Charles and Diana


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I don't know Lily how he would know. CXharles had had a previous engagement for this event and apparently the surgeon told them that it was a simple operation. That led to the conclusion that both parents didn't need to be there.

My impression though on reading this latest book is that Diana didn't always want Charles around.

An example of not wanting Charles around was her 30th birthday party which I described above. It does appear that she leaked a story to the press that she didn't want Charles around on her 30th birthday.
 
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I think by the early 90s Diana no longer wanted to pretend that her marriage was fine and perfect thats why she did all those things.
 
I think by the early 90s Diana no longer wanted to pretend that her marriage was fine and perfect thats why she did all those things.

That I think is true, sirhon. :flowers:

But I think some other forces were going on. As an American, I am quite surprised to read that Diana received negative press while she was alive because in America, all we saw were complimentary articles about her.

However, I now see that in Britain, the coverage of Diana was not always complimentary even during her lifetime. In particular her friendship with Sarah, Duchess of York, was considered a little undiginfied and there was greater uproar in Britain when Sarah and Diana both impersonated policeman at an event. In America, it was seen as a harmless prank but in Britain apparently some quarters were very alarmed at their behavior.

Sarah, after an initial love affair with the British press, saw the press turn against her and Diana saw her fair share of articles against her too during this time. This was something that I was unaware of.

Also I was surprised to read that Diana's affair with Hewitt was exposed before Charles' affair with Camilla. Apparently Diana's friends told Smith that Diana became obsessed with bringing Camilla down because she became angry that the press never paid attention to Charles' meanderings but always jumped on her when she talked to a strange man.
 
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But I think some other forces were going on. As an American, I am quite surprised to read that Diana received negative press while she was alive because in America, all we saw were complimentary articles about her.

I've noticed that too when she died I was 7 but I do remember hearing about her before her death and usually I heard postive reports about her. But years later when I was older and had access to a computer and went on British newspaper and tabloid websites that I realized that in Britain not all reports on her were positive. But that happens with so many other famous people and celebrities.
What always puzzeled me about Charles and Diana's marriage is how long it went. They both were so clearly unhappy with each other but still stayed married. Had I been in a marriage like theirs I wouldn't stay a month. Whats the point in being in a relationship that can no longer work?
 
What always puzzeled me about Charles and Diana's marriage is how long it went. They both were so clearly unhappy with each other but still stayed married. Had I been in a marriage like theirs I wouldn't stay a month. Whats the point in being in a relationship that can no longer work?

I so agree with you sirhon! That is the mystery of Charles and Diana. I like Charles well enough but even I can't understand why Diana would stay with him for so long if it was clear that he was happiest with another.

The only reason I can think of is that Diana experienced the trauma of being separated from her mother when her parents divorced and she was scared of losing her children.

Given what I read about the divorce reports between the Earl Spencer and his first wife, it appears that the Earl's title was the major factor behind the judge giving the custody of the children to him.

If Diana was merely a daughter of a nobleman married to the Heir of the Throne, I think she may have feared losing her children if she left Charles.

That is the only reason I can come up with for staying in a marriage like this.
 
Absolutely ! If it wasn't for her children, she would have run away with Hewitt or someone else. The image of her mother leaving her was in her memory and when she recalled her unhappy childhood she tought it would be the same traumatism for the boys. She waited too long in this marriage IMO. By staying like this she hurted herself but even the boys who heard the rows between Charles and Diana. Okay, they wouldn't be able to see both of their parents together but it would have been better to see them separately and their mother happy.
 
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How very true Diana stayed in that marriage for far too long. I don't think it ever croosed anyone's mind that in the same month a year later Diana would die in an accident. What I've learned from their marriage is that never to stay in relationship that is doomed for trouble and heart ache. And from her death I learned to apperciate and live life because we don't know when our time is up.
 
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I think the Queen was also wanting Charles and Diana to stay together and appear to be a team at least on the surface, and it takes a brave person to defy the Queen.
 
I think the Queen was also wanting Charles and Diana to stay together and appear to be a team at least on the surface, and it takes a brave person to defy the Queen.

I wouldn't even dare look at her in the eyes. And it was certainly not Diana who could have said to the Queen, face to face, I don't like the life I have with your son and heir to the throne Charles :rolleyes:
 
Hi Duchess I haven't read through the entire chapter yet but here is what I read so far...
of course of course....how could i have forgotten the gold club incident and the book. thanks ysbel. :)

one thing i've always wondered about though is the taj mahal thing. i just wonder if perhaps that since charles had at one time made the statement that he would like to one day bring his wife there and that if was purely coincidental that diana was in the right place at the right time and the picture was taken and the press made a big thing of it and diana just kind of said "yeah that's it...that's how i can play this out"? did diana really have the saavy to be in that place at that time and stage it all? sometimes i don't think she was just that sharp. the press can piece anything together so going back and finding that quote by charles wouldn't be that far a stretch would it?
 
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I think the Queen was also wanting Charles and Diana to stay together and appear to be a team at least on the surface, and it takes a brave person to defy the Queen.

I agree with you Elsepth. I don't think the royal family would allow a divource between Prince and Princess of Wales in any circumstance. Diana did want to escape, but she cannot escape. Also she did not want have a divouced marriage and let her children face divourced parents. She wanted to save her marriage but she used the wrong way to defend her marriage.

I just finished Sally Bedell Smith's paperback "Diana: the life of a troubled Princess" .It had reduced a great amout of BPD theory about Diana. Only the last chapter had discussed briefly about the possibility of BPD in Diana. Smith's book is a really good biography about Diana. I like her analysis about the mode of Diana's problem and I find it very insightful and reasonable.
 
when you say BPD do you mean bi polar disorder? i'd never heard of that theory and it's quite intesting. she did show classic signs from afar but i think you'd really have to know a person well in order to make that kind of diagnosis. i think a bystander could diagnose just about anyone with manic depression if they see enough of them but without intimate knowledge of their personality i think it would be a stretch. any thoughts??
 
Do you really think she could have been bipolar? Hum...Yes; she had some bi-polar characteristics, but she also have some valid reasons to act the way she did. She was trapped by her marriage, who turned to be a disaster, she realized that Prince Charles didn't love her any more, and that there was another woman with a real name in her husband's life..but she didn't want to repeat the same story than her own parents. Lady Diana was horriffied by her parents divorce and she didn't want the same for her children. However, she must have felt that her marriage was unbearable...

Hum. Not an easy situation, I guess.

Vanesa.
 
BPD stands for Borderline Personlity Disorder. I think it is a quite serious mental disease and very hard to cure. She does not make any assertion that Diana suffered from BPD but she mentioned Diana's things fit in the background information of BPD. From what I read from the book, Smith wants readers to see Diana's mental problems beyong only Bulimia. Her view is "Bulima is a winadow." and it is only a part of Diana's mental problems. I think I will read Sarah Bradford's book. She is a British author and she probably can have other things to add.
 
Elspeth said:
I think the Queen was also wanting Charles and Diana to stay together and appear to be a team at least on the surface, and it takes a brave person to defy the Queen.

I wonder how much the Queen imposed her own opinions on Charles and Diana though Elspeth. Certainly she would have had no concept of divorce for Charles and Diana but I wonder how forcefully she made them acquainted with that fact?

From all I have read of Her Majesty she didn't want to interfere with her children's personal lives. Of course she would have had to consent to a divorce and the prospect of just asking the Queen for a divorce even as noncommittal as she seemed would be frightening to me much less Diana. But I still don't see the Queen pointedly telling the couple they must hang in together enough for the Queen herself to act as a deterrent to Diana's asking for a divorce.

The Queen was not a deterrent to Diana's collaboration with Andrew Morton on the book and the action of airing the Royal Family's dirty linen in public (as one onlooker described it) would I think be a lot scarier to do that than simply to ask the Queen for a divorce. Diana's collaboration with Morton caused her the greatest difficulty with the Royal Family and the Palace and it appears from Smith's book it was the beginning of the end.
 
of course of course....how could i have forgotten the gold club incident and the book. thanks ysbel.

You're welcome Duchess. :) Well what seems even more surprising was that the Palace officials didn't realize that Charles had made that statement when they agreed for Diana's photo shoot at the Taj Mahal. That seemed like an unusually careless oversight.

Apparently the Palace officials didn't realize it until the day before when they saw the tabloid pack's excitement for the upcoming photo shoot apparently because the hacks wanted a picture to go with the story they had planned. The story that hit the papers after the picture was of a 'poignant reminder of a wish that did not come true' as one headline proclaimed.

I agree with you Duchess that it doesn't seem something that Diana would create on her own. I do think the press knew from the beginning the significance of a photo of Diana alone at the Taj Mahal and if Diana didn't know the significance, they would take pains to tell her. It does appear from the leak about her 30th birthday party, she was in contact with Stuart English, editor of the Daily Mail, she had collaborated with Andrew Morton on the book and she had been in close contact with James Whitaker, originally with the Daily Star who later went to the Daily Mirror (the source of the 'poignant reminder' headline) so they had the opportunity to influence her to get the photo op they wanted. However, I don't think they had the power to make her do something that she didn't want to do or the ability to just mislead her into thinking a photo of her in front of the Taj Mahal would be a simple innocent picture.

I think her look at the Taj Mahal was too sad for that and usually when she was away from Charles during this time, she showed a much happier face to the public. With her friendship with Whitaker, I can't imagine her not knowing the significance of the Taj Majal as it concerned Charles' earlier remarks when she was sitting on the steps.
 
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I just finished Sally Bedell Smith's paperback "Diana: the life of a troubled Princess" .It had reduced a great amout of BPD theory about Diana. Only the last chapter had discussed briefly about the possibility of BPD in Diana. Smith's book is a really good biography about Diana. I like her analysis about the mode of Diana's problem and I find it very insightful and reasonable.

That is the book that I am reading and you're right, and although I am only halfway through, it really hasn't touched on the borderline personality disorder except for the first chapter.

So far it seems like a reasonable analysis of a train wreck which is the best way to describe Charles' and Diana's marriage from how it is being so far described in her book. She puts the blame at a momentarily lapse in judgment by both Charles and Diana during their courtship on how well they could meet each other's emotional needs.

Smith is much more critical of the tabloids and their reporters and the effects they had on Charles, Diana, and the monarchy than she seems of Diana and Charles. It will be interesting to read Tina Brown's book when I get it from the library. Apparently, Brown is not as harsh on the tabloids as Smith is.
 
I wanted to point a couple of things out. We don't know what really went on in Charles and Diana's marriage, and we don't know what went on in their engagment and courtship, it is not for us to say that they weren't honest with each other. Maybe they were completely honest with each other. Or maybe they weren't honest with their own personal feelings.

Charles and Charles' close friends have all insisted that Charle's relationship with Camila did not restart until after his marriage with Diana was basically in shambles. And there is no evidence, to prove that what Charles is lying there.

Charles could have been completely honest, with Diana. He could have told her about his heartbreak over Camilla etc. As for Diana should could have easily been excited about the idea of being the future Queen.

One thing I want to point out is that people, who are insiders say that Diana could be extremely difficult.. The private Diana was in someways very different from the public Diana.

And as for Charles is concerned, I have heard that in someways the private Charles is very different from the public Charles. I was reading on a message board somewhere. Someone said that they had always disliked Prince Charles because of the media bias or whatever. But one day, this person met Prince Charles through a charity thing. The person said, that Charles was one of the nicest, kindest people she had ever met in her life.

And I remember as a little girl people were talking about how Charles was supposedly a "cold father." But now, it turns out that Charles isn't a cold father whatsover. Has never been a cold father, and I think Charles actions during Diana's death also suggest that he's gotten the bad rap.

Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to make Prince Charles a saint. He clearly made some bad choices, including marrying a 19 year old. But there's another side to this story.

And I find it amazing when people talk about why Diana married Charles: Because he's the future King of England, that's why. Did anyone wonder if Diana could have had ulterior reasons for going into that marriage.
 
BPD stands for Borderline Personlity Disorder. I think it is a quite serious mental disease and very hard to cure. She does not make any assertion that Diana suffered from BPD but she mentioned Diana's things fit in the background information of BPD. From what I read from the book, Smith wants readers to see Diana's mental problems beyong only Bulimia. Her view is "Bulima is a winadow." and it is only a part of Diana's mental problems. I think I will read Sarah Bradford's book. She is a British author and she probably can have other things to add.

oh yes now i remember reading that somewhere too. she certainly showed signs of it but again unless you know someone very well it's hard to make this kind of diagnosis. we can all show signs of bpd...just think PMS (sorry i had to say it). :lol:
 
You're welcome Duchess. :) Well what seems even more surprising was that the Palace officials didn't realize that Charles had made that statement when they agreed for Diana's photo shoot at the Taj Mahal. That seemed like an unusually careless oversight.

whitaker would definitely be a good source wouldn't he...and we all know how the press can manipulate a situation to get what they want. i guess i've just always wondered about this whole "diana being able to manipulate the media" thing. i mean yes...she could turn it on when she wanted to and i suppose that can count as being manuplative but the other event i've questioned is the serpentine gallery photo. apparently she showed up with the intent of shoving the whole charles/camilla eveing off the front pages but she could have showed up at mcdonald's and it would have had the same result. i think a lot of the supposed manipulation was just a lot of coincidences and good timing. i just don't think diana had the smarts to "plan" a lot of this manipulation. of course there are incidences where she did...the bashir interview and the morton book but in hindsight she knew they were mistakes so that kind of makes me think that she couldn't manipulate the media...at least not on her own.
 
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you can see in these pictures that charles fell in love with diana after they were married. i believe that if diana would not have came down with the illness, which would be hard on any marriage they would have still been together!
 
... I think a lot of the supposed manipulation was just a lot of coincidences and good timing. i just don't think diana had the smarts to "plan" a lot of this manipulation.
Something which has always stuck in my mind is an incident related in Penny Junor's "Charles: Victim or Villain?" (1998). From page 137 of the hardcover:

"Soon after the Yorks' wedding [Diana] unexpectedly announced that she wanted to do some more engagements and gave Richard Aylard and Anne Beckwith-Smith three dates when she specifically wanted them to find something for her to do. It was an odd request and quite out of character. Nevertheless, they fixed things for her to do, and it was only when they had organised it all the policeman pointed out that they were the precise dates when the Duchess of York had her first three public engagements. Diana upstaged her new rival to perfection."

Assuming this is true, or there are elements of it which are true, it shows that Diana may not have confined her "media manipulation" exclusively to her husband.
 
BPD stands for Borderline Personlity Disorder. I think it is a quite serious mental disease and very hard to cure. She does not make any assertion that Diana suffered from BPD but she mentioned Diana's things fit in the background information of BPD. From what I read from the book, Smith wants readers to see Diana's mental problems beyong only Bulimia. Her view is "Bulima is a winadow." and it is only a part of Diana's mental problems. I think I will read Sarah Bradford's book. She is a British author and she probably can have other things to add.

Well apparently it was Charles's friends who treated Diana as mad and they were the first to mention BPD. Bradford's, if I remember good, don't believe that. Her behaviour could be medicaly explained by 'prolax' that she took for her bulimia. Some of its effects are humor change and light depression. Personnaly, I don't believe it neither. Diana was far from being crazy and Charles had his unjustifiable crisis too.
 
good points. if there was something very obvious then she would use it to her advantage. what i mean is that an event like the serpentine gallery and the taj mahal would have been arranged in advance and it was just the media making it look as though diana herself had arranged them for the sole purpose of upstaging charles. i do, however, now see that she could, given some thought, upstage people if she wanted to. i guess what i mean is that given that the press coverage of her was, for the most part positive some believed that she was manipulating. also, given that the royals are so busy a lot of their engagements would have coincided with each other and the press would just choose to attend diana's rather than the others because photos of diana would always outsell photos of the others and this would make it look as though she would be manipulating the media???
 
I can imagine Charles wanted attention and care, time devoted to him and his feelings. Diana initially (during the courtship) gave all that, and he thought that would continue after the marriage as well. I don't doubt he had feelings for Diana. But the marriage must have been a harsh reality for both - too many differences, too few things in common.

I don't see Diana being in love as deeply as she is usually depicted. In fact, I don't think she would ever consider marrying him, if he were not The Prince of Wales. She was another one, who needed care and attention (actually I think that's one thing they shared because of their childhood - Charles didn't see much of his parents either, did he?). She probably thought of Monarchy and her role in it in a bit childish way - imaging herself in beautiful gowns and tiaras, attending balls. She wanted attention and admiration, love and support from everyone. And in the process of making sure she has all that, she forgot that the person who she married to needs all of that.
The same goes for Charels, although in his case I think it was more duty first, personal life second.

Personally I believe what Charles and his friends said - that Charles restarted his relationship only after his marriage with Diana was ruined beyond repair. I've never seen evidence for the contrary.

To summarize - their marriage was doomed from the start, with or without Camilla, Hewitt and the others.

Diana should have married a rich and carrying person, who would devote all his financies and time to her and allowed her dazzle with her beauty and elegance.

Charles should have married Camilla in the first place, since she's obviously the kind of person, who suits him perfectly.

But they did marry each other. Had their happy and difficult time together. Had made many mistaked (he probably should try to devote more time to his wife, she should have never done all those interviews and leaks).
Once Diana was mature enough, I think they were ready to be on friendly and carin terms, for the sake of their boys, and go each with their own path.
 
I personally believe some of the reasons she married Charles were I believe she was in love with him and yes of course being a Prince helped (who wouldn't want to marry a Prince at 19) but in her mind she thought they could never get divorced something at the time she never wanted to happen.

As for the Taj Mahal, wasn't Charles on that trip with her and he was doing something else when that photograph was taken? He could have taken her there if he had wanted to. I could be mistaken but I believe he was there with her.

She did manipulate the press at times, no doubt. I do not know how she would have survived if she hadn't, even Charles once wrote to a friend how could one as young as she survive all this attention unscathed or something to that effect. In the beginning she certainly did not ask for it.

I do not think it helped at all when Camilla's photographs fell out of his wallet on their honeymoon. I know this is Diana's version but I do believe it happened. I think the valet could have laid out the cufflinks but these two events on their honeymoon did not help at all to start their life together.

Lily
 
whitaker would definitely be a good source wouldn't he...and we all know how the press can manipulate a situation to get what they want. i guess i've just always wondered about this whole "diana being able to manipulate the media" thing.

That's a good question, Duchess. Quite honestly I think the charges of Diana's manipulating the media came when the media itself came under fire for some of its less than honest portrayal of the Diana-Charles marriage and the response was that they had been manipulated by Diana. Whitaker in particular gave an interview before Diana died and claimed that she was very saavy with the media from the beginning and he said he always suspected her of manipulating them. I was quite surprised to hear him say this while she was still alive. But still to me, Whitaker's protests sound like the pot calling the kettle black.

I think all public figures need to manipulate their press coverage to a certain extent; that is why they are public figures. The Queen, Prince of Wales and the whole Royal Family have to manage their image in the press because the image of the monarchy is their whole reason for being. That's why they hire hire press agents and press secretaries.

Diana did meet individually with press power brokers and try to convince them to cover her more favorably. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't so I think you're right, she wasn't always succesful. But I don't think that meeting with them was excessive manipulation; I imagine other celebrities do it too.

More troubling (to me) examples of her press manipulation were her long-standing relationships with Whitaker, Morton, and Kay ahd her tendency to feed them erroneous information which they published without independently verifying. James Whitaker covered the Daily Mirror, Andrew Morton covered the more upscale Sunday Times, and Richard Kay covered the midmarket Daily Mail so between the three of them they had all of Britain covered. Diana would call Kay up so many times to feed him an article that she wanted him to print that his rival reporters started getting suspicious and started stalking Kay. Their photographers shot pictures of Richard Kay and Diana talking alone the day before Richard Kay published a major revelation and Kay had to scrap his plans to quote a 'friend' of Diana and had to quote Diana herself.

Diana and Kay caught tremendous heat when Richard Kay published a story about a heroic Diana saving a tramp from drowning in a gutter that came when general press coverage about Diana was negative. It appears that Diana had called him up with the story, Kay published it without checking to verify it and his rival papers verified it and found that it wasn't true. Despite this debacle, Kay had Diana's trust so much that he became her speechwriter.

Even with these little manipulations and yes the picture at the Taj Mahal too, I think Diana would have escaped the 'press manipulator' label if she had not used her power to make Charles and the Royal Family look bad in her two major public relations coups - the Morton book and the Panorama interview.

Morton swore up and down that he did not try to lead Diana on with the book but that it originally was her idea and she sought him out. I don't know whether I believe that he never led her on but I do believe his word when he says that she reached out to him. One theme throughout the book from talks with Diana's friends and people she came in contact with was that Diana was uncomfortable when the other person took the initiative; she preferred being the one to reach out to others rather than have others reach out to her. It seemed a common theme in her romantic relationships, friendships, and dealings with the press.

Ironically I think that the Panorama interview was a good example of a media figure manipulating Diana. Martin Bashir looked incredibly discreet and well-bred during the interview, but according to Smith's book, he fed Diana lies about how members of her family were spying on her and produced bogus documents to show that a certain press agency had paid the security at Althorp for exclusive pictures and stories of Diana in order to get her to sit down for an interview with him. He also implicated some of Diana's friends in the plot (some thought because the friends would counsel her against an interview with Bashir) The implication was that Bashir manipulated Diana to keep the project a secret from everybody so that he could get the interview.

For me the most troubling aspects of these two events was Diana's reaction after the fallout. The Morton book put her brother-in-law, Robert Fellowes, in an untenable position as the private secretary of the Queen. In his job he had to ask her if she cooperated with the book and when she said no, he defended her and her non-involvement to the press and was made to look ineffectual and foolish when Diana publicly visited her friend Carolyn Bartholomew who had cooperated with the book. Fellowes was so mortified he offered his resignation to the Queen because he said he had failed in his duty. The Queen luckily refused to accept his resignation. I suppose it is good of Diana to stick by her friends but when sticking by her friends causes her family who weren't even involved in the mess with Charles and Camilla to look foolish, this act of sticking by her friends does not seem good-natured at all. Smith also says the Royal Family offered her several outs and several methods to say she didn't cooperate with the book and the implication was that all would be forgiven but she refused each overture by them.

More troubling was her reaction after the Panorama fallout. In fact, after learning about the background of the Panorama interview, it appears she wanted Charles to look bad so much that she was willing to sacrifice making herself look good. According to Smith, Diana spoke with the editor of the Sun about the press coverage following the interview. The editor told her point blank that she could not expect favorable coverage from the Sun unless she made it clear that she was not advocating that Charles be bypassed as King in the succession to the throne. He told her as long as she confirmed she supported Charles' succession to the throne, the Sun would report favorably for her on the interview. However, Diana refused to state her support for Charles ascending the throne. What is remarkable is that despite the need for positive coverage, Diana refused to backtrack on the implication that she thought Charles was not fit for the throne.

The implication of the interview seemed obvious. Polls right after the interview showed only a minor upsurge in Diana's popularity with the general public but they showed a major downturn in people's opinions of Charles. Nothing, not the Morton book, not the Dimbeldy book or interview where Charles admitted the affair, not even the Camillagate tapes affected Charles' reputation with the public as much as Diana's Panorama interview.

In answer to your question whether she consistently and successfully manipuated the media, I think not. But in the Panorama interview in particular, I think she was very successful in manipulating public opinion to Charles' detriment and it appears from her reactions after the interview that she was very pleased with the results. She was at least pleased enough with Bashir to hire him as her speechwriter replacing Richard Kay.

Without the Morton book and the Panorama interview, I think her legacy might be different.
 
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As for the Taj Mahal, wasn't Charles on that trip with her and he was doing something else when that photograph was taken? He could have taken her there if he had wanted to. I could be mistaken but I believe he was there with her.

Hi Lily,

It may help to understand the background of Charles' first remark to understand why he would not want to go to the Taj Mahal with Diana.

Charles originally had visited the Taj Mahal, a monument to the beloved wife of a great Indian potentate, when he was still single and was so overcome by the sight, he romantically proclaimed that when he was married he wanted to bring his wife here.

Unfortunately when he was married and came with his wife to the same place, the Andrew Morton book had come out, Charles had been with Camilla for awhile, Diana had been with James Hewitt for awhile and broken up and Charles and Diana could barely stand to be in the same room with each other.

I think Charles and Diana would have been uncomfortable having their picture taken together in front of the Taj Mahal given how they felt about each other by then. But I do think that Diana was trying to send a message about the state of her marriage with the Taj Mahal picture.
 
Ironically I think that the Panorama interview was a good example of a media figure manipulating Diana...
I heard that too. Diana hesitated a long time before saying yes. Bashir found reasons that would make her fall in the trap and she unfortunately did. Bashir did a documentary and interview of Micheal Jackson a few years ago. It turned out to be a disaster for MJ because Bashir had everything he wanted to paint him in a very bad light and he did by the manipulation of the video. I think MJ sued him eventually. She has manipulated the media but they were happy she did. They need her to sell, she would be nobody without them...
 
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I heard that too. Diana hesitated a long time before saying yes. Bashir found reasons that would make her fall in the trap and she unfortunately did. Bashir did a documentary and interview of Micheal Jackson a few years ago. It turned out to be a disaster for MJ because Bashir had everything he wanted to paint him in a very bad light and he did by the manipulation of the video. I think MJ sued him eventually.

I didn't know that TheTruth. Well then that makes Diana's decision to hire Bashir as her speechwriter after the interview even more puzzling. :confused:

From all accounts she was extremely pleased with Bashir after the interview so much that she trusted him to literally put words in her mouth as her speechwriter and supplant Diana's previous favorite Richard Kay. I assume she eventually found out the truth of what Bashir was telling her but in the year following the interview Bashir was definitely on her payroll and it looks like, in her confidences.

I agree with you that Diana and the media were for a time in a mutually beneficial relationship with each other. But the nature of her death makes me a little cynical about the positive effects of the media on Diana and I do think that the Royal Family suffered because of it.

However, Tina Brown apparently has a more benign interpretation of Diana's relationship with the press and I look forward to reading it when it comes from the library.
 
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