Okay, that last statement was probably over the top. But I really believe she did what she did because she liked the publicity and the public love that she missed in life. Diana profited from her bad marriage although she never seemed to understand that her children should have made it impossible to regret her matrimonial choice. I believe that she believed that her marriage was a forever thing. Not just because that's what all brides think but because she married into a family for whom at the time divorce was anathema. But to give Diana her due, when she was fed up with her role as one-half of an unhappy union, she determined to obtain that divorce, although she seemed ambivalent about it until the end. Maybe she thought that the Queen would intercede and demand that the Prince of Wales love his wife.
I don't know and that really is not the reason I am writing about Diana.
A new book by Australian journalist John Morgan charges that Diana and Dodi Fayed were murdered. Not new charges. Not new evidence.
I do not know if driver Heni Paul was drunk. But I do know that while driving at an unsafe speed, Paul lost control of the car. I believe that might have saved Diana's life. I suspect that her condition worsened because of the poor roadside assistance she received from the French ambulance service, but I am not convinced that Diana would have survived even with the best medical care in the world.
I am convinced that the controversy continues because Diana sells books, magazines, and made-for-TV movies. Morgan may be the latest in a long line of men who used Diana for their own purposes, including Tony Blair who first proclaimed her the "People's Princess."
The French may well have bungled the medical care Diana received and Henri Paul's autopsy but that doesn't mean they were in the pay of British secret service or that the Royal Family launched an assassination plot to rid themselves of a woman who wanted out and then refused to go quietly.
Two things were shaken when Diana died: A good part of the dignity that has for so long surrounded the Royal Family and the world's belief in happy endings.
No doubt had Diana survived into middle age, she would have done herself in. She may even have appeared on Dancing with the Stars. But she didn't, so, she remains in our memories as a beautifully dressed, attractive young woman who occasionally did photo calls with small but needy children. That she emphasized with the disenfranchised may have said more about her own inner needs than her desire to improve the lives of others. Her former sister-in-law, the Princess Royal, has devoted her life to a number of charities and causes that have real effect. But no one thinks of her as a "People's Princess."
