Her first memory was of plastic, a warm synthetic smell touched off
by sunlight on her stroller. She also remembered visits to the churchyard grave
of the child her parents conceived just before her, a boy who lived barely 10
hours. Had he survived, she often wondered, would she have existed? Or would her
mother, having produced a male heir, have left her husband for another man
sooner than she actually did, breaking up the family before Diana could be born?
She wished she were her oldest sister, the firstborn, the star of the family:
smart, extroverted, unafraid to greet their hated stepmother with an insolent
burp. At nine, Diana would bravely declare that she would marry only once — and
only for love — and never, never divorce. But even as she said that, she stared
out, as she would often do, from beneath her bangs, never quite looking anyone
in the eye. For her parents, once in love, were no longer.
Once upon another time this little girl would grow up and fall in
love and marry a prince and grow so happy for such a splendid moment that the
whole world paused to marvel and rejoice with her, falling in love with Diana in
love. The sunshine of her shy smile outshone royalty. she became the most famous
woman on earth. But she learned quickly that though she had become a princess
and borne her husband an heir, she could never truly become his queen. And when
she died, suddenly, the day after the 36th anniversary of her christening, the
world, still in love, stopped for a very long moment to grieve.
Why did so many mourn her so, and why do they mourn her still? Was
it because the feats and foibles of British royalty have always been such an
integral part of the world's story — and because Diana acted out the latest
chapters in Britain's thousand-year-old soap opera with such compelling
charisma, with such a facility for manipulation and melodrama? Was it just that:
the flawed heroine vanishes, and we are bereft of narrative? Or was it because
her unexpected end gave emotional resonance to the profuse and sometimes
conflicting details of her intensely scrutinized life, uncovering omens through
tragic retrospective, inchoate but nevertheless consoling proofs of destiny and
meaning? Or perhaps all of that is not quite the heart of the grieving. Perhaps
the mourning was over something simple yet profound, something cosmic yet
common...
What cannot be denied is that in the beginning there was majesty,
that fascinating natural resource of her homeland, a country celebrated by its
greatest bard as "this England ... this teeming womb of royal kings, fear'd by
their breed and famous by their birth." Still, majesty is a concept that
requires re-enchantment every generation or so — and in this time the spell was
Diana.
And then came Diana, the girl chosen to refresh the line, to bear
its heirs, to be the new smiling face of the family. Despite the stately
filigree Elizabeth had embroidered onto the Windsor facade, Diana found the
dynasty dysfunctional, uncertain of its work, in truth more a firm than a
family. Diana tried to serve. she tried to persevere. She tried to be dutiful.
But in the end, she would not obey.
This disastrous turn of events nevertheless failed to dissipate
popular fascination with the British royals. Indeed, it intrigued the world even
more. For was this not to be expected of the line that had leavened history with
domestic dramas both delicious and dolorous? Henry VIII and his six wives; the
rivalry of a Virgin Queen and her all too lusty Scots cousin; the madness of
George III and the cupidity of his sons; Victoria and the brood she produced to
rival the Hapsburgs, marrying, marrying,marrying all over Europe.
Diana's catastrophic dalliance with the Windsors reverberated with
history. It seemed as if the marriage and bitter divorce of Charles and Diana
were inevitable evolutionary steps in the centuries-long intercourse between the
Spencers and the Crown. For not only did the Spencers trace their descent from
the same kings the Windsors claimed as ancestors, but in the 17th century alone,
four of Diana's forebears were royal mistresses: Charles II was linked to three
Spencer women, his brother James II to one. In the 18th century, Georgiana
Spencer, the daughter of the first Earl of Spencer, scandalized the country not
only with her many infidelities but also with her affair with the Prince of
Wales, who may have been the father of one of her children. The same pathetic
prince, after being abandoned by Georgiana, would pursue her sister Henrietta,
who spurned him amid a comic seduction. In this century, a Prince of Wales again
paid court to a Diana forebear: Lady Cynthia Hamilton, who chose instead to
become the wife of the seventh Earl of Spencer and thus Diana's grandmother. The
prince eventually turned to the American divorcee Wallis Simpson — and had to
give up his throne for the woman he loved. What if Lady Cynthia had married the
prince? The more cogent question is: Should not her decision have served as
warning to her granddaughter to avoid a royal marriage?
History and its omens hovered around the marriage of Charles and
Diana like uninvited guests bearing ill tidings. Tradition called for a wedding
in Westminster Abbey. But Charles did not want to marry in Westminster,
preferring St. Paul's Cathedral. He pointed out that a royal marriage had once
been celebrated in the old St. Paul's: in the 16th century, Arthur, Prince of
Wales, had married his Spanish bride Catherine there. It was an acceptable
precedent — but an unfortunate one. Arthur died before the marriage was
consummated, and Catherine, a prize because she was the daughter of Ferdinand
and Isabella of Spain, was eventually wed to the new English heir, becoming the
unhappy first of Henry VIII's six wives.
As for Diana, she wanted to avoid Westminster for reasons of
personal history: her parents were married there in 1954. At that wedding, the
Bishop of Norwich told the couple, "You are making an addition to the hoe life
of your country on which, above all others, our national life depends." It
turned out to be a blessing without efficacy. Indeed, the opposite was visited
upon the Spencers. Diana wanted no part of that unintended curse. And so Charles
and Diana were married in St. Paul's — in the end, a futile dodge.
The personal history of Diana before the Windsors was, of course, a
premonition of the life of Diana the princess. In 1982, the year after the royal
wedding, the journalist Penny Junor was almost apologetic about writing the
biography of a 20-year-old "who has spent 19 of those years in almost total
obscurity." What kind of life could possibly be told? And yet the details she
related then possess a fatalistic glow now, hinting at the troubled Diana who
would emerge over the next 15 years. While admiring of its subject, Junor's book
nevertheless draws attention to Diana's imperfect virtues. "Diana was a
compulsive washer," Junor wrote matter-of-factly, before cataloging how, in
boarding school, Diana would not let a day go by without bathing, no matter how
late it was, sneaking into the bathroom after lights were out even though it was
strictly forbidden by the school, which allowed the girls to shower only three
times a week. "She also had a compulsion for washing clothes" — and did more
washing than any other student at school When she had time to visit her sisters,
Diana would do their laundry too. After her marriage, she would write to an
ex-nanny saying, "I do get annoyed at not being able to do my washing and
general ironing." At nine years old, she was dusting the nursery to keep a less
than thorough nanny out of trouble when her father came to check the room.
Goodness may explain some of this fastidiousness. But only some. After all, this
girl became the woman who admitted to bulimia and a regular program of colonic
irrigation.
The child Diana, like the adult princess, had a capacity for drama
and a penchant to seek comeuppance — locking a hated nanny in a room where she
would not be discovered till evening, throwing the underclothes of an au pair
onto the roof of the house and watching with glee as the items were rescued. She
was an indifferent student: she froze at exams, was terrible at French, even did
badly at needlework. But her limitations would serve her well. A penchant for
popular culture and romance novels cultivated what many would later praise as
her "common touch," her ability to talk to ordinary people about things they
cared about. In school she was recognized as a do-gooder and received
seldom-awarded prizes for helpfulness. As a teenager, she learned quickly that
loving children was not the same as being able to care for them. She took her
training as a kindergarten teacher very seriously.
She was aware of how things failed to work — even things inspired
by love. The infidelities and disappointments that befell her family were proof
enough. Her mother lost custody of her children because the court saw fit to
punish her for adultery. Her father chose to marry a woman his children
detested. Diana knew what it was like to be six years old and unable to explain
to her friends why her mother was no longer around, how even her most courageous
front could snap in a fit of anger. She knew what it was to be caught crying in
secret. But she wanted to get family right. And when, one day, her prince came,
she believed she had her opportunity, risked all, stumbled into the very
nightmare she had sought to escape — and lost.
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in
its own way." that declaration comes down to us from the magisterial heights of
Tolstoy. But it is a false one. The happy family is a protean myth, shifting
shape with the fashion of the times. The reality is that every unhappy family is
alike. And, alas, unhappy families abound, trapped in cycles of aspiration and
disappointment, of love and loss. The most augustly unhappy family in the world
thus becomes a spectacular mirror for us all.
That is what is at the heart of our grief: simpler and yet more
profound than a fascination with splendor; cosmic and yet as close to us as our
parents, our brothers, our sisters, our children. In the ruins of Diana's life,
we see the shadows and anxieties of the lives we are trying to build together —
as husbands, as wives, as sons, as daughters. We shudder over our sorrow for
Diana as if we were caught in paroxysms of self-pity. In embarrassment, we deny.
In truth, we recognize.