Inside the Surreal Final Days Before Princess Diana's Death
The breakdown of Princess Diana and then-Prince Charles' marriage—including the divorce neither wanted but which Queen Elizabeth II quietly insisted they get—wasn't an obvious precursor to the most tragic of outcomes.
In actuality, despite her persistent feeling that the royal family had thrown her out with yesterday's tabloids, the world still could have been Diana's oyster after her divorce. She retained a residence at Kensington Palace and the title of Princess of Wales. She agreed to a $22.5 million settlement, plus $600,000 a year to run her office.
And, more important than anything else, she has sons Prince William and Prince Harry to look after half the time.
But after she died on Aug. 31, 1997, at the age of 36, it became impossible to view the last months of Diana's life through anything but doom-tinted glasses, the outcome so undeniably tragic.
Yet there was joy and romance in her final days, as she pondered her future and the world speculated about what she'd do next—and with whom.
"I have learned much over the last years," Diana said after a June 1997 auction of her iconic gowns at Christie's raised $5 million for charity, per biographer Andrew Morton. "From now on I am going to own myself and be true to myself. I no longer want to live someone else's idea of what and who I should be. I am going to be me."
"I've been in a privileged position for 15 years," Diana said on the BBC's Panorama in November 1995, three years after her and Charles' separation. "I've got tremendous knowledge about people and how to communicate and I want to use it."
Her divorce from Charles—hastened in no small part by that explosive interview—was finalized Aug. 28, 1996.
That December, the charity United Cerebral Palsy honored Diana as Humanitarian of the Year at a ceremony in New York. The following month, she took her famous walk through a minefield in Angola on behalf of the Halo Trust to draw attention to the devastation caused by landmines in war-torn regions.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and wife Cherie Blair hosted her at the P.M.'s official country estate, Chequers, in May 1997, to discuss possible outreach collaborations.
Diana hoped to parlay her already sizable platform into an ambassadorship, even if an unofficial one.
At the end of May, she went to Pakistan to fundraise for a hospital built by cricket star (and future Pakistani prime minister) Imran Khan. In June, her engagements included meeting the dancers after a performance of Swan Lake at Royal Albert Hall and visiting with then-first lady Hillary Clinton at the White House, a few days before she bid her glittering designer ensembles farewell at Christie's in New York.
"Diana Reborn" was the title of the July 1997 Vanity Fair cover story that was meant to serve as a symbolic fresh start.
"There is a kind of serenity," her friend Gianni Versace told the publication. "I had a fitting with her last week for new suits and clothing for spring, and she is so serene. It is a moment in her life, I think, when she's found herself—the way she wants to live."
(Needless to say, the eeriness is enhanced by Versace's July 15, 1997, murder, the Italian designer gunned down outside his Miami Beach home by spree killer Andrew Cunanan.)
After attending a 36th birthday soiree thrown in her honor at London's Tate Gallery on July 1, Diana wanted to put some distance between herself and the 50th birthday party the future King Charles III was throwing for his longtime girlfriend Camilla Parker-Bowles (now Queen Camilla) at his Highgrove estate.
The princess was also said to still be nursing a broken heart following her split from cardiothoracic surgeon Hasnat Khan, who was willing to hide in the boot of Diana's butler's car to discreetly visit her at Kensington Palace but ultimately wasn't willing to make it a lifestyle.
So, Diana took her friend, Egyptian business magnate and Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed, up on his longstanding invitation to host her, along with William and Harry, at his vacation home in Saint-Tropez.
Dodi Fayed, Mohamed's eldest son, showed up on July 14, a few days into the princess' stay, docking his boat near his father's yacht, the Jonikal. The 42-year-old movie producer was accompanied by his model fiancée Kelly Fisher, though Dodi would later deny that they were engaged.
Mohamed, who used to arrange private shopping excursions for the princess at his famed London department store after it had closed for the evening, was excited by the prospect of a love connection between Diana and his son.
Kelly left for work on July 18 and Dodi started spending more time with Diana and her sons, renting out a nightclub so they could dance in peace and taking the trio to an amusement park.
Diana called it the "best holiday of my life," per Morton.
But in light of the tragic news, after dropping the boys back home in the U.K. she flew to Milan to attend the July 22 funeral for Versace.
Though they were treated in the press at the time as a couple on the verge of getting married, Dodi was Diana's romantic companion of less than two months when they died.
After her sad sojourn to Italy, the Chariots of Fire producer picked Diana up in London and they helicoptered to Paris, where they spent the weekend at the Ritz Hotel, another property owned by Dodi's father.
That managed to be quite private, with Ritz security enlisted to keep photographers off the scent. But on July 31 the pair embarked on a six-day Mediterranean cruise aboard Mohamed's yacht, where the long-lens shots of the pair canoodling on deck went 1997-era viral.
Dodi's scorned ex Kelly held a press conference in Beverly Hills on Aug. 13 to announce that she was suing him for breach of contract, alleging he'd offered her a six-figure sum to put her modeling career aside so she could focus on being with him full-time.
At the same time, British tabloids were ablaze with reports that Dodi—whom Tina Brown called a "haphazard playboy" in her 2007 book The Diana Chronicles—was quite serious about Diana and she, in turn, was in love.
Meanwhile, Diana took the Harrods jet to Bosnia, where she spent Aug. 9 and 10 meeting with landmine victims (the Ottawa Treaty banning landmines, which she championed, was signed in December 1997).
On Aug. 15, with paparazzi in hot pursuit, she headed to the Greek isles with Tiffany & Co. president Rosa Monckton for a long-scheduled holiday, while Dodi went back to Los Angeles to try to smooth things over with Kelly. (She dropped her lawsuit after his death.)
Reflecting on her last vacation with Diana, Rosa wrote in the Daily Telegraph, "She had talked often to me about the intrusion of the press, about what it is like to be hounded by the paparazzi and to have to fight for every second of her privacy."
After reuniting in London, Dodi and Diana took off again for the South of France on Aug. 21.
Diana and Dodi spent a week aboard the Jonikal, passing through Portofino and Sardinia. He presented her with a small silver-framed plaque inscribed with a poem he wrote. She gifted him with an engraved cigar cutter—"With love from Diana"—and a pair of gold cufflinks that had belonged to her late father, Earl John Spencer, who died in 1992.
"I know it would give my father great joy," Diana reportedly said, "to know that now they were in such safe and special hands."
According to myriad accounts, Diana was enjoying Dodi's company, but was anxious to see William and Harry, who were spending their annual August fortnight with their grandmother the queen at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.
But during an Aug. 22 stop in Monte Carlo, Dodi secretly purchased a $200,000 Alberto Repossi diamond ring from the "Dis-Moi Oui!" (translation: "Tell me yes") collection.
And he was determined to give it to Diana before she returned home.
He arranged to pick up the bauble in Paris on Aug. 30. Diana planned to fly back to London the next day, telling William and Harry she'd be home soon, hours before she died.
"I was running around with Willy and my cousins and didn't want to stop playing," Harry wrote in his memoir Spare of the last conversation he had with his mother. "So I'd been short with her. Impatient to get back to my games, I'd rushed Mummy off the phone. I wished I'd apologized for it. I wished I'd searched for the words to describe how much I loved her. I didn't know that search would take decades."
Though Mohamed—who died Aug. 30, 2023, at 94—put the Repossi ring on display at Harrods as part of a shrine to Dodi and Diana that stayed up for years as a testament to the great love he insisted they shared, even he didn't know for sure if his son had actually popped the question.
Or, if he did, whether the princess had said yes. The Crown's final season, starring Emmy winner Elizabeth Debicki as Diana, leaned into the ambiguity, imagining that Dodi (Khalid Abdalla) started to propose in a suite at the Ritz but she quickly cut him off. In the dramatized end, she let him down gently while tenderly convincing him to finally level with his overbearing father.
Which Dodi planned to do once he'd seen Diana off the next morning.
Instead, shortly after midnight on Aug. 31, they headed downstairs and lingered for about seven minutes near the rear entrance of the Ritz while staffers created a diversion out front to throw a horde of paparazzi off the scent.
The couple climbed into the back of a Mercedes being driven by (as subsequent investigations and inquests concluded) the intoxicated head of security at the Ritz, Henri Paul, who was unexpectedly tasked with driving them back to Dodi's apartment. Bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones got into the front passenger seat.
Photographers who weren't fooled by the ruse took off after the Mercedes by car and on motorbikes. Henri sped into the Pont de l'Alma tunnel and, seconds later, the Mercedes smashed into a pillar. Trevor was the only survivor.
Henri and Dodi died at the scene, while Diana was taken to Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital. After life-saving efforts failed, doctors pronounced her dead at 3 a.m.
The world found out three hours later.
When the queen and Charles got the call at Balmoral in the middle of the night, he decided to let William and Harry sleep. He'd tell the boys when they woke up.
As Diana's memory lives on, revisit the ways she forever changed what it meant to be part of the royal family:
Princess Diana went far against the grain when she advocated for causes previously considered taboo amongst royals, including AIDS research, land mine removal and homelessness in the U.K. She was one of the first public figures to be photographed interacting physically with AIDS victims—a decision that helped destigmatize and lessen the public's fear around the condition.
The paparazzi's role in Princess Diana's tragic passing actually brought the royal family and the press closer than ever before. After her death, the palace made agreements with the British media to ensure photographers wouldn't overstep boundaries in an attempt to satiate public interest. As a result, we see more palace-organized photo calls and greater cooperation on both sides when it comes to balancing privacy and public figuredom.
Perhaps Diana's most extraordinary influence on the royal family was her unprecedented vulnerability in the face of public scrutiny. She openly discussed her struggle with mental health (notably suffering from postpartum depression after giving birth to Prince William), and in her landmark interview with the BBC's Martin Bashir Diana remarked, "Well, maybe I was the first person ever to be in this family who ever had a depression or was ever openly tearful. And obviously that was daunting, because if you've never seen it before how do you support it?"
Years later, William and Harry have kept their mother's legacy alive by launching Heads Together, a campaign that works to change the U.K.'s conversation around mental health and wellbeing.
The princess made yet another impact on life behind palace doors by maintaining unusually laid back relationships with the royal staff. Her famously close friendship with butler Paul Burrell captivated headlines, and she reportedly set up play dates for Prince William and Harry with her employees' children. Princess Di also encouraged her sons to participate in the kitchen, which might have inspired Kate Middleton's decision to often prepare home-cooked meals for her family.
Princess Di flipped the script on traditional royal birthing techniques by welcoming both her children outside Buckingham Palace, where Prince Charles was born decades before. This made Prince William the first future British monarch to be born in a hospital on June 21, 1982. Wills and the Duchess of Cambridge followed suit, welcoming Prince George and Princess Charlotte in the same medical center, St. Mary's in London.
Instead of putting her sons on a pedestal like the entire world had already done, Princess Diana made an effort to create a sense of normalcy for William and Harry. Her youngest explained in an interview, "She made the decision that no matter what, despite all the difficulties of growing up in that lime light and on that stage, she was going to ensure that both of us had as normal life as possible. And if that means taking us for a burger every now and then or sneaking us into the cinema, or driving through the country lanes with the roof down in her old school BMW to listen to Enya."
When Diana and Prince Charles were to embark on their official tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1983, she insisted that Wills (then only 10-months-old) would join his parents on the road. Royal children never typically traveled on these trips, but Diana's decision to keep her family together explains why Prince George and Princess Charlotte are now always included on overseas ventures.
(Originally published Nov. 18, 2023, at 12 a.m. PT)
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