So what was refreshing about her first solo TV interview was that for the first time the princess spoke for herself rather than relying on her friends. It is a clear sign that she has matured considerably since those days, which she describes as “the dark ages.” Calmer, certainly-especially toward Camilia-stronger and much more resolute. Here was a woman in control of herself and her destiny.
She put a brave face on her isolated position as a disillusioned, disenfranchised member of the royal family. “No, I’m not really on my own,” she said- a sentiment belied by her almost monastic life at Kensington Palace. The cloistered quiet is broken only by the shrill sound of the telephone, an instrument that is at once her confessional, her best friend and her occasional doom.
She worships daily at the temple of her body, rigorous in her adherence to a spartan diet of exercise, massage, therapy and medication. Often the Princess of Wales is in bed by 8. Alone. Her solitary existence, largely self-imposed, worries her dwindling circle of friends. “Such loneliness, she doesn’t know who she can trust,” says Lucia Flecha de Lima, wife of the Brazilian ambassador and the surrogate mother who has given her safe haven at her home in Washington, D.C.
The daily routine rarely varies. Her day starts promptly at 7, when she departs for her daily workout at the exclusive Chelsea Harbour Club, a two-mile drive away. Around 9 o’clock her hairdresser Sam McKnight puts in an appearance. While he attends her hair, the princess is busy on her bedroom phone. Friends know that early morning is a good time to catch Diana. She is usually chatty, eager to share her anxieties and plans. It is at this time that she can be lighthearted. By the evening, when the events of the day have crowded in and her emotional batteries are depleted, making conversation can be, as one friend notes, “like pushing glue uphill.”
Early in the day her private secretary, Patrick Jephson, accompanied by her two secretaries, arrives to discuss the business of the day, meetings that last barely 80 minutes. From about 10 o’clock she puts in some serious phone time. Regular callers include Lord Palumbo, who advises her on financial matters, her lawyer Lord Mischon and (rather surprisingly, given past hostilities) her stepmother, Paine, and the,Duchess of York, Fergie. If Diana is feeling depressed or bored or lonely, she goes shopping to cheer herself up. She shops a lot. She carries a leatherbound notebook to keep a record of her purchases, which, under the terms of the separation, the Duchy of Cornwall pays for. “It’s great spending money on his account,” she jokes with friends. ‘There are weekly visits to see her therapist Susie Orbach at her north London home; her masseur Stephen Twigge; her “lifestyle manager,” Dr. Mary Loveday, and even her astrologer, Debbie Frank.
When the princess sees friends she normally eats out, meeting at restaurants like Mortons, Launceston Place, Le Caprice or Kaspia, a caviar house. Most of the time, however, she dines alone at Kensington Palace. Her needs are simple: a glass of mineral water, a pasta dish or a humble baked potato-topped with caviar or foie gras. In the afternoon she may be scheduled for an official visit, or she may receive visitors connected to her charities, or spend an hour or so on correspondence and other paperwork that arrives each day in a red plastic bag. Between 4 and 5 in the afternoon she retires to bed, either for a nap, to read or write letters to friends. It is also at this time of day that the princess likes to make private visits away from the eyes of royal staff and police. Her normal domestic pattern in the evening is equally quiet. She may catch up on the latest soaps. Occasionally she will go out to the movies, the theater or ballet with a couple of girlfriends.
Her weekends are if anything quieter than her weekdays. While many of her friends decamp to the country, the princess is content to stay at Kensington Palace. She plays tennis, goes roller-blading or jogging in Kensington Park Garden and at least once a month she spends the afternoon with the Duchess of York and her daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, at their home outside London. A quiet Saturday evening watching television with a light supper is the norm. Diana is a fan of the mawkish Saturday-night hospital drama “Casualty” and has never been known to miss an installment of the dating game “Blind Date,” hosted by Cilia Black.
Indeed it was the very simplicity of her private life that enabled her to smuggle BBC reporter Martin Bashir and his crew into Kensington Palace and tell the world about her unhappiness.
If she could write her own script, the princess would like Charles to go off with Camilla Parker Bowles and fulfill his private ambition of owning a farm in Tuscany, leaving Diana to groom William for the throne. She believes-and her personal astrologers agree-that Charles will never become king, and that William is the one who will succeed Queen Elizabeth after her death.
So the hidden agenda in her TV interview was to spread her view that William is more suited to the role of Sovereign than her husband. Diana believes that the monarchy today is outmoded and out of touch. Over the years she has emphasized her determination to bring up her children in a very different manner from that of previous. royal generations. She believes that their constricted upbringing has left members of the royal family emotionally stunted and unable or unwilling to understand a modern society. As one of her friends told me: “She finds the monarchy claustrophobic and completely outdated, with no relevance to today’s life and problems. She feels that it is a crumbling institution and believes that the family won’t know what has hit it in a few years’ time.”
That view is what shapes the way she brings up her sons. As she told a friend: “I want them to experience what most people already know-that they are growing up in a multiracial society in which not everyone is rich, has four holidays a year, speaks standard English and has a Range Hover.”
But in the competition to mold the future monarch, Diana has proved no match for Britain’s First Family. The boys fit increasingly smoothly into the traditional Windsor mold. Friends say William has become a studious, reserved and serious young man, a youngster aware of the debate about his future and much troubled by the weight of responsibility it will impose. He has the Windsor stance, the Windsor temper and the Windsor manners. “He acts a lot older than his years, and these days I can see his father in him,” commented one family friend who has known William since childhood. They see him now protecting his mother, rather than needing her protection.
As the young prince, now at Eton, moves closer into his father’s orbit, Diana’s desire to rear her children unroyally sounds particularly futile. At 18, William has his own valet and bodyguards; like his father, he adores the country pursuits of hunting, shooting and fishing. If Queen Victoria were alive today she would entirely approve of William’s progress.
As Diana sits in her palace amid the wreck- age of her marriage and royal life, she may recall the plans she made before the separation. She looked forward to leaving Kensington Palace- “my prison”– and buying a “cozy nest” of her own. There was excited talk of a Diana Foundation, supported by adoring billionaires, who would help her numerous charities. Most important, she talked gaily of finding a new man and having more children. Yet three years later she remains in her palace prison.
The Establishment will have to find a way to accommodate the most popular princess of the century. But Diana’s modernizing instincts may, in the long run, have little effect on her son’s destiny. The tide of history has the stronger pull.
