Diana in Death

POOR Lady Diana Spencer. Hers was truly a bewildering fate. Born into one of Britain’s most ancient and aristocratic families, she seemed destined through marrying Prince Charles to be a beautiful and fitting Queen of England. The whole world instead became privy to the infidelities of this royal marriage and the gossip surrounding its messy breakup. A drunken chauffeur in Paris then had an accident at high speed, killing himself and his passengers, Lady Diana and Dodi Fayed, the man with whom she had been having some sort of romance that summer.

Mass emotion is always mysterious. One of its essential features, though, is the conversion of hard facts into wish fulfillment. A much troubled and vulnerable personality, Lady Diana had been anorexic and on occasion had done herself physical injury. Mixing charm and manipulation, she had leaked to the media all manner of private stories harmful to herself and the royal family. Whether or not she realized it, she was establishing herself with 006Daximum publicity as a woman wronged. World literature testifies to the lasting power of that image.

About the Author

David Pryce-Jones

David Pryce-Jones (1936–2025) was a British author and commentator and served as a senior editor of National Review.

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POOR Lady Diana Spencer. Hers was truly a bewildering fate. Born into one of Britain’s most ancient and aristocratic families, she seemed destined through marrying Prince Charles to be a beautiful and fitting Queen of England. The whole world instead became privy to the infidelities of this royal marriage and the gossip surrounding its messy breakup. A drunken chauffeur in Paris then had an accident at high speed, killing himself and his passengers, Lady Diana and Dodi Fayed, the man with whom she had been having some sort of romance that summer.

Mass emotion is always mysterious. One of its essential features, though, is the conversion of hard facts into wish fulfillment. A much troubled and vulnerable personality, Lady Diana had been anorexic and on occasion had done herself physical injury. Mixing charm and manipulation, she had leaked to the media all manner of private stories harmful to herself and the royal family. Whether or not she realized it, she was establishing herself with 006Daximum publicity as a woman wronged. World literature testifies to the lasting power of that image.