Diana, Princess of Wales, 36, died in Paris in the early hours of Aug. 31. Diana, the former wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, the heir to the British throne, was killed when the car in which she was travelling crashed in the Place de l'Alma underpass.
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Her companion Dodi Fayed, son of Mohamed al-Fayed, the millionaire owner of the Harrods store and the Ritz hotel group, and Ritz driver Henri Paul were killed instantly in the crash. Diana suffered massive internal injuries and died in hospital three hours later despite undergoing emergency surgery. A bodyguard, Trevor Rees Jones, the only occupant of the car reported to have been wearing a seat belt, survived the crash but sustained serious injuries.
Born on July 1, 1961, Lady Diana Frances Spencer was the third daughter of the eighth Earl of Spencer. She received an exclusive, albeit limited education, prior to working as a kindergarten teacher in London. She was catapulted into public life with the announcement of her engagement to Prince Charles, more than 10 years her senior, in February 1981. They were married in St Paul's Cathedral in July 1981 [see p. 31116], and had two children, Prince William (born 1982) and Prince Henry (born 1984). Despite her enormous popularity with the public, it became increasingly clear that there were problems in her marriage, and the couple officially separated in late 1992 [see p. 39246]. Although she continued to perform charity work, in 1993 Diana reduced her public commitments and appealed to the press to give her more privacy. In a Panorama television interview in 1995 she confirmed that her husband had been having a long-term adulterous relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles. She also admitted to having had an extra-marital relationship herself, and to having suffered from the eating disorder bulimia. Despite her reluctance to accept a divorce, she eventually conceded to pressure and the divorce was finalised in August 1996 [see p. 41242]. In the months before her death she had becoming increasingly involved in the campaign to ban the use and production of landmines worldwide.
The accident in which Diana died occurred shortly after midnight on Aug. 31 after the couple had dined at the Ritz Hotel and were apparently en route to Fayed's Paris apartment. In a bid to elude the photographers waiting outside the main entrance of the Ritz, the couple's car left from the front entrance as a decoy, whilst Diana and Fayed left from the rear of the building in a different car. The Princess had been habitually pursued by photographers, but her relationship with Fayed, with whom she had been on holiday immediately prior to the accident, had attracted even greater levels of media interest in her private life in the previous few weeks. The vehicle in which they left the hotel was pursued by a number of photographers on motorbikes, and was reported to have been travelling at high speed in a bid to escape them when the driver lost control in the underpass. Seven photographers were arrested at the scene of the accident and a number were subsequently charged in relation to the deaths. A number of others left the scene after taking photographs of the crash and its victims and were being sought by French police.
Although still the subject of a police inquiry, the role of the photographers in the accident was widely condemned, particularly in the UK, and provoked calls for the enactment of a privacy law. However, the burden of blame for the Princess's death was shifted somewhat when it was revealed that tests performed on Paul, the driver of the crashed car, indicated that he had a blood-alcohol level three times that legally permitted when driving in France and had also been taking prescription drugs.
This article comes from Keesings Worldwide Online
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