The total cost of the wedding was close to $70 million in today’s dollars, CBS reports. Diana Frances Spencer was born to a British noble family on July 1, 1961. Her brother, Earl Charles Spencer, remembered her as «incredibly brave.» People leave floral tributes outside Buckingham Palace in London, after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, on September 2, 1997. Her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, remember her as a loving and «informal» mother.
However, within five years of their marriage, their incompatibility, along with their unhappiness with each other, became apparent and publicly damaging. Princess Diana received £17 million (nearly £33,000,000 now), plus £400,000 per year, as settlement. Years after the incident, Diana’s adult son, Harry, who now fathers two kids with his American actress wife, Meghan Markle, feared that his life would have been fashioned similarly, considering the bouts of racism they witnessed in the royal family. But before they had the chance to start a family, they died in a tragic car accident in France.
The inquest was held to dispel Mohamed Al Fayed’s claim that the crash that killed Diana and his son, Dodi Fayed, was a deliberate plot. The jury concluded the crash was the result of chauffeur Henri Paul’s impaired driving and paparazzi photographers’ pursuit. In 1994, Fayed spoke out to name prominent British politicians who he said had taken money or benefited from free stays at his Ritz Hotel, evidently as retribution for the failure of his citizenship application. «I did it to take my revenge, to show people who really runs this country, what quality they are,» he told Vanity Fair the following year. He married Heini Wathen a Finnish model and actress, in 1985—the same year he would add the department store Harrods to his collection of assets. His father appears to have been either a school teacher or school inspector.
SHOWERED WITH A RICH MAN’S GIFTS OF LOVE
But because of private matters and some secrecy, they ended their romance in the summer of 1997. Within a month, Diana reportedly began a relationship with Emad “Dodi” Fayed, an Egyptian film producer. Consequently, she joined him and his family on a 10-day getaway to the French Riviera, following which they went to Paris.
Fayed and Diana died together in a car crash in 1997
She was also one of the English-speaking world’s most well-known women, who millions had watched evolve from a shy 20-year-old wife of the older Prince Charles into a global figure whose legacy spurred major changes to the traditional royal family. Ednesday marks 25 years since Princess Diana’s death thrust not only the British royal family but the entire world into shock and mourning. Diana, then 36-years-old, was a glamorous celebrity known for her advocacy for AIDS I loved this patients and land mine removal in developing countries. Towards the end of their final cruise, Diana telephoned her friend, Rosa Monckton, who asked her, ‘Just tell me, is it bliss? ’ Diana replied, ‘Yes, it’s bliss.’ The first anniversary of Diana’s decree absolute from Prince Charles fell as she and Dodi were cruising away from Sardinia. In the two years that she had been seeing the Pakistan-born heart surgeon, he had become an indispensable part of her life.
After her divorce, Diana was always looking for a way to spend time with her sons in a setting that could rival the lush privacy of the royal family’s Balmoral estate, in Scotland. When Mohamed Al Fayed invited her in June 1997 to spend a week at his villa in St. Tropez that July, Diana accepted, and looked forward to the privacy and security of Al Fayed’s residence. “At the time, I accepted what she told me,” Kay recalled recently, adding that he made a “mental note” to follow up on the rumor.
July 1980: Three years later, Diana Spencer and then-Prince Charles met again, igniting a romantic relationship.
Diana and Dodi both died in Paris on August 31, 1997, when their car crashed into a pillar in a tunnel. They were being chased by paparazzi when the accident occurred, per Biography.com. Diana did not die immediately, but succumbed to her injuries hours later; Dodi, on the other hand, died instantly in the crash. But this dramatic twist won’t hit screens until season 6 (and FYI, Diana’s death is not going to be shown).
In a 1995 interview with Martin Bashir of the BBC, Diana described bulimia as a «symptom of what was going on in marriage,» and described it as «a secret disease.» Princess Diana also spoke about Camilla’s invisible presence on the honeymoon and a gift the prince received from his former lover. According to Stephen Barry’s book, «The Diana Chronicles,» Charles called Camilla Parker Bowles daily. Photographers and journalists started following Diana as rumors swirled that she was soon to be engaged to the future king.
The friends of Diana with whom I spoke insist that she had broken off the relationship out of frustration that Hasnat wouldn’t agree to marry, or even to go public. He told police investigating her death, “My main concern about us getting married was that my life would be hell because of who she was. I knew I would not be able to live a normal life and if we ever had children together, I would not be able to take them anywhere or do normal things with them.” A few days after their last meeting, Diana flew to Paris to see Dodi. But, again, it may also be that she was using him to force Hasnat’s hand. Four days later, 79 of Diana’s dresses were auctioned off at Christie’s in New York, raising $3.25 million for her favorite charities and further shedding her royal baggage.
Despite seemingly hitting it off during their first meeting, it would be more than a year before Charles began courting Diana. In audio recordings made by Diana at Kensington Palace, which would ultimately serve as the basis for her 1992 biography, she recalled attending Charles’ 30th birthday dance on Nov. 14, 1978. «I had a very nice time at the dance — fascinating,» she reportedly recounted in the audio files.
The following year in 1997, Dodi invited Diana, Prince William, and Prince Henry to his yacht on the south of France. Khan states that after Diana visited Dodi on his yacht, she broke up with him; they’d been together for two years. Sometime that August, as She Knows shows, a photograph circulated around the world, of Diana and Dodi kissing while wearing swimsuits on Dodi’s yacht. As season five of The Crown dives into the royal family in the 90s, here’s a guide to all the men to whom Diana was romantically linked to in the time period—from James Hewitt to Hasnat Khan.
Her father had been the personal physician to Saudi Arabia’s Kind Abdul Aziz and her brother was Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. The driver, Henri Paul, and Princess Diana’s boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed are believed to have been killed instantly. The only survivor was bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, who was hospitalized for two months with severe injuries. He has consistently maintained he does not remember much of the crash.