wymanda said:
I think its very hard on these young women to be compared to the image of Diana. As Elvis Presley once said there is a person & an image and it is very hard to live up to an image. Diana, like all of us, was a flawed human being and each of these young women has her own special gifts to offer both her own country and the rest of the world. Let them get on with doing the best they can and stop holding Diana up as some sort of perfect princess - she was far from it!
I agree with a lot of what you've said here wymanda. It's not fair to compare any of the present princesses up to Princess Diana. Each of the present princesses are unique in their own manner of style, conduct and approach to their role. It's barely fair to compare the women to each other as there are different expectations in each monarchy.
While I did like Diana and admire her work, I think that part of what made her as famous as she was was not only for her title and social status, her role as the future Queen of Great Britain or as the mother of the future King of Great Britain, her fashion sense, or her charity work but it was for some of the infamous incidents in her life. From her very public battle with anorexia and bulemia, her affairs, Charles' affairs, their divorce and all the daily drama around Charles and Diana's life.
She was as famous for the good things she did in her life as she was for the infamous things she did.
From her affair with James Hewitt, stories of how miserable Charles and Diana were on their trip to Korea, when she walked down the aisle and saw Camilla in the church on her wedding day, to Charles saying that Diana was a bit "chubby" around the time of their engagement -- these things will indelibly be tied to Diana as much as her standing alongside Mother Teresa shortly before her death and that Paris car chase or the visit to the landmines and her holding hands with AIDS patients.
The world loves juicy stories about famous and rich people who seemingly have it all. Sharing the stage with Diana for many years were all of Sarah Ferguson's scandals, such as her infamous toe sucking incident. The lives of today's princesses are much tamer -- or at least they are now. The most scandalous things in the lives of the present current princesses would be Mette-Marit's single motherhood/drug partying days, Maxima's father's role in Argentina, Mabel's omission regarding her relationship with the mob boss and Letizia's divorce. I would say that while those things certainly made waves for a time in their respective countries and maybe to a few other countries, they were not where on the national scale as the public scandal of Charles and Diana's tumultuous relationship.
And I think Charles gets a bit of "credit" for Diana's fame, too. His extremely public relationship and affair with Camilla frequently put Charles into the "bad guy" role (which wasn't always true) and by extension cast Diana in a vulnerable light and made her seem more like a matyr -- which wasn't always true either. Charles has flaws, but so did Diana. And often I think the press chose to emphasize Charles' flaws and bolster Diana's image. In today's monarchies, the princes are either more popular than their princess wives or they share the same amount of popularity; I can't think of a case where people like the prince significantly less than his wife. In Denmark while Mary is very well liked, Frederik is repeatedly voted Dane of the year. Even in Belgium, Phillippe's popularity may be less than Mathilde's, but it does improve daily as people see him more with her and their children. In Holland, Maxima is wildly popular, but Willem is also very well liked.
. She does a lot of charity work . Especially for children . She went to Niger on her one , like Diana. She is a great mother to Elisabeth and Gabriel . Mathilde is so sweet and kind , and she has a beautiful smile . In her marriage she has more luck .Filip adores his wife
