It is difficult for me to explain it in english, and it is personal, probably not comprehensible, certainly not well-balanced but I'll try it anyway.
When Diana died, I was so shocked. I've followed her life closely through the media and could easily identify with her, since she was only a year older than me, I was easy to impress and really believed in the fairy tail. - In a way, she was like the older sister I never had. She went through life like I did, only in front of me, marriage, children, problems, whatever. I fully expected "us" to go on like that, me seing how she managed her life and taking what seemed useful for me.
I grew up in a bit and with it came a slow change over the years. While initially I was totally believing in whatever the media was feeding me, at some point, I found it more and more difficult to believe in the stories Diana told.
Why did she have to call Camilla a "Rottweiler"? With giving Camilla that nickname and selling it to the press like she did, Dianas own beauty became instrumental, without her striking appearance there was not much left but a bitter, manipulating person. She lost Charles, even with all her beauty, so it was useless with him, but she couldn't stop using it as a weapon against him. He was married to a young and beautiful woman, and yet he wanted an older, far less attractive woman. There is only one logical reason for that, Diana must have been unbearable. But in her anger, she never realized that she was implying so much.
We have only Dianas word that Camilla was the reason that "the marriage was quite crowded", Charles couldn't counter that with "but she cheated on me first", because of his position and more important, because he wouldn't do that to his sons, something she was not taking into consideration, otherwise the whole "Charls is not fit to be kind" would have never happened. She went so far as to have intimate details of her marriage published in the book from Morton.
She was a good mother to her small boys, but when was she ever with the boys after the divorce? I saw her travelling, having affairs (imho she had lousy taste in men, probably because of her incecuirites) and using the press for her own interests, uncaring about the effects her actions were having on her children.
Today, I mostly see Diana as a tragic figure, victim and offender, humanitarian and self centered child. The one thing I cannot get over is the fact that she did not use the seatbelt in Paris. What a tragedy - only because she was stupid, stupid, stupid.
That said: even today, I ask myself how she would have dealt with the joys of menopause
. And I miss her, just like the sister I never had.
