Andersen’s biography William and Kate chronicles the end of the princess’s romance with Hasnat Khan. Evidently, Diana had gone so far as to have her butler Paul Burrell secretly make inquiries to determine whether a Catholic priest would marry her to Dr. Khan. After reiterating her desire for Khan to move into Kensington Palace so her sons could “know you the way I know you,” a “flabbergasted” Khan replied that the only way he could see them “having a normal life together” was if Diana moved to Pakistan. But that was an absolute deal breaker. “I cannot be away from my boys,” Diana insisted. “They need me now more than ever.” That night, Khan ended their on-again, off-again relationship.
In the summer of 1997, the Egyptian-born Mohamed Al Fayed, who owned Harrods department store, was enthusiastically playing matchmaker between Diana and his divorced playboy son Dodi, an erstwhile filmmaker.
During a six-week whirlwind romance—much of it spent at Mohamed’s villa on the French Riviera or aboard his luxury yacht, the Jonikal, the forty-two-year-old Dodi hotly wooed Diana, showering her with lavish gifts, which she could have afforded to purchase on her own if she desired. What she basked in was his indulgent attention, abetted by his father’s unsubtle pandering. Diana had recently redecorated her Kensington Palace digs; and Dodi’s father, “Mo,” had stocked the game room with toys and games from Harrods. No pressure there.
Dodi’s much younger siblings, Omar, Jasmine, and Camilla, already got on well with Harry and William. While Dodi romanced Harry’s mum, the twelve-year-old video game addict hung out with the youngest Al Fayeds and proved himself the undisputable king of Sonic the Hedgehog.
Maybe . . . just maybe . . . an interdenominational Brady Bunch could be formed from the families of the princess and the playboy. What a coup it would be for the Egyptian Muslim Mohamed if his son were to wed the former Princess of Wales! As it was, she had already created something of a PR nightmare for Buckingham Palace by dating back-to-back Muslim men.
The long-lensed paparazzi couldn’t get enough photos of Di and Dodi. Because the princess had recovered from her eating disorder and from one angle a bikini picture appeared to show a slightly rounded belly, Fleet Street went nuts. Was Diana pregnant?
Did any of them pay attention during biology class? Even if the lovers had sex on the first date, Diana had not even known Dodi long enough to show a pregnancy in July 1997. Speculation increased further: Were Diana and Dodi engaged?
It was nearly impossible for them to enjoy a holiday, though, thanks to the intrusive paparazzi. After Diana was stripped of her HRH title, she also lost the right to a security detail from Scotland Yard. She wished to disengage herself from the permanent spotlight; it was rumored she might relocate to America. But she could never leave the country with her sons, both royal princes and one the heir to the throne. And Diana had no intention of moving anywhere without them. According to essayist Clive James, “Diana believed, against all the evidence, that there was some enchanted place called Abroad, where she could be understood and where she could lead a more normal life.”
Harry and William spent the second half of their 1997 summer holiday with their father and the Queen at Balmoral. Because they were photographed everywhere they went with their mother, Her Majesty believed it was vital for the princes to enjoy some privacy in the remote Highland enclave.
On the morning of Saturday, August 30, Diana phoned Scotland from Paris, where she and Dodi were staying at the Hôtel Ritz, another property owned by Mohamed Al Fayed. Diana had intended to reunite with her boys that day, but Dodi had made the snap decision to spend the night in the City of Lights instead.
William was the one who got on the phone with his mum to tell her all about the brothers’ wonderful holiday at Balmoral. They couldn’t wait to see her again, he told her. Again was supposed to be tomorrow.
Harry didn’t get to speak to his mother. Which means he was never able to say goodbye.
And tomorrow never came.
Simone Simmons had a vision in November 1996 of a “terrible crash” in Paris. Another of Diana’s friends, the clairvoyant Rita Rogers, had warned Dodi not to go to Paris on August 30, 1997, because she had a vision of him in danger in a tunnel there.
Late that evening, Diana’s usual driver was dispatched from the Ritz in her Range Rover as a decoy to lure the waiting paparazzi away. A little while later, Dodi’s driver was sent on a second decoy run.
Henri Paul was the Ritz’s deputy chief of security. That night he was off duty and had spent several hours drinking pastis. He had also been taking the antidepressants Prozac and Tiapradal. With no other driver available, at the last minute he was pressed into service to get behind the wheel of the $170,000 armored Mercedes 220SL that the Ritz employed to ferry anxious VIP guests. Henri Paul did not possess a traditional chauffeur’s license. He was credentialed to drive that armored Mercedes, but did not have the special license required under French law to drive high-powered vehicles.
Late that Saturday night, with a blood alcohol level that was three times above the legal limit for drinking and driving, combined with the meds he’d ingested, Henri Paul was speeding through Paris’s Pont de l’Alma tunnel, pursued by a phalanx of paparazzi, when he lost control of the Mercedes and struck a pillar. The costly armored car was crushed like a can of soda. Henri Paul and Dodi were killed instantly. According to prosecutors, the speedometer on the mangled dashboard was frozen at 121 miles per hour.
Diana was treated at the crash site but lost consciousness soon afterward. She was rushed the four miles to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in critical condition with severe internal injuries; every attempt was made to save her.
The only survivor was Diana’s bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones. He was also the only one who had been wearing a seat belt.
It was shortly after three A.M. on Sunday, August 31, when the British embassy informed the royal family that Diana was gone.
Charles reportedly wailed like a character from a Greek tragedy.
The Queen decided to let the young princes slumber on. In her view, there would be so much to deal with when they awoke that a few more hours of blissful unawareness couldn’t hurt.
William awakened to find his papa seated at the foot of his bed, his eyes red and swollen from crying. Together they agreed to deliver the devastating news to Harry.
Of all times to maintain that stiff upper lip, when two young boys were reeling with shock over the sudden and tragic death of their mother, the senior members of the royal family made the determination that the best thing for the princes would be to carry on as if nothing major had happened. So they went to church at Craithie Kirk as if it were any other Sunday morning at Balmoral, in the belief the boys would derive comfort from their faith. But now that the news of Diana’s demise had been released, all eyes were on them, expecting a reaction. Harry and William had been encouraged to cry in private; they knew their duty as royals meant expressing no public emotion. What an impossible request in such a situation! When no mention whatever was made in church of Diana’s passing, Harry asked, “Are you sure Mummy is dead?” The young prince was in shock: numb and silent, refusing to leave the side of his nanny, Tiggy.
Charles had the television in the nursery removed so the boys wouldn’t have to see the endless loops of devastating news footage.
As Harry and William fished the River Dee in mournful silence, down in London, people gathered by the thousands to pay their respects, leaving an ocean of floral tributes at the gates of Kensington Palace. They were shocked by Diana’s sudden death and perceived the Queen’s refusal to curtail her Scottish holiday as a passive-aggressive gesture from a hostile former mother-in-law. The Queen, they believed, was ignoring a nation in pain.
Her Majesty’s perspective was different, however. She believed she was protecting her precious grandsons by prolonging their privacy. For the first time in her life she was placing the feelings of her family above duty.
But Fleet Street agreed with the public. Tabloid
headlines eviscerated the monarch. WHERE IS THE QUEEN WHEN HER COUNTRY NEEDS HER? the Daily Mail demanded to know. SPEAK TO US, MA’AM—YOUR PEOPLE ARE SUFFERING, declared The Mirror.
Unaware that the Windsors were weeping their eyes out behind the heavy doors of Balmoral, the Daily Mirror, noting that the royals had absented themselves from their subjects, asked WHY CAN’T THE ROYAL FAMILY SHOW ITS GRIEF? Even the pro-royal Daily Express urged the monarchy to SHOW US YOU CARE.
Opinion polls taken at the time revealed that 70 percent of Britons believed that the Queen’s refusal to return to Buckingham Palace damaged the reputation of the monarchy as an institution, with 25 percent stating that it was time to bring the monarchy itself to an end. If the sovereign couldn’t be there to comfort her subjects in a time of national crisis, what good was she?
But now Britain was seemingly on the verge of a revolt because the flag at Buckingham Palace had not been lowered to half-mast. The official explanation was that because Diana was no longer a titled member of the royal family at the time of her death, protocol didn’t require this gesture of recognition. But that rationale seemed churlish and tone-deaf, like something out of a classic fairy tale—as if the elderly queen remained envious, even in death, of Diana’s youth and popularity.
Nearly a week after Diana’s demise, Queen Elizabeth II caved to public pressure and the urging of her prime minister, Tony Blair. Although she believed bereavement was a private matter, on September 5, 1997, she returned to Buckingham Palace, where she delivered a televised address to a nation united in grief, speaking as their queen and as a grandmother.
At Kensington Palace, Harry joined William and their father on a walkabout in front of the black and gold iron gates. Kneeling to view some of the cards that accompanied the sea of condolence bouquets, they were profoundly touched, not only by the outpouring of tributes but by the thousands of people who waited to see them. The boys behaved royally, holding back their tears. To the sound of gentle applause, the three Windsor princes shook hands with the crowd, and a woman shouted, “We love you!” as a mourner handed Harry and William individual calla lilies.
The most challenging assignment of all for the young princes was participating in their mother’s funeral cortege on September sixth. William, then fifteen, was adamant in his refusal to walk, certain he would not be able to keep his emotions in check. It was Prince Philip who persuaded him, explaining that while he might not feel up to it in the days that immediately followed his mother’s death, it would be his only opportunity to escort Diana on her final journey, and later in his life he might look back and regret the decision not to do so. Besides, Philip urged, if William walked behind his mother’s caisson, then Harry could be persuaded to walk alongside him; if he didn’t walk, Harry would never have the courage to make that lonely pilgrimage on his own. He knew whereof he spoke. At age sixteen, Philip had walked in the very public funeral procession of his beloved older sister, Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark, after her tragic death in a plane crash. He managed to change the young princes’ minds.
Diana’s casket was draped in the yellow, red, and blue royal standard, the Queen’s official flag. The caisson bearing it was drawn by three teams of coal black horses from the King’s Troop Royal Artillery. As the carriage halted before Kensington Palace, the television cameras panned to show to the worldwide audience of 2.5 billion viewers—the largest audience for any televised event ever—the deluge of love for Diana from all over the world. The palace and the surrounding buildings and monuments seemed to float amid a sea of bouquets of every color and size.
The sight was enough to crack the hardest heart. But undoubtedly the most poignant of all was the display atop the casket itself: an arrangement of white roses and Casablanca lilies bearing a white card on which Prince Harry had written a single word. Mummy.
Harry walked between his father and his uncle Charles, Diana’s brother. As they reached the protective shadow of Horse Guards Arch, shielded from public view, the earl gave Harry a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
No cameras were permitted to focus their lenses on Harry and William once the princes were inside Westminster Abbey. Harry broke down as their mother’s casket passed. William hugged him protectively.
Diana had raised them to be normal boys after all.
[You Gotta Have] Heart
A stone’s throw from the American Film Institute, which is known for preserving the country’s illustrious cinematic history, for educating filmmakers, and for its lists of the top 100 films, sits the 112-year-old Immaculate Heart High School. Founded by Catholic nuns, this all-girls college prep school “dedicated to the intellectual, spiritual, moral, and social development of young women” sprawls over an enviably beautiful campus. Shaded by palm trees, amid acres of lush greenery, fewer than seven hundred students, aged eleven to eighteen, attend middle school and high school in Spanish Colonial–style stucco buildings with red-tiled roofs. The sparkling swimming pool would even tempt someone who hates gym class.
Tuition for the 2016–17 school year was $15,700, placing it in the mid-priced range of private schools in that area of Hollywood and Beverly Hills; however, according to Immaculate Heart’s president Maureen Diekmann, they “have some very wealthy students, and some who are financially challenged.” To that end, Immaculate Heart provides a million dollars a year in grants so that less-wealthy girls from the Los Angeles area are able to be educated there.
The school aims to create “a mixture of the traditional and the innovative,” providing the students with a balance “of discipline and freedom; of play and work; of concern for things of the heart as well as of the mind; and of a readiness to create and to celebrate.”
Because Immaculate Heart is a parochial school, part of its mission is “to share in the teaching ministry of the Catholic Church by creating a learning environment where students can, with Mary as their model, mature in their faith as they reflect on their special roles as members of the Christian community.”
Not all students who attend Immaculate Heart are Catholic, and the staff makes a point of stating that they respect the religious and ethnic diversity of the student body.
Meghan Markle is not Catholic, nor was she raised in the Catholic faith.
It seems clear, however, that Immaculate Heart’s philosophy helped shape the woman she grew up to be. “The school assists parents by helping their daughters to develop in such a way that they will become women of great heart and of right conscience; knowledgeable and concerned about the earth and the global community in which they live; creative as problem-solvers; capable of building on their appreciation of and acquired skills in the humanities and sciences; aware that learning is a lifetime endeavor; and convinced that, ultimately, all must develop within themselves a capacity for integrity, wisdom, humor, joy, peace and love, so as to ‘make gentle the life of this world.’ ”
Among the other alumna of this school, which has a cuddly panda as its mascot, are the supermodel Tyra Banks and the legendary television actress Mary Tyler Moore, who “turned the world on with her smile” during her eponymous long-running series.
When Meghan entered the middle school at Immaculate Heart, she would have pledged “as a young woman of integrity” to abide by the school’s honor code, which included the promise to respect the property of the school and of other students; not to cheat; never to steal from her classmates, nor to plagiarize the ideas of others and present them as her own; and to always assume responsibility for her own actions.
She took the school’s philosophy to heart. One alumna recalled with tears in her eyes an incident that occurred when she was in seventh grade at Immaculate Heart. Meghan, who was a year above her and didn’t know her, confronted a bunch of mean girls from the senior class who were bullying the underclassman. “We don’t do that here,” she said.
During her three years of middle school, Meghan received a well-rounded education. Fine and performing arts classes included an appreciation of culturally div
erse forms of expression and an awareness of the importance of the arts in all areas of the school’s curriculum. Being health conscious didn’t just mean exercising and learning to eat well, although one can see where some of the seeds of Meghan’s “foodie” persona were planted. It meant learning to become ethically and socially responsible, as well as being an accountable steward of the planet.
At that age, Meghan was also learning financial responsibility. Despite enjoying the privileges of a posh private school education, she was thirteen when she started her first job. Paula Sheftel was Meghan’s former boss at Humphrey Yogart in the leafy Los Angeles suburb of Sherman Oaks, where Meghan earned minimum wage serving frozen yogurt. Even then, as Ms. Sheftel recollected, Meghan’s outgoing personality served her well. The bubbly young teen succeeded because of her ability to relate to the customers and to work well with the rest of the staff.
Even as she scooped yogurt, Meghan was already practicing the other key focuses of Immaculate Heart’s Middle School curriculum, among them thinking critically, being an effective communicator—which meant listening to others as well as speaking thoughtfully and eloquently—and being a constructive member of society.
But one seventh-grade assignment completely tripped her up.
In her English class, Meghan had to complete a mandatory census. It required her to check only one box describing her ethnicity. She sat paralyzed, pen poised above the form. Curly haired, freckled, pale complexioned. Biracial. To check the box for either black or white was to reject one of her parents—to choose one over the other. One half of herself over the other.
American Princess Page 6