crave that kind of affection and support in our lives? No
matter what else may have been going on around them, those two boys knew
without a doubt that their Mummy loved them.
Princess Diana also formed a bond with the most unlikely of people –
Mother Teresa, the Nobel Prize-winning nun who nurtured children in the
slums of Calcutta. What a contrast. Mother Theresa often admonished her
audiences, “Give until it hurts.” That’s not exactly a welcome message
to most people, whose lives are already full of enough pain. Princess
Diana, however, never stopped looking like she could really use a hug, a
cup of tea, and an encouraging pat on the shoulder. Most of us could use
the same ourselves.
The saint died six days after the princess, and many pundits point to
the relative lack of attention Mother Teresa’s passing received as proof
that something is truly amiss with our priorities. It wasn’t so much
that as it was our inability to identify with a seemingly perfect,
invulnerable person who didn’t appear to need anything from us except
money to continue her work. The princess always felt so much more
welcoming.
And although frequently in pain and vulnerable, Princess Diana and her
world of pomp and privilege offered some of us a fleeting chance to
exchange our ordinary existence for the fantasy veneer of glamour.
But we all came crashing back to reality the day the princess – and the
fairy tale – died.
© 2007
North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
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