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BIOGRAPHY OF THE PRINCESSDiana, Princess of Wales (Diana Frances Mountbatten-Windsor; nee Spencer; 1 July 1961 - 31 August 1997) was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, eldest son and heir apparent of Elizabeth II. Her two sons, Princes William and Harry, are second and third, respectively, in line to the thrones of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and 12 other Commonwealth Realms. Early Life The Honourable Diana Frances Spencer was born the youngest daughter of Edward Spencer, Viscount Althorp, and his first wife, Frances Spencer, Viscountess Althorp (formerly the Honourable Frances Burke Roche) at Park House on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, England. She was baptised at St. Mary Magdalene Church in Sandringham, by Rt. Rev. Percy Herbert (rector of the church and former Bishop of Norwich and Blackburn); her godparents included John Floyd (the chairman of Christie's). Diana's four siblings were:
- Lady Elizabeth Sarah Lavinia Spencer (b. 19 Mar 1955) During her parents' acrimonious divorce over Lady Althorp's adultery with wallpaper heir Peter Shand Kydd, Diana's mother took her and Diana's brother to live in an apartment in London's Knightsbridge, where Diana attended a local day school. That Christmas, the Spencer children went to celebrate with their father and he subsequently refused to allow them to return to the capital and their mother. Lady Althorp sued for custody of her children, but Lord Althorp's rank, aided by Lady Althorp's mother's testimony against her daughter during the trial, meant that custody of Diana and her brother was awarded to their father. On the death of her paternal grandfather, Albert Spencer, 7th Earl Spencer, in 1975, Diana's father became the 8th Earl Spencer, at which time she became Lady Diana Spencer and moved from her childhood home at Park House to her family's sixteenth-century ancestral home of Althorp. A year later, Lord Spencer married Raine, Countess of Dartmouth, the only daughter of the highly eccentric romantic novelist Barbara Cartland, after being named as the "other party" in the Earl and Countess of Dartmouth's divorce. During this time Diana travelled up and down the country, living between her parents homes - with her father at the Spencer seat in Northamptonshire, and with her mother, who had moved north west of Glasgow in Scotland. Ancestry Diana was born into an aristocratic background with royal Stuart ancestry. On her mother's side, Diana was Irish, Scottish, and American. Her great-grandmother was the famous New York heiress Frances Work. On her father's side, Diana was a direct descendant of Robert I (the Bruce) and Mary, Queen of Scots - a period of family history in which Diana expressed great interest. She was a direct descendant of Charles II through four illegitimate sons, Henry Fitzroy, Charles Beauclerk, James Crofts "Scott" and Charles Lennox. She was also a descent of James II and VII through an illegitimate daughter, Arabella FitzJames. Another notable ancestor of Diana's was Mary Boleyn, one of Henry VIII's most famous mistress, who fell when Henry caught her sister's eye. Additionally, Diana's great-great-great-grandmother Eliza Kevorkian was a native of Mumbai, India and of Indian descent, though family lore identifies Kevorkian as of Armenian ancestry. ("Kevork" and "Kevorkian" are Armenian surnames, which translate into English as "George" and "Son of George.") The Spencers had been close to the British Royal Family for centuries; rising in royal favour during the mid 1600s. Diana's maternal grandmother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, was a long-time friend and a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. Diana was also a cousin of one of her favourite actresses, Audrey Hepburn. Her other notable cousins include Oliver Platt, Humphrey Bogart, and Rainier III. Education Diana was educated at Riddlesworth Hall in Norfolk and at West Heath Girls' School (later reorganised as the New School at West Heath, a special school for boys and girls) in Sevenoaks, Kent, where she was regarded as an academically below-average student, having attempted and failed all of her O-levels twice. In 1977, aged 16, she left West Heath and briefly attended Institut Alpin Videmanette, a finishing school in Rougemont, Switzerland. At about that time, she first met her future husband, who was dating her sister, Lady Sarah. Diana excelled in swimming and diving and reportedly longed to be a ballerina, but at 5 feet 10 inches was too tall. Marriage Prince Charles's love life had always been the subject of press speculation, and he was linked to numerous glamorous and aristocratic women. In his early thirties, he was under increasing pressure to marry. Legally, the only requirement was that he could not marry a Roman Catholic; a member of the Church of England was preferred. His great-uncle Lord Mountbatten of Burma, who was assassinated by an IRA bomb in 1979, had advised him to marry a virginal young woman who would look up to him. In order to gain the approval of his family and their advisors, any potential bride was expected to have a royal or aristocratic background, as well as be Protestant and, preferably, a virgin. Diana seemed to meet all of these qualifications. They married at St Paul's Cathedral on the 29 July 1981, watched by a global audience of almost one billion. Separation and Divorce The Prince and Princess of Wales were separated on 9 December 1992; their divorce was finalised on 28 August 1996. Diana received a lump sum settlement of around £17,000,000 along with a legal gag order preventing her from discussing the details. The Princess relinquished the style Her Royal Highness and instead was styled as Diana, Princess of Wales. However, since her death, Buckingham Palace has maintained that Diana was still, at the time, officially a member of the Royal Family, since she was the mother of the second and third-in-line to the throne. This has since been confirmed by the Deputy Coroner of the Queen’s Household, Baroness Butler-Sloss, who after a pre-hearing on 8 January 2007 ruled that: "I am satisfied that at her death, Diana Princess of Wales continued to be considered as a member of the Royal Household." After the divorce, Diana retained her apartment on an upper floor of Kensington Palace, which remained her home until her death. After her divorce Diana pursued her own interests in philanthropy, music, fashion and travel - although she still required royal consent to take her children on holiday or represent the U.K. abroad. Without a holiday or weekend home, Diana spent most of her time in London, often without her sons, who were with Prince Charles. She assuaged her loneliness with visits to the gym and cinema, private charity work, incognito midnight walks through Central London and by compulsively watching her favourite soap operas (EastEnders and Brookside) with a 'TV dinner', in the isolation of her apartment. Contemporary Opinions An iconic presence on the world stage, Diana was noted for her sense of style, charisma, humour and high-profile charity work, yet her philanthropic endeavours were overshadowed by her scandal-plagued marriage to Prince Charles. From the time of her engagement to the Prince of Wales in 1981 until her death in a car accident in 1997, Diana was one of the most famous women in the world - the pre-eminent celebrity of her generation. During her lifetime, she was often described as the world's most photographed woman. To her admirers, the Princess of Wales was a role model — after her death, there were even calls for her to be nominated for sainthood - while her detractors consider her to have been suffering from a mental illness; it has been suggested that Diana was, according to one biographer, possibly suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder. Diana herself admitted to struggling with depression, and the eating disorder bulimia, which recurred throughout her adult life. Charity Work Starting in the mid- to late 1980s, the Princess of Wales became well known for her support of charity projects. This stemmed naturally from her role as Princess of Wales - she was expected to engage in hospital visitations where she comforted the sick and in so doing, assume the patronage of various charitable organizations - and from an interest in certain illnesses and health-related matters. Owing to Public Relations efforts in which she agreed to appear as a figurehead, Diana used her influential status to positively assist the campaign against landmines, a cause which won the Nobel Prize in 1997 in tribute, and with helping to decrease discrimination against victims of AIDS. Her work often drew an analogy with that of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. AIDS and Landmines In April 1987, the Princess of Wales was one of the first high-profile celebrities to be photographed touching a person infected with HIV. Her contribution to changing the public opinion of AIDS sufferers was summarised in December 2001 by Bill Clinton at the 'Diana, Princess of Wales Lecture on AIDS': “In 1987, when so many still believed that AIDS could be contracted through casual contact, Princess Diana sat on the sickbed of a man with AIDS and held his hand. She showed the world that people with AIDS deserve no isolation, but compassion and kindness. It helped change world's opinion, and gave hope to people with AIDS.” - Bill Clinton Diana also made clandestine visits to show kindness to the sick. According to nurses, she would turn up unannounced (for example, at the Mildmay Hospice in London) with specific instructions that her visit was to be concealed from the media. The pictures of Diana touring an Angolan minefield, in a ballistic helmet and flak jacket were seen worldwide. It was during this campaign that conservatives accused the Princess of meddling in politics and declared her a 'loose cannon'. In August that year, just days before her death, she visited Bosnia with the Landmine Survivors Network. Her interest in landmines was focused on the injuries they create, often to children, long after a conflict is over. She is believed to have influenced the signing, though only after her death, of the Ottawa Treaty, which created an international ban on the use of anti-personnel landmines. Introducing the Second Reading of the Landmines Bill 1998 to the British House of Commons, the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, paid tribute to Diana's work on landmines: “All Honourable Members will be aware from their postbags of the immense contribution made by Diana, Princess of Wales to bringing home to many of our constituents the human costs of landmines. The best way in which to record our appreciation of her work, and the work of NGOs that have campaigned against landmines, is to pass the Bill, and to pave the way towards a global ban on landmines.” - Robin Cook As of January 2005, however, Diana's activities, and hopeful legacy regarding landmines had become stuck. The United Nations appealed to the nations which produced and stockpiled the largest numbers of landmines (China, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, and the United States) to sign the Ottawa Treaty forbidding their production and use, for which Diana had campaigned. Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), said that landmines remained "a deadly attraction for children, whose innate curiosity and need for play often lure them directly into harm's way". Diana's Death On 31 August 1997 Diana was killed in a high speed car accident in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris along with Dodi Al-Fayed and their driver Henri Paul. Blood analysis shows that Henri Paul was legally intoxicated while driving. Tests confirmed that original postmortem blood samples were from driver Henri Paul, and that he had three times the French legal limit of alcohol in his blood. Conspiracy theorists had claimed that Paul's blood samples were swapped with blood from someone else, who was drunk, and contended that the driver had not been drinking on the night Diana died. Their Mercedes-Benz S280 sedan crashed on the thirteenth pillar of the tunnel. The two-lane tunnel was built without metal barriers between the pillars, so a slight change in vehicle direction could easily result in a head-on collision with the tunnel pillar. Fayed's bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones was closest to the point of impact and yet the only survivor of the crash. No-one in the car was wearing a seatbelt. Henri Paul and Dodi Fayed were killed instantly, and Diana, unbelted in the back seat, slid forward during the impact and, having been violently thrown around the interior, "submarined" under the seat in front of her, suffering massive damage to her heart and subsequent internal bleeding. She was transported by ambulance to the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital, but on the way to casualty went into cardiac arrest twice. Despite lengthy resuscitation attempts, including internal cardiac massage, she died at 4 a.m. local time. Her funeral on 6 September 1997 was broadcast and watched by an estimated two and a half billion people worldwide. The death of Diana has been the subject of widespread conspiracy theories, supported by Mohamed Al-Fayed, whose son died in the accident. Her former father in law, Prince Philip, seems to be at the heart of most of them but her ex husband has also been named, and was questioned by the Metropolitan Police in 2005. Some other theories have included claims that MI6, the CIA, or Mossad were involved and one outlandish claim, appearing on the internet, states that the Princess was battered to death in the back of the ambulance, by assassins disguised as paramedics. These were all rejected by French investigators and British officials, who stated that the driver, Henri Paul, was drunk and on drugs. Blood tests later verified that Henri Paul was drunk at the time of the accident. Nonetheless, in 2004 the authorities ordered an independent inquiry by Lord Stevens, a former chief of the Metropolitan Police, and he suggested that the case was "far more complex than any of us thought" and reported "new forensic evidence" and witnesses. The French authorities have also decided to reopen the case. Lord Stevens' report, Operation Paget, was published on December 14, 2006. Within seconds of the crash, the paparazzi had surrounded the Mercedes, and proceeded to take pictures of the dying Princess. Not one called for medical assistance. On 13 July 2006 Italian magazine Chi published photographs showing Diana in her "last moments" despite an unofficial blackout on such photographs being published. The photographs were taken minutes after the accident and show the Princess slumped in the back seat while a paramedic attempts to fit an oxygen mask over her face. The photographs were also published in other Italian and Spanish magazines and newspapers. The editor of Chi defended his decision by saying he published the photographs for the "simple reason that they haven't been seen before" and that he felt the images do not disrespect the memory of the Princess. The British media publicly refused to publish the images, with the exception of the United Kingdom's tabloid newspaper, The Sun, which printed the picture but with the face blacked out. Final Resting Place Diana's final resting place is in the grounds of Althorp Park, her family home. The original plan was for her to be buried in the Spencer family vault at the local church in nearby Great Brington, but Diana's brother, Charles, the 9th Earl Spencer, said that he was concerned about public safety and security and the onslaught of visitors that might overwhelm Great Brington. He decided that he wanted his sister to be buried where her grave could be easily cared for and visited in privacy by her sons and other relations, although he has been accused of profiteering. Lord Spencer selected a burial site on an island in an ornamental lake known as The Oval within Althorp Park's Pleasure Garden. A path with thirty-six oak trees, marking each year of her life, leads to the Oval. Four black swans swim in the lake, symbolizing sentinels guarding the island. In the water there are several water lilies. White roses and lilies were Diana's favourite flowers. On the southern verge of the Round Oval sits the Summerhouse, previously in the gardens of Admiralty House, London, and now serving as a memorial to Diana. An ancient arboretum stands nearby, which contains trees planted by Prince William and Prince Harry, other members of her family and the Princess herself. Titles, Styles, Honours and Arms Titles
- 1961-1975: The Honourable Diana Frances Spencer Styles Posthumously, as in life, she is most popularly referred to as "Princess Diana", a title she never held. She is still sometimes referred to in the media as "Lady Diana Spencer", or simply as "Lady Di". Diana's full style was Her Royal Highness, The Princess Charles, Princess of Wales and Countess of Chester, Duchess of Cornwall, Duchess of Rothesay, Countess of Carrick, Baroness of Renfrew, Lady of the Isles, Princess of Scotland. Arms As the wife of the Prince of Wales, Diana used arms that included the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom with a plain, three-point label and the inescutcheon of the Coat of Arms of the Principality of Wales (the arms of the Prince of Wales), impaled with a shield bearing 1st and 4th quarters plain white, and the 2nd and 3rd quarters bearing a golden fret on a red background defaced with three escallopes (the arms of the Earl Spencer, her father). The supporters were the crowned golden lion from the Royal Arms, and a winged griffin from the Spencer arms. The shield was topped by the Prince of Wales crown. Her motto was Dieu Defend le Droit (English: God defends the right), also used in the Spencer arms. After her divorce, Diana used the arms of the Spencer family, crowned by a royal coronet. Legacy Diana's interest in supporting and helping young people led to the establishment of the Diana Memorial Award, awarded to youths who have demonstrated the unselfish devotion and commitment to causes advocated by the Princess. Princes William and Harry are currently organising a concert to be held in memory of their mother on 1 July 2007 - it would have been her 46th birthday. The concert will be staged at the soon-to-be rebuilt Wembley Stadium. Confirmed acts include Duran Duran, Joss Stone, Elton John, Andrew Lloyd Webber, English National Ballet, Pharrell Williams and Bryan Ferry. Tickets went on sale on 13 December 2006 and sold out within minutes. A memorial service is planned to be held on 31 August 2007.
Taken from Wikipedia
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