A teacher friend and I were discussing nonfiction recently,
and I mentioned that I was currently reading my second biography of Princess
Diana. He chuckled and asked, “Why?”
“… I don’t know,” I realized. “I’m not sure why.”
“You don’t know,” he said incredulously, “or you don’t want
to admit it?”
The truth is that I really don’t know why I’ve been reading
so voraciously about Princess Diana’s life.
It started with a TIME magazine article about the new biography of
Prince Charles that just came out.
Charles has a very interesting and complicated life, one that only seems
to become more complicated as his mother The Queen ages and his son has
children, and I enjoy reading about it.
Sometimes I've wondered if Charles gets a bad rap due to his presence in
the media opposite Diana, so this kind of naturally led to me being curious
about her life.
I originally ventured to the library looking for a biography
written after Diana's death in 1997. I
found that in Brown's The Diana Chronicles, but I was also drawn to Morton's
1992 biography, written not only before Diana died but before she and Charles
even divorced! Fascinated, I grabbed it -- and ploughed through it in roughly 3
days.
The portrait it paints is of a depressed, downtrodden woman
who is utterly alone, and it's incredibly sad.
The reading experience was fascinating but difficult at times; it's hard
to read about her life and know that she isn't some made up character and
instead she's really experiencing these things.
Brown's The Diana Chronicles was something else entirely,
and the contrast is quite striking.
Brown’s biography is much harsher, much more judgmental, in
comparison to Morton’s. This makes sense
in retrospect: Diana later admitted that much of the material in “Her True
Story” actually came from her as opposed to or via the friends credited in the
book. In that way, she was able to
cushion her appearance to the public; Brown offers her no such sanctuary.
The Diana Chronicles is also from a media perspective;
Morton is associated with the media, for sure, but he seems to also be an
extreme Diana sympathizer, willing to shelter both her and her image in
exchange for her favor. Brown appears
much more removed, more journalistic than anything else, and in doing so,
Diana’s story changes. Where Morton
offered exclusively Diana’s opinion and reflection on most topics, Brown
expands on events, providing different sides of the stories and drama and
interjecting her own opinions about how events played out.
I think what makes Brown’s account so interesting is that
she is constantly suspicious of events, regardless of their origins. Sometimes
she has Diana in mind, questioning if the Princess was really as depressed or
innocent as she seemed; at other times, she has the Royal Family in the
crosshairs, accusing them of destroying opportunities or failing to support the
Princess. There are moments where Brown
deviates entirely from accepted versions of events, such as in discussions of
who visited Charles just weeks before the first famous Royal Wedding; here she
offers her own analysis of events, citing evidence and uncovering stories
previously absent from the record. In
this way, her book is absolutely fascinating, perhaps more so than “Her True
Story.”
At their hearts, both books ask the same question: Why is
the world so fascinated with Diana? Both
illustrate distinctly different times: Her True Story came out in 1992, years
before Diana died, and The Diana Chronicles was published in 2007, about ten
years after her untimely deal. Both are
widely read and remain interesting, even when the fairytale wedding that
captured the world was close to 35 years ago and Diana herself passed almost 20
years ago.
Her life and death continue to hold sway over the public,
and the question of why remains at the forefront of the discussion.
Diana famously said that she wanted to be the “queen of
people’s hearts,” and Tony Blair crowned her the People’s Princess just after
her death. Both titles demonstrate that
allure which Diana embodied (and both also demonstrate why Brown pulls in a lot
of psychology in her analysis of Diana’s personality, too). She was
the People’s Princess – she was accessible to the public, a huge change from
royalty of the past, and that made her popular in ways beyond anyone’s
expectation or control. Analyses of her
life and person make it clear that she thrived on this exposure, wanting to be
connected to the people, for good or ill.
(That feeds into the conspiracy theory community surrounding her death
too, though that’s a different topic entirely.)
I understand this about Diana and her life, but I remain
curious about why I find her fascinating.
The unfortunate answer remains that, deep down, I’m not really
sure.
I remember where I was when Diana died. There are few moments in my life like this,
where the outside world embedded itself into my memory. It was August 1997, which means I was only 8
years old, and I was spending the weekend with a friend's family at their
lakehouse. The crash happened in the
middle of the night in Paris, which means it was early evening for us, and I
recall watching it on the news. I can
still picture the living room where we stood, oddly enough; the TV was canted
in one corner near the deck, its blinds moving gently with a breeze from the
open door. The ceiling light made the room seem almost yellowy, and I remember
seeing the black car, crushed, on the screen.
I had been playing with someone's knee brace but stopped when I realized
how upset the adults were. If I remember
right, I think my friend's mom called my mom to discuss the accident.
I didn't know this was such a significant moment at the time. Looking back, it's easy to see based on how
others responded, but even so, I didn't really attach a lot of meaning to it
until I was far older. Diana's life was
important, her death defining. The world
changed, just a little.
Even so, even now,
so much about Diana remains unknown. She
has been picked apart for years, and yet it seems like so few actually knew the
‘real’ Diana, whatever that might mean.
She’s so wildly public, and yet she’s so alone; she’s one of the most
discussed people on the planet, and yet she’s unknowable.
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