Diana, Princess of Wales (UK)

[Auroranorth]

I feel sorry for Dr. Khan, having it all raked up yet again. He's pretty much kept his mouth shut since Diana died. However he felt about her, I really doubt he wants to have someone play him onscreen in intimate moments.

[magazinewhore]

Yeah, he's the only man who hasn't really talked about her (other than some married guys).

[Ladybug]

I read this Vanity Fair excerpt from Tina Brown's new book The Palace Papers, and I can't wait to read the entire book. The Diana Chronicles is the best Diana biography and this article does not put Diana is saintly light, but it sure does explain a lot about her sons' respective trajectories.

Prince Harry idolized Diana more and understood her less. He would always be her baby, a scamp who was “thick” at his lessons and “naughty, just like me.” His emotions, like hers, were always simmering near the surface.

William understood Diana more but idealized her less. He was privy to her volatile love life. He knew the tabloids made her life hell, but he also knew she colluded with them. By his early teens, he was his mother’s most trusted confidant. She used to describe him as “my little wise old man.”

[royalwave]

The link doesn't work. Try this one: www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/04/how-dianas-dance-with-the-media-impacted-william-and-harry

I found this article very interesting. I knew that Diana had a rather inappropriate relationship with William (hardly the first woman to confide everything in a son), but it's sort of shocking still that he would have sat in on interviews with tabloid journalists and that he would have kept a photo of his mother's lover's wife on his dartboard at school. That anecdote comes from Piers Morgan so I question whether it has been embellished. Still, given other things we know it's not outside the realm of possibility.

I do think William has a more nuanced view of his mother's role in her own coverage and realizes she wasn't exactly a saint. Harry wouldn't want to admit she is anything less and gets a lot of mileage out of the "poor wounded son of poor innocent Diana" angle. I have sympathy for both of them and what they went through in their childhoods, but it would be healthy for Harry to recognize that his mother was not solely a victim, and neither is he.

[tiggertoo]

Wow, very interesting. I think that theory may explain a lot about William and Harry. They carry very different emotional burdens.

I read Patrick Jephson’s book. It was an eye opener. One thing I remember from his book is that she would joke, a bit meanly, about the people she was going to visit, but then she would be absolutely lovely and warm to the people when she met them.

[Auroranorth]

Yikes. This makes me feel pretty sorry for young William, whose mother took him along to meetings where she said incredibly inappropriate things and clearly encouraged unhealthy behavior, and also turned him into her personal confidant about things that were way above his paygrade as her child. She'd have been much better off with a good therapist, and so would he.

I can't help wondering if part of Catherine's appeal to him was that she wasn't anywhere near as needy as Diana must have been. She came from a stable background with a committed and loving family, and while she no doubt has her insecurities and her issues, like any other human being, she isn't driven by his mother's instabilities.

[royalwave]

Diana had a real lack of maturity. She married young and it seems like her development was sort of arrested at that point. She perhaps grew more jaded, more cunning, and more bold over the course of her marriage but she was still only 36 when she died with teen/tween kids and what seems like the emotional maturity of a prepubescent girl. It feels like she didn't stop to think about how her actions and manipulation of the press would impact her sons until after the fact. She treated William like a peer rather than a son. Maybe it would have been different if there had been a few more years between them.

I'm William's age and of course at the time I didn't think of Diana as super young. I remember feeling sorry for William and Harry that their parents couldn't get it together enough not to wage war on the cover of tabloid magazines. Any child would have been angry with them about that. Now that I'm older than Diana was when she died though, I have a somewhat different perspective and a bit more empathy for her. We all make mistakes as parents but I feel like the younger you are when you have your children, the more likely you are to have a relationship that more quickly turns to one of friendship or peerage vs. parentage as they grow. Being in a bad marriage where you can't confide in your husband would exacerbate that situation. She was looking for support in the wrong places and it didn't seem she had anyone in her life to knock some sense into her.

[ladyboy]

I also think she didn't have anyone - ANYONE - around that she could actually trust. Her child was probably the safest person for her to confide in, as messed up as that may be. At least he wasn't going to leak to the tabloids about whatever she said.

[magazinewhore]

I can't help wondering if part of Catherine's appeal to him was that she wasn't anywhere near as needy as Diana must have been. She came from a stable background with a committed and loving family, and while she no doubt has her insecurities and her issues, like any other human being, she isn't driven by his mother's instabilities.

Probably. Also Kate comes from a take-charge woman who seems good at getting shit done. I wonder if Carole wears the pants in that relationship. The women in the Middleton family seem kind of steely while the men a little dither-y (based solely upon her brother). I know he had depression and I appreciate him talking about it. He just doesn't seem terribly ambitious, which is FINE.

Re: Diana's maturity. Yes, it sounds like calling many, many times a day and staking out a man's house is something I did in college for a couple of dumb years. I never called anyone, but I may have staked out someone's house. But it's so dumb and you learn so quickly how unproductive that is. Maybe she had nothing better to do. Fame is a helluva drug.

[lea1977]

I always have felt that a Kate’s family was part of the appeal for William.