Sydney, Australia, November 1996. Police and the press are on full alert. For the guests and dignitaries gathering at the Sydney [music] Entertainment Center, this is the most prized entry in the social calendar, the night they dine with Diana. She has come to speak at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute dinner in honor of Australia’s top heart surgeon murdered in 1991.
She praises Chang as an original thinker whose mind was not fixed on the traditional way of doing things. Her words have a telling transcript to the House of Windsor for whom there is no other way than the traditional Princess Diana last visited Sydney in 1988 with her husband for the bicesentinary celebrations.
This is her first visit to Australia as the divorced wife of the heir [music] to the throne and there’s an air of expectancy about the place. Lord Archer, who has advised her at some of the most critical moments of her public life, believes her appeal is unddeinished by her altered status. >> We’re talking about a superstar here.
She’s immensely popular worldwide. She’s a highly attractive woman and comes over to the man in the woman in the street as a caring, decent person. [cheering] And there’s no getting away from this. She can’t suddenly invent her the next day and say, “Nobody loves her. We don’t care any longer.
” I think the problem is that Princess Diana will live to 90. And this isn’t going to go away. >> Today, that level of interest has not changed. The crowd still turn out to see her, talk to her, touch her. She’s returned to the country she once tooured in triumph as future queen. When she came in 1983 with Prince Charles, her appeal was one of the strongest weapons in the palace armory.
The House of Windsor did not hesitate to show off the young princess to the former Dominions, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, where the queen is head of state. In her Panorama interview, Diana said of the 1983 visit, “We had a 6 week tour, four weeks in Australia and two in New Zealand.
By the end, when we flew back to Britain, I was a different person. I realized the sense of duty, the level of intensity of interest, and the demanding role I now found myself in. That demanding role was already taking its toll on the young princess. She was suffering from post-natal depression after the birth of William and from bulimia, an eating disorder.
13 years later and now fully recovered, Diana, Princess of Wales, is a woman in her prime. Elegant, glamorous, an unequaled wearer of fabulous gowns, composed in control, and very popular for her. Go on. Despite her divorce from Charles, Diana still hopes to become a roving ambassador for Britain. What she wanted, what she has striven to achieve over the last year is to be allowed to go around the world and represent Britain in the way she has represented Britain in the past, but
with the support knowing that there would be the support of the government to help organize trips and so on. That hasn’t been forthcoming. It’s been a consequence of the divorce. Therefore, that she’s done her trips on her own, privately, individually. Back in 1983, the Wales were immensely popular.
Who could have guessed that their marriage had been anything other than a love match? It was a message that the royal family and their courtiers were keen to convey. The warmth which greeted the princess enhanced her husband’s image. Together, Charles and Diana were a dynamic partnership. Underneath, Diana was learning to cope with insuperable pressures while still full of doubt and lacking self-esteem, the root cause of bulimia, which blighted the marriage.
Had William been left in Britain, Diana may have been unable to cope with this long separation from her newborn son. However, Malcolm Fraser, the Australian premier, arranged a temporary base for William so that Diana could be close to her baby. But on a trip to Canada later that year, Diana was compelled to leave William behind.
The pressure on her was mounting. Her suffering kept undercover. Asked on Panorama if she had felt she had to perform, Diana said, “I was compelled to go out and do my engagements and not let people down.” In turn, the public supported her, carrying her through the difficult times. But Bimia had taken over her life. On a tour of Expo 1986 in Canada, Diana fainted in public.
She had been surviving on a diet of Mars bars. Charles was embarrassed by her failure to maintain royal decorum. Diana’s bulimia had its roots in an unhappy childhood. As a child, Diana had grown up next door to the royal family at Park House on the Sandringham estate. She was a girl much above the ordinary, the youngest daughter of the eighth Spencer.
She was the flower of British aristocracy. [music] It seemed a protected, charmed life, but the family split after [music] parental rouse. When Diana was six, her mother Francis left home. The children remained in their father’s custody. [music] Diana went to boarding school where she excelled at [music] sport and music, coming home for events such as her sister Jane’s wedding to the Queen’s assistant private secretary, Robert Fellows, a crucial link to Diana’s future.
She’s taken it all in her stride. I think she’d always be like that. She’s very practical, Donna. very down to earth, very practical, very good housewife. And incidentally, when she was a baby, she was a superb physical specimen. [music] She’d won any baby prize there was going. The Spencers left Park House in 1975 when Diana’s grandfather, the seventh Earl, died.
Her father inherited the title and a 100 roommed ancestral mansion, Ultrup [music] House in Northamptonshire. The Spencer line can be traced [music] back to the Normans and beyond. There are links to Charles II. Diana’s family can boast more English blood than the Germanic House of Windsor. The Honorable Diana Spencer became Lady Diana Spencer, entering adult life fully aware of her aristocratic background.
I called my daughter Donna after her. Yes. >> Because she’s one of the old family names or the middle of the 18th century. >> There have been links with the [music] monarchy and with the nation as a whole since the 17th century really because one of my ancestors was virtually prime minister to three kings, Charles II, James II, and William and Mary.
And ever since then, they’ve been very close links with the royal family. I mean, Queen Mary was one of my godmothers. Prince of Wales those days was one of my godfathers and my mother was a lady in waiting and now my daughter has married Prince of Wales. Becoming [music] Princess of Wales was a donastic prize.
When Diana won it, her father’s pride and delight [music] was without bounds. On that glorious [music] July morning, almost none of the world’s 750 million television viewers [music] had any idea of the truth behind the wedding of the century. Front row privilege in St. Paul’s Cathedral was given [music] to Diana’s closest friend, Sarah Ferguson, who knew many of her secrets.
With Diana’s maternal grandmother, Lady Foy, were her sisters, Jane [music] and Sarah. They knew of Diana’s fears the day before the wedding and had comforted her, joking, “Your face is on the tea [music] towels, so you’re too late to chicken out now.” As mother of [music] the bride, Francis Shand Kid, still strikingly attractive, returned in triumph to the court, which had virtually [music] exiled her after her bitter divorce from Diana’s father.
Diana’s grandmother, Lady Famoy, a close confidant of the royal family, had serious [music] doubts about Diana’s suitability as a royal wife. Well, she certainly said so to people. Yes. But I think that that’s the nature of being a courtier. That unfortunately you don’t tell your employers what they don’t want to hear.
Ever the consumate courtier, Lady Foyer’s loyalty to the royal family and particularly to her friend, the queen mother, was absolute. In their minds, Diana was the right choice for Charles. I think it it’s perhaps wrong to say it was an arranged marriage. I just because everybody wanted it doesn’t mean to say it was arranged.
I think the Prince of Wales convinced himself that he loved her. And I think she certainly was in love with him. Whether she was actually really in love with him as a person or whether she was in love with the whole mystique of him being Prince of Wales, I don’t know. She certainly went into it willingly.
She was absolutely determined to marry him. I mean, she didn’t know about Camila, but I think she thought she could win him over. I don’t I I really don’t think anybody would have deterred her. And I think although he did have his doubts, he thought it was his duty and [music] that really she was ideal and he must go ahead with it.
I mean, I think she’s changed a great deal and I think it was a great shock for her to discover she couldn’t really make her husband love her and they were actually completely unsuited. I don’t know if you remember that interview they gave and um you know Prince Charles saying oh that she was absolutely perfect and loved the country and all this kind of thing and I mean it turned out of course she wasn’t like that at all and so they didn’t have a single interest in common >> some of the central participants knew all was not as it seemed the bride and
groom his parents and Robert Runy Archbishop of Canterbury who married claimed the wedding was the stuff that fairy tales are made of. Later, he told his biographer that he believed it was an arranged marriage, that the couple were ill-matched, that Charles was marrying primarily to produce an heir to the throne, but he hoped Diana would grow into the role.
Both families had achieved an excellent piece of donastic family planning. The queen had satisfactorily married off her 32-year-old son, and the divided Spencers had seen their daughter marry into royalty. But saying goodbye to him on a trip to Australia, the sad truth was beginning to intrude on her romantic dreams.
The warning signals had been ignored. Diana was left sobbing. Charles had just taken a goodbye call from his mistress, Camila Parker BS. From the start, Diana was the focus of much public attention, a foretaste of greater pressures to come. Diana, later accused of manipulating the press, was a recent convert to the game.
All that mattered to her then was being part of the dynamic duo, The Good Team. For Charles, the media was there to serve his interests. knowing for years that the camera is poking at you from every quarter and recording every twitch you make. So you can get used to a certain extent and on those occasions you accept that that’s part of it.
I think if you don’t try to work out in your own mind some kind of method for existing and surviving this kind of thing, you you would go mad. I think >> and so in the end you do get used to it. But I don’t know you find that now six months you’re beginning to get used to it. >> Just it is I suppose one of the most important things you’re going to have to adjust to really isn’t it? >> Of course. Yes.
>> And Prince Charles has been a great help to you in that terror strength. Whatever support Charles gave was clearly insufficient. One person who might have guided her through the times she now calls the dark ages was Princess Grace of Monaco. Based on her own experience of a life under the microscope, Grace took the nervous girl aside and gently warned her, “Don’t worry, dear. It will get worse.
” When Grace died tragically after a stroke which caused fatal injuries in a car crash in September 1982, Diana personally asked the Queen for permission to represent her at the funeral. Privately, Diana was unable to bear the pressures of her life. A few months after her wedding, she threw herself down the stairs at Sandringham.
So you have so much pain inside yourself that you try and hurt yourself on the outside because you want help, but it’s the wrong help you’re asking for. People see it as crying wolf or attention seeking and they think because you’re in the media all the time, you’ve got enough attention in vertic.
But I was actually crying out cuz I wanted to get better in order to go forward and continue my duty and my role as wife, mother, princess at Wells. Diana wanted to remold herself into a visible queen in the making. At the state opening of Parliament in 1984, she appeared with her hair in an upswept shinor, but the publicity eclipsed the serious nature of the occasion.
Princess Margaret scolded her, saying, “Don’t ever upstage the queen again. Charles’s friends criticized her appearance. Columnist Gene Rook accused Diana of becoming a living daily recycled Barbie doll. Diana is still nicknamed Barbie by some of the enemy camp. Charles spent more time hunting and playing polo.
Diana suspected that this was an excuse to see more of Camila as these occasions were written into his diary before any public engagements were added. [cheering] >> [cheering] >> Diana and Charles still put on a show of affection in public. [cheering] >> Privately they behaved with the politeness of strangers. Queen Alexandra put up with what King Edward IIIth did.
uh we are living in a different age and women have different expectations and so I think it was rather difficult for somebody who wasn’t brought up in royal circles to cope with this situation u very probably if he’d married a foreign princess she would have just you know looked away turned a blind eye to what was going on and just regarded as her duty to keep the whole thing going >> these were turbulent years for Diana.
She turned for help to a series of friends, advisers, and astrologers. Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, recalls in her book, My Story, that at Balmoral, Diana was tearary and reclusive and out of sorts. Diana’s father was a vital prop in these difficult times when her marriage was disintegrating.
[music] Sadly, he died in March 1992. His funeral was a harrowing occasion for all his family. Prince Charles arrived just in time by helicopter following an alleged private meeting with [music] Camila. Earl Spencer had lived on borrowed time after a brain hemorrhage. And seeing William the heir in line growing up was precious to him.
As he recalled [music] in a television interview, >> William was five yesterday. I thought of that. I might not have been there, but I was there and able to ring him up and talk to him on his fifth birthday, which was great fun. Great day for him. Great day for him. He you would send him a send him a lovely present and maybe he has a happy day and hope to hear all about it from him later on.
>> Diana’s family history had been marred by feuds. She, her sisters, and brother disliked Rain, their stepmother. Although today she is one of Diana’s [music] circle of strong women friends. Charles did not add his name to Diana’s touching floral tribute. His message was attached to a wreath sent by the Queen and Prince Phillip.
Charles attended Earl. Spencer’s memorial service with his [music] wife and sons. The show of togetherness was deceptive. Charles had felt obliged to join Diana for appearances sake at other Spencer family gatherings in the past. On his father’s death, Diana’s brother Charles became Earl Spencer. He took control at Olrop and later married the model Victoria Lockwood.
Prince Charles accompanied Diana to their wedding in 1989. Their marriage ended in separation after the fragile Victoria became unable to cope with her problems. They too fell prey to the Spencer family curse of unhappy marriages. On holiday with King Juan Carlos of Spain and his family, Diana’s frailties left her struggling to hide her unhappiness and her bulimia, whilst projecting a happy family image out of duty.
>> Unloved by her husband, Diana found comfort in the arms of a young officer, James Hwitt. His looks are strikingly reminiscent of her father as a young man. Diana’s love affair with James Hwitt lasted on and off for 5 years. When she addressed the wives of the Gulf War soldiers in 1991, Diana was thinking of her lover Huitt, then a tank commander in the Gulf, often in the line of fire.
There is nothing of course that I can say which will fill that gap in your lives. And to say that I along with so many others at home understand and sympathize with you at this time sounds very inadequate and rather too easy. But it is the least I can do and I do feel for you with all my heart. >> Diana admitted her affair with Huitt.
>> Did your relationship go beyond a close friendship? Yes, it did. Yes. >> Were you unfaithful? >> Yes, I adored him. Yes, I was in love with him. >> Despite what was going on privately in their lives, Diana still obeyed the whims of palace and government, accompanying Charles on foreign tours to fly the flag for Britain and the monarchy.
She admitted she had suffered from rampant bulimia in these years. Eating in public, especially a large number of lavish courses at a banquet, put her under particular pressures. But friction in the marriage grew over Diana’s escalating popularity. Diana claimed that Charles was a proud man. He found her ascendants too hard to bear, and he ended the double act.
Anxious to protect the public from the truth, a propaganda campaign was mounted to discount stories of serious problems. The palace insisted that a marriage which Charles now admits had irretrievably broken down by 1986 was happy and wholesome. Sarah Bradford believes the deception was unwise. >> It was much more of a shock once everything came out, wasn’t it? But I think that whatever happened, it would have been very bad because after we all had this fairy tale image, didn’t we? And then when the facts came out, I think everybody was really pretty
shocked. >> [applause] >> It was at a polo match in India that Diana stopped pretending. Expecting to kiss his wife. She deafly turned her head away. The big lie was being exposed. Diana had an ally in her friend, the Duchess of York. They had shared many confidences before marrying into the House of Windsor, and as sisters-in-law understood each other’s distress.
Unknown to the public, they had made a packact to leave their husband that spring. Both deeply unhappy, Diana and Fergie had resolved to break from palace control and begin a fresh in a search for happiness which had so far eluded them. In March 1992, Fergie unceremoniously left the royal family, but Diana waited.
She had her secret weapon already primed. A group of friends had told the hidden side of her marriage to the author Andrew Morton, whose book would be published that summer. One of those friends was her former flatmate, Carolyn Pride. Diana attended her wedding to William Bartholomew and became godmother to their son.
Caroline had witnessed the personal destruction Diana’s exalted marriage had caused >> when the Morton book came out. So, I’m told that the princess’s friends um talked to Andrew Morton because they felt that the truth should be told about this marriage, that it was a sham. And they all thought, I’m told, that the princess would then leave the royal family and have another life.
But this didn’t happen. And I don’t know whether she looked into the abyss and thought, I don’t know that I want to go, that I I want to be separated, but I don’t want to go. And so she backtracked. Diana chose to send symbolic messages to reinforce the story she knew would soon be told.
She visited the Taj Mahal where Charles had posed in 1981, shortly before his wedding. She called her visit a healing experience. The donastic marriage that had been presented to the world as a love story had proved disastrous for both parties. After Diana, her true story, the royal family faced an escalating drama. But with hindsight could have prevented the final act.
I think most of us feel perhaps that they should have been told to get on with it. Um I think there has been a problem of communication and I think that people have found it very difficult to say tell the Prince of Wales what they think he should do. The Queen’s not given to probing into other people’s private lives and that includes the lives of her children.
Um, I think she was taken by surprised and very upset um that it wasn’t working out. >> Diana’s grandmother, Lady Famoy, had told others that Diana was an actress and a schemer. She died in 1993 and had been the crucial link to the royal family through her friendship with the Queen Mother. Lady Foy had fallen out with her granddaughter Diana over the Morton book, but they were reconciled shortly before her death.
The old lady also patched up a long rift with her daughter Francis, dating from her divorce when Lady Foy had testified against her over the custody of the children. Charles genuinely grieved for Ruth Foy. She had given him and the royal family the kind of unquestioning loyalty he expected from his wife. After exposing the sham marriage in Diana her true story, Diana suffered reprisals.
A tape of an intimate conversation between Diana and an old friend James Gilby was made public. Her friendships with other men were also made public. A series of phone calls made to the art dealer Oliver Hall were leaked to the media. sir. >> Her relationship with rugby player Will Carling became front page news. Shortly afterwards, he separated from his wife, Julia.
After the publication of the notorious [music] Camilleate tape, Diana found her role increasingly marginalized as [music] Charles’s office orchestrated a relaunch campaign. Following a disastrous tour of Korea in November [music] 1992, the Wales would never again be sent abroad as joint representatives for Britain.
>> John Major brokered a deal whereby the waring couple would live separately but would preserve the official side of their union. He hoped that with arrangement Diana could still become queen. >> Constitutional positions are unaffected. The princess still appeared with the royal family at important events such as the state visit of the king of Malaysia.
Look at this guy. Come on. This is the last time Diana joined the House [music] of Windsor for such an occasion. Her potential as a great queen consort all [music] too sadly evident. Diana has [music] said in her own words that in her marriage three was a crowd and the dominance [music] of Camila Parker Bowls had grown to the extent that Charles was prepared to place his affair with her in the public domain.
Charles’s cooperation with Jonathan Dimbleby for a candid television interview and biography took the princess in the palace by surprise. Did you try to be faithful and honorable to your wife when you took on the vow of marriage? Yes, absolutely. And were you? Yes, [music] until it became irretrievably broken down.
Diana’s decision in December 1993 to withdraw, at least temporarily, from public life, climaxed with a dramatic speech, which she planned to make at a charity function. The palace and the prime minister’s office maneuvered behind the scenes to make sure she was stage managed as smoothly as possible.
Her friend, Lord Archer’s role was to steer her through this traumatic event. >> We got her on stage at the end of the meal. Um, and I introduced her and I simply said, “Her Royal Highness, Princess of Wales, would like to make a statement >> and she was trembling >> and she was in she was very very the whole thing was.
Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales, would like to make a short statement. Your Royal Highness [applause] Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure to be here with you sharing in your successes of the past year. When I started my public life 12 years ago, I understood the media might be interested in what I did. I realized then their attention would inevitably focus on both our private and public lives.
But I was not aware of how overwhelming that attention would become, nor the extent to which it would affect both my public duties and my personal life in a manner that’s been hard to bear. At the end of this year, when I’ve completed my diary of official engagements, I will be reducing the extent of the public life I’ve led so far.
Obviously, I attach great importance to my charity work and I intend to focus on a smaller range of areas in the future. Over the next few months, I will be seeking a more suitable way of combining a meaningful public role with hopefully a more private life. My first priority will continue to be our children, William and Harry, who deserve as much love and care and attention as I am able to give, as well as an appreciation of the tradition into which they were born.
I would like to add that this decision has been reached with a full understanding of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh who have always shown me kindness and support. I hope you can find it in your hearts to understand and to give me the time and space that has been lacking in recent years. I couldn’t stand here today and make this sort of statement without acknowledging the heartfelt support I’ve been given by the public in general.
Your kindness and affection has carried me through some of the most difficult periods and always your love and care has eased that journey. And for that I thank you from the bottom of my heart. >> I mean this was pindropping stuff because they hadn’t been expecting it. They’d come to celebrate a charity function.
They hadn’t expected a constitutional announcement and they burst into thunderous applause. And I could see her trembling. [applause] >> [applause] [applause] >> Your Royal Highness, I know I speak for all of us when I say we sympathize with the decision you have taken. >> [applause] >> Whatever course your life now takes, be assured there are many charities and individuals all over the world who will remain grateful for the dedicated service and care you have brought to everything you do.
On behalf of those people who cannot be with us today, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales. >> [applause] >> Lord Archer took control of the situation. >> Follow me, Mom. Walked down into the audience and she just followed and they remained standing and cheered her all out of the room. Took her back to the palace and I remember leaving the palace, I don’t know, 20 minutes later, thinking, “God, poor woman.
She’s gone through all of that and now she’s on her own and no one there at all. I mean, no one, it’s not as if I mean, I suppose some people who read stories about princesses think there are hundreds of people running around getting food and turning on televisions and bringing people in to meet her. There was one man who I think was called the ECU and he left at 6.
So, she she’s in this great big house all on her own. And I remember going back to my wife and saying, you know, wouldn’t it be lovely to take her to dinner? Of course, we can’t you can’t ring up a princess and say, “Would you like to come to dinner?” But I I remember that evening vividly thinking, “She must be very lonely.
” And then I reported what had happened during the day back to the prime minister. And that was the end of it. She in her typical good manner, she’s beautifully mannerable, sent a handwritten note round here the next day with a small present saying, “Thank you for taking care of me during the day.” Again, typical of her beautiful manners.
Diana returned to public life the following [music] year. The need to honor the brave and the dead of World War II meant that she took her place with other royals on commemorative [music] occasions. Seen behaving with respect and dignity at these sad remembrances alongside the queen. There is a sense of loss.
Diana is the queen that never was. The queen had persuaded Diana [music] to stay within the royal family after the Morton book. The official separation was meant to be permanent. However, 3 years later, the queen changed her view. Divorce was inevitable. This shocked Diana when it was eventually announced. >> I don’t want a divorce.
But obviously, we need clarity on a situation. that has been of enormous discussion over the last three years in particular. So all I say to that is that I await my husband’s decision of which way we are all going to go. Diana did not agree to a divorce until February 1996 when she could no longer continue defying the queen whose letter sent in December had the private force of a royal command.
Diana told friends she felt under pressure to get out. Well, I don’t think she was removed from the royal family. After all, I think she removed herself, although perhaps in the end she changed her mind and didn’t want to get divorced. And I think made it plain that she didn’t. Um, over the years, I think she’d given the impression certainly that she wanted out.
And I think as always in these divorce situations, who wants to make the first move? because the person who makes the most move has to pay the most usually. >> I think that’s perfectly true. She didn’t want to divorce. She saw no need to divorce. She felt that the separate state the separation status gave her a position still.
Um it was important to the to William and Harry. Everything Charles and D have done has been for William and Harry. Um, and there was therefore no need to to rush into a divorce. >> I mean, I think that most people thought, to be quite frank, that the queen should have banged their heads together longer and said, “Well, you know, there you are.
You must get on with it. After all, we’re not talking about two people who live cheek by jowl in a tower block and have no personal space. Plenty of room for that.” So, the trouble was it just went on until it was poisonous. As part of her divorce settlement, Diana received £15 million. At their final meeting, she dissuaded Charles from having a notetaker present.
She told him she had always loved him, she had no regrets about marrying him, and she was agreeing to a divorce against her wishes. >> She was an asset we could never have dreamed would be so good. And you see it when the crowds turn out and their reaction to her. I think most people, and I may be wrong, but my reading is that most people are very sorry about the divorce.
They’re very sad about the divorce. They would have liked that to go on. They would have liked them to go on as Prince and Princess of Wales. >> With the divorce, hopes of Diana becoming queen ended. She had claimed that the establishment she married into saw her as a non-starter for Queen. Her huge pulling power abroad did not secure her future at home.
I’d like to be a queen of people’s hearts in people’s hearts, but I don’t see myself being queen of this country. >> If she doesn’t want to be queen, she doesn’t want to be queen. You say that she doesn’t um like the idea. I personally would have thought she’d be rather good at it, just as she’s been extremely good at being a princess of of Wales.
In 1992 and still an official member of the royal family, Diana appeared on the Buckingham Palace balcony for the last time. On her divorce, the Queen removed the title her royal highness. It was an unpopular move. >> As the mother of of a future king, she should be accorded the title HR, her royal highness.
Others decided that it was not to be. Um, but it looked more and more like a an act of punishment really for the way the princesses behaved. Donna, of course, indicated at the start of the process back in February 1996 that she would be willing to give up her title because she felt she she was taking a backseat from now on.
But I think she always hoped that it would never come to that. I think she felt that she needed to have that title principally as I say for Prince William and Prince Harry’s sake. >> Once you are divorced, you are after all no longer a real member of the family. Are you in anybody’s family? This is true. And therefore, you no longer in their view have the right to that title.
But um I think that it did appear petty. And there is also the problem of her being the mother of the future king. And so some people thought that it would have been better to have left the HR. When she heard that she would no longer be her royal highness, Diana cut over a 100 charities of which she was royal patron or president.
Her presence will be [music] sadly missed and her love and affection will never be replaced. It meant an awful lot to the status she felt of her charities and it was because of that the removal of the title that in fact she decided to cut so severely back on all her charity work and her charity commitments. The campaign for a better understanding of AIDS also found a sympathetic supporter very early on.
Diana was not afraid [music] of controversial issues. Public concern and confusion about the facts had been growing. But pictures like this did more than a thousand reassuring words from doctors. Now officially out of the royal family, Diana’s future role is uncertain. On a private trip to [music] Argentina, she had hoped to improve relations with Britain.
Some felt that she lacked the diplomatic training and experience [music] for such a mission, no matter how well she was received. Without a formal role, Diana’s foreign trips can leave her open to political wrangling. This was the case when Diana accompanied her friend Jamaima Khan to her husband Imran’s hospital in Pakistan. There are problems.
I mean, there was that business when she went to see Imran and Jamaima Khan in Pakistan and got very involved in the politics. She didn’t mean to, but simply by the act of going to see them, that was regarded as a political act in Pakistan. So, she’s not really wise enough in the ways of diplomacy to get herself along in those sort of situations.
>> Diana’s international acclaim is particularly evident in the United States. This is one of the nicest British invasions that the White House has ever had. It’s because she is a woman who has had a tireless commitment to the homeless, to AIDS, cancer, leprosy, and other health issues. >> Hillary Clinton is one of the strong women who give Diana inspiration.
As her life changes, Diana has moved into a new circle of friends, [music] women with international experience. One is Lady Elsa Boka, the widow of a British ambassador. Her diplomatic advice is invaluable to Diana. Another discreet [music] friend is Britishborn magazine editor Liz Tilburis, her constant companion in New York.
Divorced and [music] stripped of her title, Diana is still treated in public like royalty. Although many close to the royal [music] family see her as an outlaw, an inconvenient woman now cast aside by the most powerful family on earth. >> I don’t think she has a great deal of contact with the royal family, but of course she cannot isolate herself totally from them and she’s always going to be part of them because of the mother as a mother of William and Harry.
So, she will still be seen, albeit increasingly rarely, I think, um, with the royal family on certain state occasions when William and Harry are there, too. But there isn’t a great deal of contact. There really there really doesn’t need to be. I don’t think they want a great deal of contact with her, and she doesn’t want a great deal of contact with them.
>> For Diana, Christmas and Easter will mean separations from [music] her children, who spend those holidays with the Queen, who is grooming William for kingship. I think that [music] um he’ll be properly trained and I think that what you know if you have that position, you have those privileges, you just get on with it.
On his accession to the throne in years to come, William [music] might restore the title HR taken from his mother on her divorce. Maybe Prince William one day, King William might feel differently and it’s in his power so to do because the king or the queen is the found of all honor. Therefore, they can do what they want for this is concerned.
>> Every man she’s seen with is viewed as a potential husband. Diana’s personal life is often the subject of conjecture. >> Had to be Lord Mega Rich. Wonderful, wouldn’t he? [laughter] Um it is very difficult because how [music] does any man cope with being um Mr. Princess Diana? It’s it’s a terrific problem for her.
>> She had an unhappy first marriage. She’d like to make a very happy second marriage. Perhaps she’d like to have another family, but I don’t think she’s going to rush into it. I mean, this has been it was an extraordinary marriage for her, an extraordinary experience, and it took an extraordinary long time to get out of when it all went wrong.
So I suppose next time she’s got to try and pick the right man. And as she has said herself, she’s always been a very bad picker. >> Diana’s role has been snatched away. She has no husband and no official duty. She is a woman alone, a survivor of misfortune whose message of [music] hope is intertwined with a renewed belief in herself.
Following her success since divorce, there is a chance that the royal family will realize the value [music] of their lost princess and draw her back into the theater of monarchy.
