She flew too near the sun

06/09/1997

The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, has robbed the Royal Family of its brightest star. A nation is in mourning. But Diana was unique: she can hardly be a role model for the future. The Countess of Longford, author of biographies of Queen Victoria, the Queen Mother and the present Queen, assesses the life and work of the princess. I fell asleep on Saturday night after a marvellous ninety-first birthday celebration with my family and friends in the country. It was shattering to wake up to such an appalling tragedy as the Sunday morning news. We were about to walk over to the church for Mass when a national newspaper rang up to tell us. Our priest knew already though it was so early in the morning, and it seemed right that our first thought should be that God alone could give peace to that greatly gifted but often unhappy soul ? and God had now done so. Princess Diana . . . may His light shine upon her.

A few hours later the effect of the princess?s death upon the Royal Family, and indeed upon the whole nation, began to take shape. In every home, Catholic, Protestant or of no religion, hearts were going out to Prince William and Prince Harry. Everywhere you heard people murmuring: The boys, the poor boys. Even if the princess had not been an exceptionally good mother, there would have been deep sympathy for her after her divorce from the Prince of Wales, the severing of a sacred relationship. But Diana, Princess of Wales, was a devoted mother whose nature blossomed with children.

Diana loved all children enough to hold in her arms those with horrifying diseases such as AIDS at a time when people were highly doubtful whether it was safe to do so. Her courage actually changed the world?s attitude to suffering. Let us hope and pray that at least the princess?s campaign for children maimed by landmines will receive a boost from her death. If that happens, it will mean, as so often before, that one tragic death has saved thousands of lives.

Some people have expressed the view that Diana had found true happiness during the last weeks of her life. In any case, but especially if this was so, we should also remember Dodi Fayed who died with her and the chauffeur who literally drove them to their death.

In another sense, others may have driven them to their death ? the paparazzi, but it is as well to remember from the start two things: the search for scapegoats will not make the dead sleep any more quietly; at the same time even the most accidental death has a cause, and it may be worthwhile finding out what it was in this tragic case.

I think one of the first effects of the tragedy will be to draw the Royal Family closer together, if only for the sake of the princes. It will also be partly in self-protection against angry critics and partly out of a genuine sense of family deprivation. In Diana they have lost something irreplaceable. There is no doubt that her incredible glamour in the eyes of the general public was one of the jewels in the Queen?s crown.

Although Diana was, so to speak, only half royal since the divorce (Princess of Wales but no longer Her Royal Highness), she was every inch a princess: tall and beautiful, she lived in a palace and was the mother of princes, the elder destined to be king. This dazzling vision appeared abroad as a mixture of the goddess Venus and the nun Mother Teresa, possessing the sparkle of the one and the loving kindness of the other.

If the Lady Diana Spencer had married an ordinary member of the aristocracy, instead of the Prince of Wales, she would, of course, still have possessed enormous liveliness and beauty, a charming lady bountiful. But by her actual marriage she herself and the Royal Family each gave something extra to the other that turned out to be unique. Princess Diana has been called a force of nature, suggesting that she was uncontrollable, unrepeatable and beyond praise or blame. This may be an exaggeration. All the same, the combination of Diana?s own glitter with the monarchy?s mystique and special aura certainly produced a being who was even more unique than every human being in fact is.

Should she be treated as a meteor or shooting star ? shimmering and glittering today but gone tomorrow ? rather than as a role model for the democratic princesses of the future? Star quality seems to be a dangerous asset in this modern age, where a small world is so full of observers and communicators that a glorious new comet, instead of appearing for a few minutes every now and then, is always in our sights, growing brighter and brighter every year.

Princess Diana was saved from the dangers of overexposure by the opposite and poignant side of her nature, which coexisted with the joie de vivre. She herself had known suffering. She recognised it and felt deeply for it whenever she saw it in others. This made her fully human as well as being royal. But for a role model of the future it may be that the Royal Family should gradually cultivate the idea of princesses of a more moderate kind: with sensitivity but not excessive anxieties, with compassion but without acute personal involvement, with attraction but without stardom, with a sense of duty but without too much urgency or ardour. In other words, like the Queen or Princess Anne.

It may well be argued that Princess Diana?s extremes of beauty and idealism were more than welcome on this flat earth and we all mourn the loss of so much intensity and loveliness. It may also be argued that it was outside forces ? forces outside herself ? that caused the occasional highs and lows in the princess?s temperament. A finger of scorn and accusation is pointed at the press.

The part played by the press in the last two months of the Diana hunt, culminating in last Saturday?s catastrophe, was not a pretty one. It is true that a drama on this scale cannot unfold without the presence of the celebrity as one of the actors. For the tragedy to work, there must also be a suitable stage. A celebrity who is basically allergic to press pursuit will avoid those parts of the world, such as the Mediterranean, Paris, London, famous hotels, restaurants and nightclubs, which might be called the hunting shires of the journalistic packs. The princess is generally agreed to have had a love-hate relationship with the press. They were a necessary part of her public work. But where to draw the line between public work and the full (private) personality that performs it?

Probably no one but Diana could have got the landmines campaign off the ground. Plenty of other people were equally devoted to the good cause but it took the glamour of Diana?s private life added to her public appearances and speeches to work the magic. In fact there is no line between a celebrity?s private and public persona. But it is the press?s duty to draw a line that does not exist. That is what we in Britain mean by self-regulation.

Meanwhile, may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.