In March 1992 the Duchess finally decided formally to separate from her husband and leave the royal family. The Princess watched the acrimonious collapse of her friend’s marriage with sadness and alarm. She saw at first hand how quickly the Queen’s courtiers could turn against her. They viciously attacked the Duchess, accusing her of behaving in a manner unbecoming the royal family and cited various incidents when she had tried to profit from her royal associations. Courtiers even claimed, falsely, that the Duchess had hired a public relations company to publicize her departure from the royal family. As a BBC correspondent said: ‘The knives are out for the Duchess at Buckingham Palace.’ It was a foretaste of what Diana would have to endure if she decided to travel along that same road.
8
‘I Did My Best’
A few days before the Queen celebrated the 40th anniversary of her accession, the Duke and Duchess of York drove from Buckingham Palace to Sandringham to see the Sovereign. On that bleak Wednesday in late January 1992 the royal couple formally discussed an issue which had troubled them for many months: their marriage. They had agreed that, after five years of married life, it would be sensible if they separated. The Duchess had become increasingly disillusioned with her life within the royal family and was depressed by continual and hurtful criticism, both inside and outside the Palace, which showed no sign of abating. The final straw was the raucous discussion in the media about her relationship with Steve Wyatt, headlines provoked by the theft of photographs taken when the Duchess, Wyatt and others were on holiday in Morocco.
During that meeting at Sandringham the couple agreed to the Queen’s suggestion that they should have a ‘cooling off’ period of two months to allow time to reflect. Consequently the Duchess undertook only a couple of official engagements, spending the rest of the time with her family at Sunninghill Park or discussing her options with lawyers, members of the royal family, including the Princess of Wales and the Princess Royal, and close friends.
One of the first to be given the news was the Prince of Wales who was then staying on the Norfolk estate. He spoke to her about his own marriage difficulties, emphasizing that his constitutional position as direct heir to the throne made any thought of separation from Diana almost unthinkable. In a ringing rebuke the Duchess replied: ‘At least I’ve been true to myself.’ It is a sentiment which lay at the heart of the dilemma facing the Princess of Wales and struck at the foundations of the modern monarchy.
The chronic instability of the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales and the collapse of the Duke and Duchess of York’s marriage were far more than personal tragedies. It was a signal that a necessary experiment born of changed historical circumstances had failed. When George V granted permission for his son, the Duke of York, to marry a commoner, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, he was recognizing the reality that the First World War had harvested European monarchies and dried up the supply of suitable royal brides and bridegrooms. The Yorks’ wedding began the transition of a virtual royal caste, where royalty married royalty, to a class within society. But the grafting of commoners, however high born, onto the Hanoverian tree has been a disaster. Apart from the marriages of the present Queen and the Queen Mother, and more recently Prince William, every significant union between royalty and commoner has ended in divorce; Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones, Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips, the Duke and Duchess of York and the Prince and Princess of Wales.
Is this state of affairs simply a reflection of the changing face of society or does it raise questions about the way the royal family relates to outsiders? Certainly when Lady Diana Spencer wed Prince Charles, it seemed to her – and later Sarah Ferguson – that she married into a family as welded to tradition and content in their insularity as any obscure South Sea island tribe. While their idiosyncrasies help shield them from the outside world, they also made the task of a newcomer, who did not know the unspoken rules of the game, virtually impossible. The royal family is testimony to playwright Alan Bennett’s maxim: ‘Every family has a secret and the secret is that it is not like any other family.’ The Queen and her sister, Princess Margaret, were the last generation immunized from reality. From an early age they lived in palaces, absolutely cocooned from the outside world. The gilded cage was their home and their life. A walk down the street, an afternoon’s solitary shopping, waiting in line and making ends meet; these freedoms, however dubious, were never part of their lives. When Princess Elizabeth secretly joined the throng celebrating VE Day outside Buckingham Palace it was seen as such an unusual event that it was eventually made into a Hollywood movie. For all their privileges, their legions of servants, their chauffeur-driven cars, private yachts and planes, they were prisoners of society’s expectations and puppets of the system. Duty, obligation and sacrifice were the expected and accepted threads of their lives and the weft and weave of the fabric of the Crown. The pursuit of personal happiness, as Princess Margaret discovered when she attempted to marry a divorcee, Group Captain Peter Townsend, has been sacrificed on the altar of monarchy and its moral ethos.
The Queen, groomed for the role, has performed those traditional and expected functions of the Crown supremely well, so much so that she leaves an unattainable benchmark for her successor. The mould has been deliberately broken. As Elizabeth Longford, the Queen’s friend and biographer, has argued, one of the central achievements of the reign has been to educate her children in the real world. It has meant that her children are a hybrid generation, enjoying a taste of freedom but anchored to the world of castles and royal protocol. The actions, particularly of the Prince of Wales, demonstrate the particular perils of allowing future sovereigns to breathe, even for a short time, the air of freedom. Unlike his predecessors, doubt, uncertainty and questioning have been added to his inherited faith in and acceptance of royal traditions.
Enter into this equation then, the expectations and values of the commoners who have come into the family. It has proved an impossible hurdle to overcome. Lord Snowdon and Captain Mark Phillips were the first to fall, even though they had careers, photography and equestrian pursuits respectively, which took them outside the royal routine. The Princess of Wales and Duchess of York enjoyed no such luxury. It was perhaps inevitable then that Diana, who watched the royal family from the inside, saw a yawning gap between the way the world was moving and how it was perceived by the royal family. She believed that they were caught in an emotional timewarp without the necessary vision to appreciate the changes that have taken place in society. It was forcibly demonstrated during the royal family’s traditional Christmas at Sandringham in 1991. During dinner one evening, Diana tentatively raised the question of the future of the British monarchy in a federal Europe. The Queen, Prince Charles and the rest of the royal family looked at her as if she were mad and continued with their debate on who had shot the last pheasant of the day, a discussion which occupied the rest of the evening.
As a friend said: ‘She finds the monarchy claustrophobic and completely outdated with no relevance to today’s life and problems. She feels that it is a crumbling institution and believes that the family won’t know what has hit it in a few years’ time unless it changes too.’
Diana discussed with her counsellor Stephen Twigg these serious doubts about the existing foundations of the monarchy. He argued: ‘If the royal family doesn’t change and their relationships with the rest of Society don’t change, it is on a hiding to nothing. It can only deteriorate as a useful organ of society. It must remain dynamic and respond to changes. It’s not just the royal family who must change but society itself must examine the way it looks at the royal family. Do we want the royal family to be revered because of their position or in a modern society do we want to admire them because of the way they cope with the traumas and tribulations of everyday life and learn from them in the process?’ One of the many ironies of her life is that Diana’s impact on the royal family is measured by how much more accommodating the House of Windsor is now to newcomers. It is
noticeable that the Queen frequently joined Prince William’s bride Catherine Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge, in the early days of her royal career. Certainly lessons have been learned – but at a price.
Although Diana successfully shook off the traditional image of the fairytale princess concerned exclusively with shopping and fashion it still coloured the preconceptions of those she met for the first time. She was used to being patronized. As she told close friends: ‘It happens a lot. It’s interesting to see people’s reactions to me. They have one impression in mind and then, as they talk to me, I can see it changing.’ At the same time her struggles within the royal family made her realize that she must not hide behind the conventional mask of monarchy. The spontaneity, the tactile compassion and the generosity of spirit she displayed in public were very genuine. It was not an act for public consumption. The Princess, who appreciated how the royal world anaesthetizes individuals from reality, was fiercely determined that her boys were prepared for the outside world in a way unknown to previous royal generations. Normally royal children have been trained to hide their feelings and emotions from others, constructing a shield to deflect intrusive inquiry. Diana believed that William and Harry should be open and honest to the possibilities within themselves and the variety of approaches to understanding life. As she said: ‘I want to bring them up with security. I hug my children to death and get into bed with them at night. I always feed them love and affection – it’s so important.’
The cultural code of the stiff upper lip was not for her boys. She had been teaching them that it is not ‘sissy’ to show their feelings to others. When she took Prince William to watch the German tennis star Steffi Graf win the women’s singles final at Wimbledon in 1991 they left the royal box to go backstage and congratulate her on her victory. As Graf walked off court down the dimly lit corridor to the dressing room, royal mother and son thought Steffi looked so alone and vulnerable out of the spotlight. So first Diana, then William, gave her a kiss and an affectionate hug.
The way the Princess introduced her boys to her dying friend, Adrian Ward-Jackson, was a practical lesson in seeing the reality of life and death. When Diana told her eldest son that Adrian had died, his instinctive response revealed his maturity. ‘Now he’s out of pain at last and really happy.’ At the same time the Princess was acutely aware of the added burdens of rearing two boys who were popularly known as ‘the heir and the spare’. Self-discipline was part of the training. Every night at six o’clock the boys would sit down and write thank-you notes or letters to friends and family. It was a discipline which Diana’s father instilled in her, so much so that if she returned from a dinner party at midnight she could not sleep easily until she had written her letter of thanks.
William and Harry were aware of their destiny. On one occasion the boys were discussing their futures with Diana. ‘When I grow up I want to be a policeman and look after you, Mummy,’ said William lovingly. Quick as a flash Harry replied, with a note of triumph in his voice, ‘Oh no you can’t, you’ve got to be king.’
As their uncle Earl Spencer recalled, their characters were very different from the public image. ‘The press have always written up William as the terror and Harry as a rather quiet second son. In fact William is a very self-possessed, intelligent and mature boy and quite shy. He is quite formal and stiff, sounding older than his years when he answers the phone.’ It is Harry who is the mischievous imp of the family. Harry’s puckish character manifested itself to his uncle during the return flight from Necker, the Caribbean island owned by Virgin airlines boss Richard Branson. He recalled: ‘Harry was presented with his breakfast. He had his headphones on and a computer game in front of him but he was determined to eat his croissant. It took him about five minutes to manoeuvre all his electronic gear, his knife, his croissant and his butter. When he eventually managed to get a mouthful there was a look of such complete satisfaction on his face. It was a really wonderful moment.’
His godparent Carolyn Bartholomew has said, without an ounce of prejudice, that Harry was ‘the most affectionate, demonstrative and huggable little boy’ while William was very much like his mother, ‘intuitive, switched on and highly perceptive’. At first she thought the future king was a ‘little terror’. ‘He was naughty and had tantrums,’ she recalls. ‘But when I had my two children I realized that they are all like that at some point. In fact William is kind-hearted, very much like Diana. He would give you his last Rolo sweet. In fact he did on one occasion. He was longing for this sweet, he only had one left and he gave it to me.’ Further evidence of his generous heart occurred when he gathered together all his pocket money, which only amounted to a few pence, and solemnly handed it over to her.
But he was no angel, as Carolyn saw when she visited Highgrove. Diana had just finished a swim in the open-air pool and had changed into a white towelling dressing gown as she waited for William to follow her. Instead he splashed about as though he were drowning and slowly sank to the bottom. His mother, not knowing whether it was a fake or not, struggled to get out of her robe. Then, realizing the urgency, she dived in, still in her dressing gown. At that moment he resurfaced, shouting and laughing at the success of his ruse. Diana was not amused.
Generally William was a youngster who displayed qualities of responsibility and thoughtfulness beyond his years and enjoyed a close rapport with his younger brother whom friends believe will make an admirable adviser behind the scenes when William eventually becomes king. Diana felt that in some way they will share the burdens of monarchy in the years to come. Her approach was conditioned by her firmly held belief that she would never become Queen and that her husband would never become King Charles III.
The boys were always a loving lifeline for the Princess in her isolated position. ‘They mean everything to me,’ she was fond of saying. However, in September 1991, when Prince Harry joined his elder brother at Ludgrove preparatory school, Diana had to face the prospect of an empty nest at Kensington Palace. ‘She realizes that they are going to develop and expand and that soon a chapter in her own life will be complete,’ observed James Gilbey.
The loss of her boys, at least during term-time, only served to highlight her cruel predicament – especially as the Duchess of York had already left the royal scene. Diana’s world may have been characterized as an unstable equilibrium: the unhappiness of her marriage balanced by the satisfaction she found in her royal work, particularly among the sick and the dying; and the suffocating certainties of the royal system matched by her growing self-confidence in using the organization for the benefit of her causes.
During 1991 and 1992 her thinking about her royal position changed by the month but the general trend was towards staying within rather than leaving the organization. She felt impatience with the creaking machinery of monarchy rather than despair, businesslike indifference towards Prince Charles as opposed to shrinking deference and cool disregard of Camilla Parker Bowles rather than jealous rage. It was by no means a consistent development but her growing interest in how to control and reform the system as well as her serious commitment to use her position to do good in the world pointed to staying rather than taking flight. At the same time the Duchess’s departure merely added another element of uncertainty in an already precarious position.
It was not an issue for complacency. The Princess could be a volatile, impatient young woman whose moods regularly swung from optimism to despair. As astrologer Felix Lyle said: ‘She is prone to depression, a woman who is easily defeated and dominated by those with a strong character. Diana has a self-destructive side. At any moment she could say “to hell with the lot of you” and go off. The potential is there. She is a flower waiting to bud.’
One evening she could be immensely mature, discussing death and the after-life with George Carey, then the new Archbishop of Canterbury, the next night giggling away at a bridge party. ‘Sometimes she is possessed by a different spirit in response to breaking free from the yoke of responsibility that binds her,�
� observed Rory Scott who continued to see the Princess socially.
As her brother said: ‘She has done very well to keep her sense of humour; that is what relaxes people around her. She is not at all stuffy and will make a joke happily either about herself or about something ridiculous which everyone has noticed but is too embarrassed to talk about.’ Royal tours, these outdated exercises in stultifying boredom and ancient ceremonial, were rich seams for her finely tuned sense of the ridiculous. After a day watching native dancers in unbearable humidity or sipping a cup of some foul-tasting liquid, she often telephoned her friends to regale them with the latest absurdities. ‘The things I do for England,’ was her favourite phrase. She was particularly tickled when she asked Pope John Paul II about his ‘wounds’ during a private audience in the Vatican shortly after he had been shot. He thought she was talking about her ‘womb’ and congratulated her on her impending new arrival. While her instinct and intuition were finely honed, ‘she understands the essence of people, what a person is about rather than who they are’, said her friend Angela Serota. Diana recognized that her intellectual hinterland needed development. The girl who left school without an O-level to her name now harboured a quiet ambition to study psychology and mental health. ‘Anything to do with people,’ she said.
Although she had a tendency to be overly impressed by those with academic qualifications, Diana admired people who performed rather than pontificated. Richard Branson, the head of Virgin airlines, Baron Jacob Rothschild, the millionaire banker who restored Spencer House, and her cousin Viscount Linley who is chairman of the auction house Christie’s and runs a successful furniture business, were high on her list. ‘She likes the fact that David has been able to break out of the royal mould and do something positive,’ said a friend. ‘She envies too his good fortune in being able to walk down a street without a detective.’
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