In the just-released fourth season of Netflix’s The Crown, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher is invited to spend a weekend at Queen Elizabeth’s Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire. Not used to hobnobbing with royalty, Thatcher is perplexed as to what to wear to the ‘drinks’ session at 6pm before dinner. She decides nothing less than her best will do, and, just as the clock strikes six, makes a grand entrance in pearls and silk. Only to find the royal entourage mud-splotched and dirty, fresh from a stag hunting expedition.
“I think we failed that test,” a bemused Thatcher later tells her husband.
This gap between the ways of royalty and the rest of the world had always existed. Until Princess Diana arrived on the scene. She believed, right from a young age, that she was “destined for greatness”. She was the perfect bridge between the two worlds—the kindergarten teacher and ‘upper-class cleaner’ who lived in Kensington Palace. The ‘rebel’ with a heart of gold. The free-spirited royal who was also charmingly self-conscious and camera-shy. The doe-eyed beauty who visited the sick in couture.
If she was idolised and adored while alive, the ‘Dianamania’ that was unleashed upon her death was unprecedented, resulting in countless books, documentaries and shows offering various perspectives on her life. But, for a people who love to write their leaders’ obituary at the slightest whiff of controversy, why did a princess who starved herself almost to death, played games with the press and was famous for her temper tantrums, remain so unscathed? Was it because she was malleable enough to fit her own myth? Or because she was a distraction from the wear-and-tear of ordinary lives and broken dreams? Perhaps we will never know. And there will always be another show or book—just around the corner—that will help keep alive the cult of Princess Diana.