On 31 August 1997, Diana was fatally injured in a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris, which also caused the death of her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed and their driver, Henri Paul, acting security manager of the Hôtel Ritz Paris. Millions of people watched the princess' funeral.
Conspiracy theories and inquest
The initial French judicial investigation concluded that the accident was caused by Henri Paul's drunken loss of control.From February 1999, Dodi's father, Mohamed Al-Fayed (the owner of the Paris Ritz, for which Paul had worked) maintained that the crash had been planned, accusing MI6 as well as Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Inquests in London during 2004 and 2007 finally attributed the accident to grossly negligent driving by Henri Paul and to the pursuing paparazzi. The following day Al-Fayed announced he would end his 10-year campaign for the sake of the late Princess of Wales's children.
Tribute, funeral, and burial
The sudden and unexpected death of a very popular royal figure Diana, a British princess brought statements from senior figures worldwide and many tributes by members of the public. People left public offerings of flowers, candles, cards and personal messages outside Kensington Palace for many months.
Diana's funeral took place in Westminster Abbey on 6 September 1997. The previous day Queen Elizabeth II had paid tribute to her in a live television broadcast. Her sons, the Princes William and Harry, walked in the funeral procession behind her coffin, along with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh, and with Diana's brother, Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer. Lord Spencer said of his sister: "She proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic.".
Memorials
The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Gardens in Regent Centre Gardens Kirkintilloch.Immediately after her death, many sites around the world became briefly ad hoc memorials to Diana, where the public left flowers and other tributes. The largest was outside the gates of Kensington Palace. Permanent memorials include:
- The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park, London, opened by Queen Elizabeth II.
- The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Playground in Kensington Gardens, London.
- The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Walk, a circular path between Kensington Gardens, Green Park, Hyde Park and St. James's Park, London
In addition, there are two memorials inside Harrods department store, at the time owned by Dodi Al-Fayed's father Mohamed Al-Fayed, in London. The first memorial consists of photos of the two behind a pyramid-shaped display that holds a wine glass still smudged with lipstick from Diana's last dinner as well as an 'engagement' ring Dodi purchased the day before they died.The second, unveiled in 2005 and titled "Innocent Victims", is a bronze statue of the two dancing on a beach beneath the wings of an albatross.The Flame of Liberty, erected in 1989 on the Place de l'Alma in Paris, above the entrance to the tunnel in which the fatal crash later occurred, has become an unofficial memorial to Diana.
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| The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park, London, opened by Queen Elizabeth II. |
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| THE DIANA, PRINCESS OF WALES MEMORIAL WALK is a 7-mile long circular walking trail in London dedicated to the memory of Diana, Princess of Wales. It goes between Kensington Gardens, Green Park, Hyde Park, and St. James’s Park in a figure-8 pattern, passing sites that are associated with her life: Kensington Palace, Spencer House, Buckingham Palace, and Clarence House, etc.. It is marked with eighty-nine individual plaques and has been described as one of the most magnificent urban parkland walks in the world. |
The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Playground in Kensingston Gardens,London
Memorabilia
Following Diana's death, the Diana Memorial Fund was granted intellectual property rights over her image. In 1998, after refusing the Franklin Mint an official license to produce Diana merchandise, the fund sued the company, accusing it of illegally selling Diana dolls, plates and jewellery.In California, where the initial case was tried, a suit to preserve the right of publicity may be filed on behalf of a dead person, but only if that person is a Californian. The Memorial Fund therefore filed the lawsuit on behalf of the estate and, upon losing the case, were required to pay the Franklin Mint's legal costs of £3 million which, combined with other fees, caused the Memorial Fund to freeze their grants to charities.
In 1998, Azermarka issued postage stamps with both Azeri and English captions, commemorating Diana. The English text reads "Diana, Princess of Wales. The Princess that captured people's hearts".
In 2003, the Franklin Mint counter-sued; the case was eventually settled in 2004, with the fund agreeing to an out-of-court settlement, which was donated to mutually agreed charitable causes.
Today, pursuant to this lawsuit, two California companies continue to sell Diana memorabilia without the need for any permission from Diana's estate: the Franklin Mint and Princess Ring LLC.
Diana in contemporary art
In 2005 Martin Sastre premiered during the Venice Biennial the film Diana: The Rose Conspiracy. This fictional work starts with the world discovering Diana alive and enjoying a happy undercover new life in a dangerous favela on the outskirts of Montevideo. Shot on a genuine Uruguayan slum and using a Diana impersonator from São Paulo, the film was selected among the Venice Biennial's best works by the Italian Art Critics Association. In July 1999, Tracey Emin created a number of monoprint drawings featuring textual references about Diana's public and private life, for Temple of Diana, a themed exhibition at The Blue Gallery, London. Works such as They Wanted You To Be Destroyed (1999) related to Diana's bulimia, while others included affectionate texts such as Love Was On Your Side and Diana's Dress with puffy sleeves. Another text praised her selflessness - The things you did to help other people, showing Diana in protective clothing walking through a minefield in Angola - while another referenced the conspiracy theories. Of her drawings, Emin maintained "They're quite sentimental . . . and there's nothing cynical about it whatsoever."
In 2007, following an earlier series referencing the conspiracy theories, Stella Vine created a series of Diana paintings for her first major solo exhibition at Modern Art Oxford gallery.Vine intended to portray Diana's combined strength and vulnerability as well as her closeness to her two sons.The works, all completed in 2007, included Diana branches, Diana family picnic, Diana veil and Diana pram, which incorporated the quotation "I vow to thee my country".Immodesty Blaize said she had been entranced by Diana crash, finding it "by turns horrifying, bemusing and funny".Vine asserted her own abiding attraction to "the beauty and the tragedy of Diana's life".
Later events
1 July 2007 marked a concert at Wembley Stadium. The event, organised by the Princes William and Harry, celebrated the 46th anniversary of their mother's birth and occurred a few weeks before the 10th anniversary of her death on 31 August.On 13 July 2006 Italian magazine Chi published photographs showing the princess amid the wreckage of the car crash, despite an unofficial blackout on such photographs being published.The editor of Chi defended his decision by saying that he published the photographs simply because they had not been previously seen, and that he felt the images are not disrespectful to the memory of the Princess.Fresh controversy arose over the issue of these photographs when Britain's Channel 4 broadcast them during a documentary in June 2007.
The 2007 docudrama Diana: Last Days of a Princess details the final two months of her life.
On an October 2007 episode of The Chaser's War on Everything, Andrew Hansen mocked Diana in his "Eulogy Song", which immediately created considerable controversy in the Australian media.
