Diana Spencer

Personal life

Its youth

The honourable Diana Frances Spencer is the girl junior by Edward Spencer (1924 - 1992), Althorp Viscount and of his first wife honourable the Frances Burke Roche (1936 - 2004). Partly of American origin by its back grandmother, (the American heiress Frances Work), it was also downward of Charles II of England and by him, downward of Henri IV, king de France. During the acrimoniously divorce of his/her parents for a question of the adultery of the viscountess with the heir to a wallpaper fortune, Peter Shand Kydd, the mother of Diana continued her husband in justice for the guard of Diana and her brother.
With died of his/her paternal grandfather, Albert Spencer, the 7th count Spencer, in 1975, the father of Diana became the 8th count Spencer, it acquired the title of courtesy of Lady Diana Spencer . One year later, after being named the other party in the divorce of Grooves, countess of Dartmouth and the count de Dartmouth, the count Spencer Maria with the countess, the only daughter of the novelist Barbara Cartland.

Diana made poor studies with Riddlesworth Hall with Norfolk and West Heath School in the Kent. At 16 years, she studied one brief moment with the Alpine Institut Videmanette, an institution for young girls of good family to Rougemont, in Suisse. She had talents of pianist, was excellent in sport and thought of being a dancer.

Marriage and family

The family of Diana, Spencer, was near to the British royal family during decades. His/her maternal grandmother, the dowager Lady Fermoy was an old friend of the queen mother and the Prince of Wales had a short connection with Sarah Spencer, the older sister of Diana during the years 1970.

The loves of the prince were always the subject of predilection of the press which lent many connections to him. About its thirty-five years, it was almost summoned to marry. To satisfy its family and her advisers, especially his great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, possible been engaged was to be of aristocratic, unmarried extraction and, preferably, virgin and Protestant woman. Diana answered all these requirements.

A preceding connection of Prince, (later, his second wife), Camilla Parker Bowles helped it to choose, like future wife, Diana Spencer, old of nineteen years and assistant with the kindergarten “Young England” in Knightsbridge. Buckingham Palace announced engagement the February 24th 1981. Lord Mountbatten had rejected Camilla Parker Bowles because of his age (it is the elder one of the 16 month old prince), of his experiment of the life and his absence of sufficiently aristocratic blood.

The weddings took place with the cathedral Saint-Paul with London Wednesday, July 29th in front of 35.000 guests (of which Mrs. Parker Bowles and his/her husband, godson of the queen-mother) and a billion televiewers in the world. Diana was first English married with a heir apparent with the British throne since 1659, date on which Anne Hyde Maria with the Duke of York, the future Jacques II of England. As of her marriage, Diana became Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales and, at the same time, the woman of the highest row to the the United Kingdom, after the queen and the queen-mother. She became at once popular and liked of English

Charles and Diana had two children, William Arthur Philip Louis Windsor, were born the June 21st 1982, and Harry Charles Albert David Windsor (often called Prince William and Prince Harry), born the September 15th 1984.

After the birth of William, Diana had a depression, became compulsive eater and tried to commit suicide several times. In an interview, published after its death, she declared that, while she awaited William, she had thrown herself in a staircase and had been discovered by her mother-in-law. It was said that Diana did not want to make an attempt on her life and that its suicide attempts were simulated: its behavior was a call to the help. In this same interview, she says that Charles had shown it to shout with the wolf when she threatened to commit suicide. If its suicide attempts had actually taken place, it would have risked a miscarriage.

The ruin of its marriage in the middle of the Années 1980 was an event which the international press started by choking, but that she dramatized thereafter. The prince and the princess of Wales, addressed themselves to the press by the means of their friends by showing one, the other of adultery. Charles joined again with Camilla Parker Bowles, while Diana had connections with several men, of which James Gilby, implied in the business Squidgygate. It confirmed later (in an interview with the British journalist Martin Bashir) which it had had a connection with its monitor of horsemanship, James Hewitt. It would have had another connection with one of the bodyguards affected to its safety, although it denied all sexual relations with him categorically, like with Oliver Hoare, a merchant of married art.

The prince and the princess of Wales separated the December 9th 1992 and the divorce was marked the August 28th 1996. It lost the title of Its Royal Highness and became Diana, Princesse of Wales , an honorary distinction. It accepted an allowance of more than 10 million books and a pension. However, of this moment until today, Buckingham Palace maintained that, since Diana was the mother of the second and the third heir to the British throne, it remained British family member royal.

In 2004, the American television channel NBC diffused vidéos where Diana commented on her marriage with the prince of Wales and gave her version of her suicide attempts. The vidéos belonged to the princess, but with his death, its majordomo took possession of it. After an incalculable number of legal actions, they were given to its trainer of voice which had been the author. These vidéos is not diffused yet with the the United Kingdom.

Caritative works

Towards the end of the Years 1980, the princess of Wales was made known for its support for humane causes such as the assistance with the victims of the AIDS or the fight against the use of the antipersonnelles mines. It helped especially the poor children of Africa and was at the side many personalities like Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama or Mère Thérésa.

AIDS

In April 1987, the princess of Wales was the first celebrity who was photographed by touching a person reached of the virus HIV. Its contribution to the change of the public opinion towards the HIV positives was summarized by these words of Bill Clinton, in December 2001 in Diana, Princess off Wales Lecture one AIDS :

In 1987, when a broad part of the population believed that it was possible to contract the AIDS by simple contacts, Lady Di sat down on the bed of a patient of the AIDS and the hand tightened to him. It showed in the world that the HIV positives did not deserve insulation but the compassion. This standpoint contributed to make evolve/move the world opinion, to give hope to the HIV positives and to save lives.

Antipersonnelles mines

Its investment in the humanitarian perhaps more mediatized relates to its voyage in Angola, when, in January 1997 as a volunteer VIP of the Croix-Rouge and the Red Crescent, it visited survivors of antipersonnelles mines, took note of the projects of mine clearance organized by the British HALATION Trust and supported the programs of education and sensitizing on the dangers of the mines in the immediate environment of the houses and the villages.

The whole world saw the photographs of Diana on a ground mined, with a helmet of protection on the head and carrying a bullet-proof jacket (the experts in mine clearance, of course, had already neutralized the course which Diana with her protective gears was to borrow). In August of the same year, it went in Bosnia with the Network of the survivors of the landmines (in English “Landmine Survivors Network”). It paid all its attention to the wounds which the antipersonnelles mines caused well after the end of a conflict and, very often, on children.

Its influence on the signature of the Treated for the prohibition of the antipersonnelles mines , Traité of Ottawa on December 3rd, 1997 (thus, little time after its death) by 122 countries was dominating. By presenting to the House of Commons British in 1998, the bill relating to the landmines, the Foreign Minister Robin Cook greeted in these terms the contribution of Diana:

All the members of this assembly will be grateful with the princess of Wales to have revealed the human costs of the antipersonnelles mines to us. The best way of taking into account its action as that of the ONGs which fought against the mines, it is to vote the bill and to thus open the way with the world prohibition of the mines.

Death

Circumstances

The August 31st 1997, Diana died in an car accident which took place with Paris, in the tunnel close to the Pont of Alma, where it circulated in company of her lover Dodi Al-Fayed, of their driver Henri Paul and of the Al-Fayed bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones.

Saturday, August 30, at the end of evening, Diana and Dody left the Ritz, Place Vendôme, and followed the Right Bank of the the Seine. Shortly after midnight, them Mercedes-Benz S 280 registered 688LTV75 entered the tunnel of Alma, continued by photographers and a motorcyclist of press.

Against the entry of the tunnel, the car ran up against the right wall, then made a yaw on the two-track road before being embedded in the thirteenth pillar of the bridge where it stopped Net.

Dodi Al-Fayed and Henri Paul were already morts ; Trevor Rees-Jones was seriously wounded, but survived. One released Diana, still alive, of the wreck, and after first aid on the spot, one transported it by ambulance to the hospital of Pity-Salpêtrière, where it arrived shortly after 2 H of the morning. She succumbed to her internal lesions, the doctors declaring it dead two hours later. With 5:30, one announced the death of Diana at the time of a press conference, behavior jointly by a doctor of the hospital, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the Minister of Interior Department, and Sir Michael Jay, the Ambassadeur of the the United Kingdom in France.

Later in the morning, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, Bernadette Chirac and the Secretary of State to health visited the room of hospital where the body of Diana was to pay homage to him. After these visits, the Archevêque Anglican of France Martin Draper recommended the heart of Diana Lady to God.

Towards 14 H, the prince Charles and the two sisters of Diana (Lady Sarah Mc Corquodale, and Lady Jane Fellowes) arrived at Paris for the identification and set out again 90 minutes afterwards.

The experts in medicine urgently American, accustomed to the scoop and run , reproached the French helps them stay and play (the care on the spot lasted approximately an hour), pretexting that only an surgical operation of extreme urgency could have saved it. Nobody will never know if she would have really survived, so much the transport of a person in hemorrhagic state of shock is dangerous.

Course of the events

The first reports affirmed that the car of Diana had entered in collision with the pile to more than 190 km/h, and that the needle of the meter remained wedged on this figure. It was announced then that the speed of the car was in fact between 95 and 110 km/h, and that the meter did not have a needle since it was Numérique (according to the last investigations, the speed of collision was included/understood between 117 and 152 km/h). The car thus ran well beyond the legal limit of 50 km/h and much more quickly than it was not careful in the tunnel of Alma. In 1999, a French investigation concludes that Mercedes had run up against another car (a white FIAT Uno) in the tunnel. The driver was not identified, and the car was never found.

According to the investigators, the collision was the fact of the driver, which was in a state of intoxication and rolled too quickly, trying to escape the Paparazzi.

The January 6th 2004, a judicial enquiry carried out by Michael Burgess, the medical examiner of the royal house, was opened with London. The Paget Operation, already cost 4 million euros at the beginning of 2006, makes some most expensive of the British history.

In May 2006, Sir John Stevens, the person in charge of the investigation declared that there were new witnesses, new results of scientific analysis, and that each theory of conspiracy was the subject of an investigation.

July 13rd, 2006, the magazine Italy N Chi published photographs (flights in the file of instruction) showing Diana in her last moments. The photo black and white show Diana receiving of oxygen in the wreck of the car. The photograph is extracted from Lady Diana: The Criminal Investigation , a book of Jean-Michel Caradec' H. In spite of criticisms, the editor of the magazine defended his decision to publish them.

Accident or assassination?

A debate makes rage between holding of an assassination and those which believe in the thesis of the accident.

The conclusions of the French investigation - Henri Paul was drunk - rest primarily on the analysis of blood samples which established a degree of alcohol three times higher than the legal limit (according to a report/ratio of the Jay ambassador of September 1997).

This initial analysis was contradicted by a British pathologist with the pay of the Fayed family. In answer, the French authorities practiced an analysis of the retina to the results médicalement reliable. This third test confirmed the degree of alcohol in blood and also showed that Henri Paul took antidepressants.

The taking away also showed that its carbon monoxide rate was sufficiently high to prohibit to him to lead (or to be even held upright). Some affirm that this shows in an indisputable way that the taking away were handled.

The families of Dodi Al-Fayed and Henri Paul did not accept the results of the French investigation. In front of the courts Scottish, Mohamed Al-Fayed claimed an investigation and appealed when it was refused to him. Fayed, for its part, remains persuaded that the princess and her son were assassinated in a plot worked out by the LOCATED and financed by the prince Philip, duke of Edinburgh, which, according to him, is racist and absolutely the idea did not accept that its grandchildren can have brothers or sisters Moslems or with half-Arabic. (Al Fayed affirmed on several occasions that Prince Philip controlled the LOCATED) the car had been previously stolen with its wheels and especially its withdrawn electric system. It would have been possible to scramble its electronics to decontaminate the assistance of the direction, making this heavy limousine impossible to direct.

That Diana intended to convert with the Islam and that it was pregnant of a child of Dodi Al-Fayed were reasons proposed in the thesis of the assassination. In January 2004, the former magistrate of Queen' S Household, Doctor John Burton said during an interview to the Times that during the autopsy of the princess to the mortuary of Fulham, it had personally examined his Utérus and that she was not pregnant.

Chris Lafaille, author of Diana, the investigation ever published , appeared on August 27th, 2007, declared: " This investigation is the result of the long work of investigation carried out by the team of Paris Match around its owner emblematic Roger Thérond".

The author holds has to recall that the duration of the investigation took ten years well and that certain elements could not be revealed with the public due to " deontology and of respect of the life privée".

This investigation would reveal that Lady Diana was pregnant at the time of the accident which has occurred under the bridge of Alma, a " quasi certitude" supported by a document of the Public assistance - Hospital of Paris (AP-HP), dated August 31st, 1997 intended for the Minister of Interior Department of the time Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the Minister for Health Bernard Kouchner, its colleague of the Foreign affairs Hubert Védrine and sponsors it murder squad Martine Monteil being in copy.

" Never this document was refuted as being a faux" , Chris Lafaille underlines, noting that a " pregnancy from 9 to 10 weeks poses the problem of paternity however, since that at the time supposed design, Diana did not know Dodi" yet;.

The designed child could thus be that of his preceding lover, the Pakistani surgeon Hasnat Khan, with whom it had just broken.

Later in 2004, the North-American television channel CBS showed images of the accident where one saw an intact back seat as well as the central part of Mercedes with Diana without external wounds, lengthened on the ground of the back part of the vehicle, his back on the seat of the passenger of right-hand side - the right backdoor of the car being completely open. These images created sensation in the United Kingdom and encouraged Mohammed Al-Fayed to start another lawsuit.

Rumors and plot put aside, it should be noted that Diana, Dodi and Paul did not have a seat belts fastened to the difference of Rees-Jones, the single one surviving. Moreover, the tunnel of the bridge of Alma is known as being a black spot, where the cars can run quickly without sufficient visibility in front of them. Concrete pillars on the central reservation are favourable with the collisions.

Funeral and public reaction

In the whole world, million people attended the ceremony on television. The funeral with the Abbey of Westminster, the September 6th gathered approximately 3 million people in London. More than one million bouquets were deposited in its London residence with Kensington Palace. One asked the public not to more bring flowers to the family field of Althorp because the number of people and flowers on the overloaded roads endangered public safety.

The reaction of the royal family with died of Diana caused an outcry without precedent. The fastidious respect of the protocol of the House of Windsor was interpreted by the public like an absence of sensitivity. The refusal of Buckingham Palace to put in Bern the Union Jack caused sour cuffs in the newspapers: “Where is our queen? Where is our Drapeau? ” asked the Sun . The queen, who had returned from Balmoral to London, accepted a short speech on television. With the request express of Downing Street, which was to be a recording became the direct one and the text was re-examined by Alastair Campbell to be “more cordial”.

The public present at the funeral threw flowers with the passage of the procession throughout its course. Outside the abbey of Westminster, crowd acclaimed the many celebrities who were inside: the singer Sir Elton John (who interpreted a version of his Candle song in the Wind, rewritten on this occasion), Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, the director Steven Spielberg, the British business man Richard Branson, the Noor queen of Jordan, Mesdames Hillary Clinton and Bernadette Chirac (respectively First Ladies of the United States and France). The religious ceremony was retransmise on line on television. Loudspeakers had been placed outside so that crowd can hear the unfolding of the office. The guests applauded the words of the brother of Diana, Lord Spencer, which attacked the press sharply and indirectly criticized the royal family for her behavior with respect to his/her sister.

Diana, princess of Wales is buried in Althorp in the Northamptonshire on an island in the middle of a lake named “the round oval” ( the Round Oval ). The visitors can see an exposure which is devoted to him and make the turn of the lake.

During the fifteen or so days which followed its burial, suicide rate in England and in the Wales increased by 17% compared to the average of this period during the four last years. The scientists think that is due to the effect of identification. The most important increase in suicides relates to a population very similar to Diana: the suicide rate of the old women from 25 to 44 years increased of almost 45%.

During years which followed its death, the interest carried to the life of Diana remained high. Very many manufacturers of collector's items continued to produce objects around Diana. Some even suggested canonizing it, which caused a certain number of controversies.

The public elected the Flamme of Freedom, in Paris, to pay a homage provisional to Diana. This monument, commemorating the gift of the Statue of Freedom of France to the the United States, is with the top of the tunnel, close to the place of Alma. Retort flame which crowns the torch held by the ephigie of Freedom in bay of New York, it was financed by a collection organized by Herald Tribune and carried out, like the original at the time of the restoration of 1985-1986, by two French artisanal companies: Champagne Métalliers and Gohart.Cette operation were controlled by the director of the French craft industry of the time: Jacques Graindorge. It had envisaged to install it place of the United States but the mayor of Paris, then Jacques Chirac, is opposite there. After protracted negotiations this site without name and which failed to be called place Maria Callas was chosen and it became for everyone, ten years later, a memorial of the princess. It did not take its name because of the opposition of the court of Angleterre.Il is always visited and of the messages are still left with its memory. The wall in Concrete, with the corner of the tunnel, is always used as a memorial of fortune where people also write some words for Diana.

The July 6th 2004, was inaugurated a fountain with the memory of the Diana princess to Hyde Park in London.

Diana arrived third of the British personalities during a vote under the aegis of BBC in 2002.

In 2003, the editor Marvel Comics announced the publication of five volumes having for title Di Another Day (in reference to film of James Bond, Die Another Day ) where Diana, princess of Wales, are represented under the features of a mutant to the super-capacities. After a great number of protests, the idea was quickly abandoned. The company Heliograph Incorporated, it, produced a futuristic Roleplay on Diana.

After the death of Diana, the actor Kevin Costner claimed that it had negotiated the participation of the princess divorced following the film “The Bodyguard” which joined together Costner and Whitney Houston. Buckingham Palace categorically contradicted.

In 2006, Stephen Frears devoted its film, The Queen with the reactions of the Queen Elizabeth II and the Prime Minister, Tony Blair after the tragic death of Diana Lady.

The June 6th 2007, little time before the 10th birthday of died of Diana, the British televised chain Chanel 4 diffused documentary which was supposed to immediately show new stereotypes of Lady Di after the accident under the bridge of Alma. A spokesperson of the princes William and Harry refused to comment on the documentary one of Chanel 4, to be satisfied to declare: " The memory of Diana should remain intact. This type of things is completely unpleasant for its family and her amis". Indeed, once again, no image of Lady Di after the accident was shown.

July 1st 2007, a concert organized by the princes William and Henry attracted more than 63.000 people at the stage Wembley of London. Several celebrities sang there in particular Elton John, Rod Stewart, the National England Ballet, the group Duran Duran as well as the Canadian singer Nelly Furtado. The two princes had organized this concert to celebrate the 46° birthday of Lady Diana. She would have had 46 years on July 1st.

Genealogy

Before its marriage, the genealogists made the research deepened on the family of Diana. Among his ascending or collateral, one raises:

the actor Humphrey Bogart, cousin with the seventh degree
the poet Edmund Spenser, the author of The Faerie Queen
the actor Oliver Platt. Diana and are directly related to him to Frances Work, a back grandmother of Diana, American heiress of the end of the 19th century which was, a time, the wife of Honourable the James Boothby Burke Roche which will become the third baron of Fermoy (Ireland).

Titles

The honorary title of Diana varied according to her statute:

Honourable Diana Frances Spencer of 1961 with 1975;
Lady Diana Frances Spencer of 1975 until 1981, when his/her father inherited the title of count de Spencer
His Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, of his marriage with prince Charles, the July 29th 1981, until its divorce, the August 28th 1996;
Diana, princess of Wales starting from her divorce. Diana lady forever be at ease in the costume of the princess of Wales.

The French-speaking general public called familiarly it Lady Di.

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