World Remembers Diana 10 Year Later

Even without meeting her, millions if not billions of people, felt the power of Princess Diana’s extraordinary charisma. Her glamour and high birth, her palpable humanity and equally palpable private anguish: Such qualities worked a powerful magic, setting her apart from the ruck of contemporary celebrities. Long before the horrific Paris car crash that brought her life to an untimely end on Aug. 31, 1997, Diana had transcended mere iconic status and become a late 20th century super icon. The most photographed woman in history, the subject of interminable analysis and speculation, the 36-year-old princess was an apotheosis-waiting-to-happen. From the moment news broke of her death, it was inevitable that the tragedy was going to be a multimedia event of epic dimensions.

What no one could have anticipated was the extreme and unruly nature of the emotions her death would unleash among British people. Censorious commentators were soon jibbing at the faintly menacing character of the prevailing grief, the apparent obligation to display suitably raw distress about the princess’ death or else suffer public obloquy. Seldom, to be sure, can mass grieving have seemed to pose such a threat to the status quo. Few doubt that the tumultuous reaction to Diana’s death came within a whisker of destabilizing the British monarchy and triggering a constitutional crisis. The initial unwillingness of Queen Elizabeth II to order that the flag above Buckingham Palace be flown at half-mast in homage to the dead princess was not well received. As floral tributes to Diana piled up outside Buckingham Palace, it became overwhelmingly apparent that the monarch had badly misjudged the public mood.(keep reading)