When did your opinion of Diana change and why?

[zhontella]

Originally Posted by Skydragon

IMO, Diana gave no thought to how she treated friends after she had finished with them. The description was made, to me, by someone she had treated in that manner.

Well, I can sympathize with that someone. It's not fun to be used and discarded by anyone. However, none of us know the true nature of the kind of emotional or mental handicap Diana might have been under in order to be this insensitive.

[love_cc]

Originally Posted by anbrida

But I am really curious of one thing. If a person enters into an relationship carring a thought from the beginning that he would never made a commitment, can we say this person is using his partner?

Do you mean "he" as Prince Charles? Prince Charles married Diana with best intentions to make the marriage to succeed and he had his efforts in it. This is a fact and no one shall deny this. However the relationship did not work out because the huge gap between two parties and Diana's inablity to make the best choice of the difficulty situation: she chose very hatred way and damaged way to deal with Charles's affair which finally caused more hurts and damages to her sons and the monarchy.

I don't think Prince Charles used Diana at all. Diana became HRH The Princess of Wales after she got married. She was the mother of a future king after she gave birth to Prince William. I would not call this situation as "used". I always think this is a mutual deal which gave the royal family the heirs and the person who filled in the position of the Princess of Wales, and realised the ambition of Spencers to have legimate royals on the family tree.

[anbrida]

Originally Posted by love_cc

Do you mean "he" as Prince Charles? Prince Charles married Diana with best intentions to make the marriage to succeed and he had his efforts in it. This is a fact and no one shall deny this. However the relationship did not work out because the huge gap between two parties and Diana's inablity to make the best choice of the difficulty situation: she chose very hatred way and damaged way to deal with Charles's affair which finally caused more hurts and damages to her sons and the monarchy.

I don't think Prince Charles used Diana at all. Diana became HRH The Princess of Wales after she got married. She was the mother of a future king after she gave birth to Prince William. I would not call this situation as "used". I always think this is a mutual deal which gave the royal family the heirs and the person who filled in the position of the Princess of Wales, and realised the ambition of Spencers to have legimate royals on the family tree.

Sorry you guessed wrong, zero point. I am talking my friend's ex-bf(happend to be a muslim). He is a well-bred and well-educated guy. He is nice but too rational, so rational that he has the ability to distinguish love and marriage. Gradually, I found him smelled familiarly, so gave a little warning to my friend. By now, I still hold my opinion.

I did believe that Charles hoped the marriage to succeed when he married. That is a common sense right? I don't think of him as an alien.

[zhontella]

Originally Posted by love_cc

Prince Charles married Diana with best intentions to make the marriage to succeed and he had his efforts in it. This is a fact and no one shall deny this.

I think I will deny that so-called fact. No one who is intent on making his marriage work will wear cuff links with his mistress's initials entwined in his on The Honeymoon with his new bride. Furthermore, he would not let pictures/letters "accidentally" fall out of his diary/notepad so his new bride could see the "secret" face of the mistress again on the Honeymoon. I don't believe those were accidents. I believe Prince Charles was trying to set the rules out the starting gate: Princes of Wales will have, and have always had, their Mistresses.

But to be fair, I suspect Diana was also using Charles, but I doubt she was mature enough to be as fully aware and deliberate about it as Charles, hence her anger.

[Harry's polo shirt]

I think Paul was her friend and loved her very deaply. In the trial he seemed very upset to have to discuss her secrets. I think he wrote the book because he had nothing, he had a family he had to support and that was the only way to make money and survive. The people he worked for (royal family) did not help him. He kept many of Diana's secrets, I don't think he betray her, I think he honored his memory of her.

[Jo of Palatine]

Originally Posted by zhontella

I think I will deny that so-called fact. No one who is intent on making his marriage work will wear cuff links with his mistress's initials entwined in his on The Honeymoon with his new bride. Furthermore, he would not let pictures/letters "accidentally" fall out of his diary/notepad so his new bride could see the "secret" face of the mistress again on the Honeymoon. I don't believe those were accidents. I believe Prince Charles was trying to set the rules out the starting gate: Princes of Wales will have, and have always had, their Mistresses.

But to be fair, I suspect Diana was also using Charles, but I doubt she was mature enough to be as fully aware and deliberate about it as Charles, hence her anger.

Is the story about the cufflinks a proven fact? Or is it Daina claiming that in the Morton-book? Or the pics... is that really proven?
Because I doubt the man who can look so happy and in love with the mistress he married, who is said to have been his love for over 30 years can be so cold-hearted towards his young wife. Sorry, these character traits simply don't fit together.

I personally wouldn't rely on Diana to tell the truth about Charles and Camilla and her at all - after all she believed Camilla was just a decoy for Tiggy, thus she sincerely believed Charles to be a sort of cad he IMHO is not.

[CasiraghiTrio]

^ Geez, I knew Diana had some weirdo thoughts about the whole Tiggy situation, and that she told ?Kay? (or Seward??) that she thought Charles was planning to marry Tiggy. I always assumed she was just smoking too much of something, never thought she had it in her head that Charles actually made Camilla into a "decoy to Tiggy". I mean, who the heck was Tiggy and where did she come from, compared with Camilla who was there as one of Charles's dearest friends, maybe even his dearest, from the time they were 22,23 something years old?

The cufflinks story is confusing. Even Diana admitted they were Chanel cufflinks, hence the CC logo, but of course she said ever so sarcastically, "very clever, the Chanel c's." But I mean...... come on! Yeah, exactly, the Chanel C's!!!!

[ysbel]

Originally Posted by zhontella

I think I will deny that so-called fact. No one who is intent on making his marriage work will wear cuff links with his mistress's initials entwined in his on The Honeymoon with his new bride.

Why do you believe that? Because Diana said so or something else?

[anbrida]

Originally Posted by jcbcode99

We cannot have a realistic discussion regarding how our opinions about Diana changed if we base it on a "what if" type of supposition. It just doesn't work. Her behavior was what it was and she had opportunities to redeem herself often, but choose not to do so. That is my whole point about Diana--I keep reading and re-reading how Diana was used, had a bad childhood, was too famous to have real friends, etc etc etc......it is a constant barrage of excuses for what can only be classified as bad behavior. Honestly, my own son, who at the time was age 5, learned the difference between good choices and bad choices. We were at the pool, I told him not to get on the diving board, and I looked up and where was he? On the diving board. So, I said to him "Sterling, is that a good choice or a bad choice?" and he just kinda looked at me, and I then said "How can you make your bad choice a good choice?" and he got down and went where he was supposed to be. Same theory applies to all adults-we make our own decisions and we have to live with those decisions and their consequences, good or bad. Most people eventually discover how to make good decisions, some do not--but we make our own decisions--and yes, that applies to even the Sainted Diana.

Sure, with the wisdom of hindsight, it is easy to tell what were good decisions and what were bad. But I think there were few people in 1981 able to foresee that marrying the Prince of Wales was the worst choice Lady Diana made in her life.

There is a Chinese saying, “who is the hero depends on who is the winner”. Actually I think some people’s opinions of Diana are significantly affected by how is the life of Camilla going now. Why? Because these two people are opponents. If Camilla is going well, then she is the winner, and Diana must be the loser. And we got accustomed to the ideas that it must be good choices lead to a winner, and bad choices lead to a loser. However, life not only has good choices and bad choices but also has a lot of uncertainties which are totally out of our control. Occasional accidents could make good choices into bad, and bad choices into good. I remembered a movie “Butterfly effects”, in which the main actor had an ability to go back to the past. So whenever things go wrong at present, he went back to change his bad choice. However, each time he went back, the outcome became even worse than before. Finally, he realized that the only way to get things right was he had never come to this world. So at the last time he went back to the time when he was still an embryo in his mother’s womb, and smothered himself by the umbilical core. This movie made me realize that even with the wisdom of hindsight, one can not resist the fate—the uncertainties in life.

So with so many uncertainties in life, I think it’s not so meaningless to ask what if. What if Diana had never spoke out, but kept all her unhappiness in herself? Probably she would have killed herself because of depression before 1997. What if Charles chose to leave Camilla for the sake of children and the country, probably right now we were mocking the divorced Camilla. In the same way, can any one declare that Charles and Camilla didn’t benefit from the accidental death of Diana at all?

Lives are not fair, basically. But thankfully there is at least one last fairness, that finally we will all go back to the dust no matter how many “good” choices or “bad” choices we have made. Everyone has to die, then what is the purpose of the life journey? I don’t think it is merely to be a winner.

One of my friends had introduced me the idea Reincarnation. In reincarnation it is said there are two worlds here. One is the spiritual world, where is the habitation for all kinds of spirits, animal’s and human being’s. The other world is our world. Once for a while the spirit will come to our world to go through a life journey, with the purpose to refine itself by confronting the challenges in our world. When the life journey is finished the spirit will go back to the spiritual world and wait for the next journey. This will repeat again and again until the spirit is culminating (be a Saint?), then it will stay in the spirit world without experiencing the difficulties in our world any more.

At first I don’t like the idea of Reincarnation, because I think it will lead people to give up lives easily. But I like this explanation now. If it is true, then no one will give up easily, because in order to refine our spirits most, we need to stay in this world as long as possible. Only here spirits can get exercised and refined. And in this way all the pains and difficulties look worthy too. Actually suffering put people in an advanced place to exercise the spirit. Like the fairness is fulfilled. Haha, thank goodness, it seems everyone would encounter some kinds of suffering in their lives. No one’s life is easy.

Talking about choices. I am not sure how to make absolute good choice, but definitely I can make choices out of righteousness and my conscience. There is an old Chinese saying, “one can not please all people, but at least one can please his own conscience.” That is my guiding rule. When I have my own children, except to teach them those adult experiences, I would more emphasize on leading them to develop their conscience and righteousness. And if the Reincarnation story is true, I think this is the right way to refine our spirits.

About Diana, my view is, she was very likely to be stupid, inexperienced and imprudent, but she was compassionate. She got her compassion not by learning (I mean not from the faith of some kind of religion), but by instinct. I like this kind of purity. And I don’t think she used her friends, but she might be very aware of being used. Diana suffered a lot, however I didn’t see her had given up. I think she had always been looking for a way to make her lives meaningful. And I believe finally she found that way – by helping other people. Everyone witnessed her charitable work in her last year, although it was not talked too much now. Though she didn’t have enough time to stay in this world to make any substantial achievement in her charitable work, spiritually she had already achieved something. Overall, I am glad to think that she , Diana, has had a prosperous life journey.

[Jo of Palatine]

Originally Posted by CasiraghiTrio

The cufflinks story is confusing. Even Diana admitted they were Chanel cufflinks, hence the CC logo, but of course she said ever so sarcastically, "very clever, the Chanel c's." But I mean...... come on! Yeah, exactly, the Chanel C's!!!!

I hadn't heard about the cufflinks being Chanel ones yet - now that makes finally a bit of sense because I couldn't believe Charles would wear custommade cufflinks with a reminiscense to Camilla on his honeymoon, that's far too caddish.

[Jo of Palatine]

Originally Posted by anbrida

About Diana, my view is, she was very likely to be stupid, inexperienced and imprudent, but she was compassionate. She got her compassion not by learning (I mean not from the faith of some kind of religion), but by instinct. I like this kind of purity.

That's an interesting aspect and well worth to discuss IMHO. Diana was compassionate, you state and I know that this is the impression she gave when she was introduced to a person who suffered. But I got the impression that she very fastly got tired of being compassionate with this one person or with this charity and selected a new topic which interested her more, leaving the old problems behind.

Eg the landmines: Richard Kay claimed on oath that Diana was already on the move, having felt that her work was nearly done and on the way towards a new charitable idea. But I think what charities really need is the constant interest of a patron, not just the short term help of a celebrity.

[Jo of Palatine]

I found that article on the net, from the Independant of 1999 :The forgotten princess | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
about "The forgotten princess". But be careful: the article while it has very good observations in it is nothing for Diana-fans... and here you get an idea, why:

"For this enduring sense of injustice, this much-cultivated feeling that she still is not getting the credit she deserves, is the most fitting memorial to Diana of all. For Diana was a woman who could never have enough - enough money, enough attention, enough adulation, enough power to do good, enough work to fulfil her, enough love, enough understanding, enough privilege. She always, always, wanted more. This is the way we should remember her. And this is the way we do.
Over the years there will be many tributes to Diana, some permanent, others fleeting, some valuable, others less valuable. But the most pertinent fact about her, the aspect of her existence that shaped it more than any other, was that her life was always a mess. She was living proof that you could have everything - everything - and still be desperately, self-destructively unhappy.

She was the breathing, walking, radiantly smiling-through-the- tears goddess of Schadenfreude. The whole world pitied her, as she pitied herself, despite it all. She found no peace in life, and precious little help in trying to find it. Nor is there any peace for her in death - just more disagreement, more controversy, and more publicity.


Surely, all this is an appropriate memorial of a sort. Of a sort that should make us think harder about the true nature of her life - but sadly never seems to."

[ysbel]

Originally Posted by anbrida

Sure, with the wisdom of hindsight, it is easy to tell what were good decisions and what were bad. But I think there were few people in 1981 able to foresee that marrying the Prince of Wales was the worst choice Lady Diana made in her life.

anbrida, I remember when my father saw Diana walk down the aisle, he said, 'The Earl of Spencer must have rocks in his head. I'd never let my 19 year old daughter with no education and no experience go into something like this prince or no prince' She seemed too innocent, her husband didn't seem attracted to her type, and she was marrying into the most high profile and high stress marriage in the world where every little mistake and problem seemed magnified.

First people could see their age difference could be a factor in making the marriage go wrong: 13 years is a large age difference. In my own family, we have had one marriage with that age difference turn out successfully but we've seen several more marriages with similar age differences fail.

Secondly there was the purity you speak of: Diana was not only incredibly young, 19, but people remarked often that Diana cast an innocence and purity of being unspoiled, unsophisticated and untouched. Her father claimed that she had never had a lover and in her innocence she seemed far younger than her 19 years. Somebody that has that much purity and innocence often does not have enough life experiences to judge and act maturely and to make the best choices.

Thirdly, Diana was marrying into probably the most high profile marriage in the world. Charles' position as heir to the most well known monarch in the world meant his wife's position was going to be high profile and high pressure. Although not much was known about Diana's early life at that time, people knew a lot about Charles' life and previous relationships. It is possible for marriages with large age differences to work however, Charles had never had a history of being interested in women a lot younger than he was; he always was attracted to older women or women closer to his age and he didn't favor the romantic type of love but more of a sharing of deep friendship.

It is possible I suppose that Charles and Diana could have surprised us and that only knowing what we knew, Diana could have shown a strength and maturity that her innocence facade masked and Charles could have shown a romantic, dashing knight in shining armour side of him that we hadn't seen before, but the couple didn't show us anything to make us believe that their were any hidden strengths under what they showed us.

Whether Camilla is now seen as a winner is not clear. I will say that Camilla has one trait that in general make people's lives more rewarding and productive and that is that Camilla focuses on the relationships with those closest to her and manages to have mutually beneficial close relationships. I don't believe that Camilla is simplly lucky and that Diana was unlucky. I just think there is one trait that Camilla has that helps her with maintaining these close personal relationships and Diana didn't have this trait.

However compared to Diana, Sarah who made a lot of wrong choices can be seen to come out a winner. At least she is around to see her daughters grow up. Sarah made so many mistakes in her short life and she is not that good I think in really making her close relationships successful.

However, I think the difference between Sarah and Diana and the reason that Sarah is alive today despite her many many poor choices is that Sarah lacks the capacity for revenge. When one engages in revenge, a chain of events can start off which often comes back and destroy the original person. Also with Diana I think the type of people that her vengeful nature attracted, like Paul Burrell, and Mohammed al-Fayed were dangerous company for her to have around. In fact, I think that if Diana had been exactly the same except for one thing and if she had not had the capacity for revenge, I think that Diana's life would have turned out much differently and probably much happier for her and everyone around.

Sarah has not made good choices with her friends and companions either but her nature does not attract the dangerous users that were probably attracted by Diana's less attractive and more vengeful side.

I've heard separately that Diana was with Dodi that night she died to 1) make Hasnat Khan jealous 2) steal the thunder off of Camilla's 50th birthday party. Either way, she knowingly allied herself with the son of a man with dubious business connections and one who wanted to avenge himself on the British establishment who had cast him off.

And Diana willingly associated with the al-Fayeds for what? To make an old boyfriend jealous? Or to knock her ex-husband's love off the front page? This is one area where I believe that Diana's choices directly affected the short tenure of her life. That and her decision to not have security and tell the press that they were going to be surprised by the next thing she did. These were all incredibly bad choices that directly affected the way her life turned out and Charles and the Royal Family didn't have any influence over any of them.

So while many choices in her life were hard to judge at the time I think two: the first of her marriage and the last choices she made regarding her security and life with Dodi could be seen as bad choices at the time.