Diana, princess of Wales

Diana, princess of Wales (born July 1, 1961, Sandringham, Norfolk, England—died August 31, 1997, Paris, France) was the princess of Wales, former consort (1981–96) of Charles, prince of Wales (later Charles III); mother of the heir apparent to the British throne, Prince William; and one of the foremost celebrities of her day.

(Read Britannica’s interview with Tina Brown about Princess Di.)

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Early life and education

Diana was born at Park House, the home that her parents rented on Queen Elizabeth II’s estate at Sandringham and where Diana’s childhood playmates were the queen’s younger sons, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward. As the third child and youngest daughter of Edward John Spencer, Viscount Althorp, heir to the 7th Earl Spencer, and his first wife, Frances Ruth Burke Roche (daughter of the 4th Baron Fermoy), she was part of British nobility. Her parents’ troubled marriage ended in divorce when Diana was a child, and she, along with her brother and two sisters, remained with her father. She became Lady Diana Spencer when her father succeeded to the earldom in 1975. Riddlesworth Hall (near Thetford, Norfolk) and West Heath School (Sevenoaks, Kent) provided the young Diana’s schooling. After attending the finishing school of Chateau d’Oex at Montreux, Switzerland, Diana returned to England and became a kindergarten assistant at the fashionable Young England school in Pimlico.

Marriage and divorce

She renewed her contacts with the royal family, and her friendship with Charles grew in 1980. On February 24, 1981, their engagement was announced, and her beauty and shy demeanour—which earned her the nickname “Shy Di”—made her an instant sensation with the media and the public. The couple married in St. Paul’s Cathedral on July 29, 1981, in a globally televised ceremony watched by an audience numbering in the hundreds of millions. Their first child, Prince William Arthur Philip Louis of Wales, was born on June 21, 1982, and their second, Prince Henry (“Harry”) Charles Albert David, on September 15, 1984.

“Princess Di” rapidly evolved into an icon of grace, elegance, and glamour. Exuding natural charm and charisma, she used her celebrity status to aid numerous charitable causes, and her changing hairstyles and wardrobe made her a fashion trendsetter. Behind the scenes, however, marital difficulties between the princess and prince were growing. Diana struggled with severe postnatal depression, low self-esteem, eating disorders, and the mounting strain of being constantly pursued by both the official media royal-watchers and the tabloid press, particularly the paparazzi. The marital breakdown became increasingly apparent amid mutual recriminations, tell-all biographies, and admissions of infidelity on both sides, and the couple formally separated in 1992. Diana presented her side in Andrew Morton’s controversial book Diana: Her True Story (1992) and in an unusually candid television interview with Martin Bashir in 1995. After prolonged negotiations that left Diana with a substantial financial settlement but without the title Her Royal Highness, the couple’s divorce became final on August 28, 1996.

“The People’s Princess” and charity work

After the divorce, Diana maintained her high public profile and continued many of the activities she had earlier undertaken on behalf of charities, supporting causes as diverse as the arts, children’s issues, and AIDS patients. She also was involved in efforts to ban land mines. To ensure that William and Harry had “an understanding of people’s emotions, their insecurities, people’s distress, and their hopes and dreams,” Diana brought her sons with her to hospitals, homeless shelters, and orphanages. To acquaint them with the world outside royal privilege, she took them to fast food restaurants and on public transportation. Her compassion, personal warmth, humility, and accessibility earned her the sobriquet “the People’s Princess.”

Death and funeral

Long one of the most-photographed women in the world, Diana’s unprecedented popularity both in Britain and abroad continued after her divorce. Although she used that celebrity to great effect in promoting her charitable work, the media (in particular the paparazzi) were often intrusive. It was while attempting to evade pursuing journalists that Diana was killed, along with her companion, Dodi Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul, in an automobile accident in a tunnel under the streets of Paris in 1997.

Though the photographers were initially blamed for causing the accident, a French judge in 1999 cleared them of any wrongdoing, instead faulting Paul, who was found to have had a blood alcohol level over the legal limit at the time of the crash and to have taken prescription drugs incompatible with alcohol. In 2006 a Scotland Yard inquiry into the incident also concluded that the driver was at fault. In April 2008, however, a British inquest jury ruled both the driver and the paparazzi guilty of unlawful killing through grossly negligent driving, though it found no evidence of a conspiracy to kill Diana or Fayed, an accusation long made by Fayed’s father.

Her death produced unprecedented expressions of public mourning, testifying to her enormous hold on the British national psyche. The royal family, apparently caught off guard by the extraordinary outpouring of grief and by criticism of their emotional reticence, broke with tradition in arranging the internationally televised royal funeral. The image of Prince William, then age 15, and Prince Harry, then age 12, walking solemnly with their father behind Diana’s casket in her funeral cortege became iconic. At Diana’s funeral Sir Elton John performed a version of his classic song “Candle in the Wind” (originally written about actress Marilyn Monroe) with lyrics that had been revised by his songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin, to reflect on the life and death of Diana, including

Goodbye England’s rose;
May you ever grow in our hearts.
You were the grace that placed yourself
Where lives were torn apart.

The recording of that version of the song became the most successful pop single in history to date, selling more than 30 million copies.

Diana’s life, and her death, polarized national feeling about the existing system of monarchy (and, in a sense, about British identity), which appeared antiquated and unfeeling in a populist age of media celebrity in which Diana herself was a central figure.