Facts about Princess Diana
Princess Diana Biography
Lady Diana Frances Spencer was just 20 when she married Prince Charles, heir to the throne of Britain, on July 29, 1981.
Princess Diana was a commoner, unusual in the recent history of the British crown. But her beauty and youthful charisma quickly earned Diana the nickname of “the people’s princess.” She and Charles had two sons, William (b. 1982, the heir to the throne after Charles) and Harry (b. 1984).
However, it later developed that the marriage of Charles and Diana was troubled almost from the start, and its breakdown was daily fodder for tabloids during the 1990s. Diana and Charles were divorced in 1996 and Diana devoted her life to her two sons and to worldwide charities.
She and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, were killed in 1997 in a high-speed car crash while being followed by paparazzi in Paris, France. A French investigation showed that their driver, Henri Paul, was intoxicated. There followed years of allegations, led in part by Fayed’s father Mohamed Al Fayed, that the pair had been victims of a conspiracy. A three-year British investigation concluded in 2006 that “there was no conspiracy to murder any occupants of that car. This was a tragic accident.”
Diana’s grandson via William, Prince George of Cambridge, was born in 2013 and became third in line to the British throne, after Charles and William.
Extra credit
The official British investigation of Princess Diana’s deadly crash also dismissed claims that Diana and Dodi Fayed were engaged to be married, and noted that Diana was not pregnant… Mohamed Al Fayed purchased full control of the department store Harrods in 1985; he sold it in 2010 to a trust held by the royal family of Qatar… A memorial concert for Diana, arranged by her sons, was held on July 2007 in London’s Wembley Stadium. The date would have been Diana’s 46th birthday… According to the web site of the Royal family, “The Princess was the first Englishwoman to marry an heir to the throne for 300 years (when Lady Anne Hyde married the future James II from whom the Princess was descended)”… Princess Diana’s nicknames included Lady Di, the People’s Princess, and the Queen of People’s Hearts… At Diana’s funeral Sir Elton John sang “Goodbye England’s Rose,” a reworking of the tune “Candle In the Wind” which he had written earlier about Marilyn Monroe.
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Something in Common with Princess Diana
4 Good Links
- The BBC's 2006 inquest report, with many links to past Diana stories
- Her background from the Royal Family's official site
- From 2017: the 'Wolf Hall' author takes a long look at Princess Diana
- Website of the PBS series; chock-full of interviews and inside dope on Diana and her pursuers