Dangerous Indiscretions: The Decline of the House of Windsor

there was a time when the Royal House of Windsor had everything a dentistry could desire in 1991 Britain had helped secure peace after the Gulf War conflict the ceremony of trooping the colour had a sense of victory over the dark forces of aggression but for the Queen the next conflict would be fought uncomfortably closer to home Princess Diana had done more than provide the next royal generation she had given a new vitality to an aging institution she looked certain to complete the Queen mother's task of taking a popular family monarchy into the 21st century under the impressive facade of royalty on parade there were dangerous tensions which would shatter the image of the monarchy no one foresaw then that within a few troubled years Princess Diana once the future Queen would be divorced stripped of her royal title and died tragically the summer of 1991 would be the last time the royal family would all appear together publicly within a year both the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of York would be removed from the Royal fold Diana had married too young at only 20 she had been unable to cope with the royal system Sarah the Duchess of York worldly-wise at 26 fared little better she too would be divorced and lose her title as mother of the future King Diana's isolation created confusion a princess alone cut adrift from the royal family like Diana Fergie had absorbed their morals and their ethos she expected protection but her indiscretions were cruelly exposed Diana found affection and the love her husband could not give her in other people and in other ways her unique empathy with the public set her apart from her husband's family [Music] her warmth and compassion for the Forgotten indisposed made her an icon of caring in a selfish age her beauty and magnetism created jealousy among the royal family her popularity calls rivalry with her husband behind her duties diana hid her unhappiness her illness and her secret life hidden from her adoring public Diana's private life was known only in royal and society circles older members of the royal family with their love of pomp pageantry and position seemed blissfully undisturbed by Diana's personal problems well of course is the first person to speak the truth about Danner and to write about her she rarely was and to see that this was a multi-faceted woman with many contradictions and someone who was putting in many different directions I haven't been surprised at what has happened in the last five years in the paperback edition of Dan and private I recount a conversation that took place at Windsor between the Prince and Princess of Wales in the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh where Diana was warned if she pushed for a separation she would inevitably get a divorce that the result would be she would be marginalized Diana and I didn't speak for three years after that book came out eventually when we spoke she said to me you were right she said I didn't believe you at the time but you were right the sourness of Diana's relationship with Charles was exposed to the world during an official tour of Korea in 1992 their visit created such embarrassment that Britain had to apologize to the host nation the royal couple continued this official union until the poisonous atmosphere could no longer be disguised Diana's marriage and the relations between her and Prince Charles really presented the royal family with an almost insoluble problem it is announced from Buckingham Palace which as insisted on a formal separation announced by Prime Minister John Major in the House of Commons major said that Diana could still become queen got up in the House of Commons she said this does not affect the whole series of things it doesn't affect Charles's position of the church it doesn't affect Diana's future position as Queen of England and everybody said come off it John you're pretty implausible most of the time but this is totally rubbish I think once actually the extent of the rift between the two of them had become public knowledge once both of them both Diana and Charles has started a public competition for favor which inevitably amounted also to blaming the other who were competitions for public faith once that's happened you couldn't possibly have the two of them remaining married and again if they had remained married the question would have been first what everybody said this is a sham and the second thing they would have said is but how can she possibly be queen in 1993 diana made her last official visit to wales as their princess as usual her pulling power was immense an expectant crowd including the press waited for the royal convoy to arrive [Music] diana knew instinctively that her popularity with both the public and press gave her a power base in a trump card to match the power of the royal system for years she fought the courtiers who effectively controlled the monarchy immensely photogenic she liked publicity and used it to her own advantage a new author in the beginning we used to describe as the last silent film star that was nowhere near the truth diana was not very good on what she was brilliant at was posing for popular newspapers for the tabloids and she invents this new art form which is really look at it I mean some of the most famous images we have Diana and outside the Taj Mahal and his greeter Garbo I want to be alert all the famous scene in Seoul and we're in Korea where she's pulling away from Prince Charles and they owe you she always makes of our eyes as great heavy cold eyes only look going up there this what she's doing she is posing for picture which she knows will have a tabloid headline the were times when the acting gave way to real emotion her performance unable to contain the real turbulence live in during the summer of 1992 Diana's secret sorrows became public dramas following the revelations about her private life during a speech at a hospice and Liverpool her composure broke as she fought back tears the philosophy of tender loving care which is and always will be the hallmark of this Hospice [Applause] gathering her composure diana reached out to her adoring public for their support and understanding her emotional breakdown was due to the publication of a sensational book claiming to be the true story of her life and exposing her suffering within her marriage its author confirmed his story on television the tears that she's shared in public in Liverpool's was nothing compared to the tears that she spent that she shed over the last year I can't emphasize strongly enough the volatility of the situation inside Kensington Palace her husband's uncaring attitude his unfaithfulness and the coldness of the royal household were disclosed in candid detail the book revealed her cries for help her suicide attempts and her eating disorders there are a number of sources for that for the suicide attempt some of the sources are off the record in tape recorded interviews and on each occasion when I was quizzing the people about these suicide attempts I asked them who told him and the answer came back on each occasion the Princess of Wales [Music] despite the publicity created by the revelations of an unhappy marriage Donna continued with her royal duties outwardly their marriage still appeared to be in good shape but behind the scenes forces were at work to discredit her Diana knew that her husband's friends were making her out to be unbalanced and plans were made to expose her as an adulteress a personal and sensitive phone call with a male friend who called Diana squidgy had been intercepted and the tape sent mysteriously to a newspaper labelled by the press as the squidgy gate tapes they were published in August 1992 James Gilby who was a named source in Andrew Morton's book was revealed as Diana's confident a Anna's friends retaliated by publicly exposing mrs. Camilla Parker Bowles as Charles's long-term mistress sometime after her first public appearance at a polo match attended by the Queen in June 1992 an intimate telephone conversation between Charles and Camilla was leaked to the newspapers [Music] later in a television interview Charles admitted that he and Camilla had been lovers since 1986 they met regularly at her farmhouse in the country Diana was not slow to realize how important the tapes were in her battle with Charles once Diana had the tape she is supposed to have try to use it as leverage to get a separation because she wanted a separation not that by then she was so unhappy with the Prince of wings but she was unhappy with the court he is running her life well once they knew of the existence of the tape these very courtiers spun around and taped her with her lover at the time who was James Gibby - really stymie her and have a quid pro quo situation whereby she would not be able to use the tape to damage the Prince of Wales Diana start to believe that she was not accidentally taped and I know this from her personally [Music] on the other side of the world in New York the disgraced Duchess of York hoped to resolve her problems by earning enough money to pay off her mountainous debt her mother-in-law the Queen cleared some of the overdraft accumulated during Fergie's brief spell as a royal wife but further debts had arisen thanks to the Duchess's high spending money and men were the twin sources of fergus fool from grace she hoped her royal connections would fail her literary endeavors what we've seen actually in the British royal family is farce and tragedy being played out simultaneously diana is the tragedy poor poor Fergie is the farce palace officials view Diana and Fergie is the continuing danger to royal stability but unlike Charles Prince Andrew behaved with great civility to his estranged wife believing that the happiness of their young daughters Beatrice knew Jamie came first Fergie's downfall was prompted by her love for rich handsome Americans first there was the dashing Texan Steve Wyatt then his friend Johnny Bryan followed Brian had claimed that he was an honest broker helping fergie with her marital and financial problems the papers told a different story the indiscretions of previous royal generations had been covered up Fergie found like Diana that hers were exposed she blamed the publication of these photos and earlier ones with Wyatt on her enemies the grey men within the palace now she obviously did quite a lot of damage to the monarchy what of the family monarchy but it was always limited by the fact that nobody ever took her very seriously did that I mean you remember his Lord Charteris wasn't it when he was asked his opinion as terribly sat up there looked it was Hoffman spectrum said Volga Volga Volga and I think we all felt that she was Volga Volga Volga the difficulty with her was ever to imagine that this hooray Henriette was actually Duchess of York and called her Royal Highness intensity she was so insolvable actually I have a very very soft spot of I think that with all her vulgarity and all her crassness she was actually quite an honest go getting girl I also think she was never malicious she never tried to damage the monarchy she never tried to damage her husband and in that sense there is quite an instructive contrast this time I mean Diana for all her virtues was very vindictive she went out of her way to damage Charles as much as possible there was also an element of vindictiveness directed against the royal family where this attack so public in the in the Morton book on the family firm now Fergie was never guilty of that she was just preposterous poor dear the royal family were on holiday at Balmoral when the pictures were published a Fergie on holiday with her lover Johnny Bryan the Queen could not forgive her daughter-in-laws reckless behavior rather than endure the looks and whispers over her topless bollocks with Johnny Bryan Fergie fled from the royal holiday home in Scotland she was subsequently banned from royal events meanwhile in Balmoral it was family business as usual with the Royals attending their church service Diana and Fergie had plotted to leave the royal family together in the event diana held back humiliated Fergie went back to a rented home and life as a single mother she had been cast out in the cold by her husband's family Fergie floundered from one house to another one unsuitable man to the next one wild scheme to a worse one consulting fortune tellers over her prospects meanwhile the royal band played on triumphal processions were a sign of a dynasty that looked to the past to distant times when monarchs had awesome power over troublesome wives outwardly undisturbed by the antics of her eldest sons and their wives the Queen perhaps drew consolation from her ancestors but Diana and Fergie may not have fared well in Henry the eighth's day his divorce from his first wife Catherine of Aragon who failed to bear him a son caused a breach within the Catholic Church of Rome she was expelled from the royal court he hounded her literally to death by moving her to a series of unhealthy houses and in sixteenth-century an unhealthy house was quite easy to find he bombarded her with demands he took away her jewels he really terrorized her the grim Tower of London faced those who fell foul of Henry his second wife Ann Berlin was executed there for her adultery an act of high treason in those days a swordsman was sent for from France to execute of its sort rather than having heard a Ming with an axe which was the way common people had their heads chopped off I mean the result was the same but there was a little bit more honoring it but later the Prince Regent's battle with his wife Carolina Brunswick was lost when the House of Lords refused him a bill of divorce ray just hard you can imagine I mean she was promiscuous she was exhibitionist she did everything to shock and make a damn fool of herself you know and she was fortunately abroad for most of the time and George the fourth wind in Prince Regent simply wanted to get rid of her and considering some of the things she did like going around in short skirts and an open carriage with a younger man in Italy I ie one can't blame him not that he was a parrot can defer to himself of course but he did have a position to give her Queen Victoria founder of most of Europe's royal dynasties through marriage to her cousin Prince Albert had nine children and provided a perfect model of family values to understand about our current royal family there of course that really the Hanoverian royal house the German royal house and they seemed to have always had tactfully a very healthy sexual appetite one doesn't normally think of Victoria you know with her famous we are not amused as a highly sexed woman but there's no doubt about it her she hated actually having children she hated the whole process of giving birth and who wouldn't under the Dorian condition so of course she was one of the early people to give birth with an aesthetic with chloroform doses of chloroform and but the night after her wedding in other words her marriage night her descriptions of fact her enthusiasm her passion is quite extraordinary Victoria's son King Edward the seventh had a lifetime of pleasure with a series of mistresses most notably with mrs. Alice Keppel then there was Daisy Countess of Warwick and the actress Lillie Langtry the man with with so many mistresses that were allegedly sort of rules as to how the mistress should behave and one of them sort of explained how a mistress was supposed to behave that you curtsied first called him sir and then jumped into bed Queen Alexandra tolerated her husband infidelities great-grandfather King Edward the seventh victorious son went Prince of Wales notoriously had many affairs and continued to after becoming King this of course was in a different age when his wife did shut up and look the other way and was very long-suffering and kind enough to invite his favorite mistress to see him on his deathbed and that favorite mistress mrs. Alice Keppel just happens to be the great-grandmother of mrs. Camilla Parker Bowles as Camilla reputedly reminded the prince on one of their first meetings my great grandmother was your great-great grandfather's mistress how about it then she supposedly said to him Edward son King George the fifth and his wife Mary preferred Victoria's Family Values what happened there in the beginning of the 20th century with George v and Queen Mary was that there was a decision that the monarchy should adapt itself to democracy what we're going to do we're going to symbolize the one thing that all our people have in common now the thing that everybody had in common in the until the 1960s was family you all belong to a family or a product of a family we're all going to get married very few people didn't get married and so on and the House of Windsor did this and he did it extraordinary successfully very very successfully embodied typical middle-class bourgeois family values it was a bourgeois monarchy now there are always exceptions there was the exception of course of Edward the eighth who was driven from the throne because he wouldn't fulfill this particular set of values George the fifth and Queen Mary were cold and distant parents to their six children the eldest David was a handsome golden child with envy able charisma his upbringing concentrated on protocol in adult life he rebelled against his parents repression it was during the first world war when as a young officer he was subjected to a major encounter with the opposite sex Edward the eighth is first introduced to sex when his parents decide that you know he's he's whatever he is I can't even remembers age but relatively elderly not have had sex they decided this really must stop so they give him an ecstatic it's just outside a mia in the First World War they give him a jolly good dinner with a great deal of wine and then a nice sympathetic French prostitute if I remember correctly called Paulette is found and who gives him ecstasy for the evening and then he writes this letter afterwards you know never been interested in it before now I can't get enough and this he is they're never out of love and never out of sex so I think we need to see this as a highly charged family which of course I suppose shows you just want problems in acting the role of the family monarchy actually presents in terms of the suppression and the control of desires Thelma Furness was one of his married lovers Freda Dudley was another they all lost out to twice married Wallis Simpson his King Edward the eighth had a succession of relationships when he was a single man always with married ladies always a married ladies he always believed that it was safer to have a relationship have an affair with a married woman because she was a kind of commitment elsewhere she had as much to lose perhaps as he did Edward the eighth chose married women because they were safe he liked mature women he liked the comforts of home he didn't like silly girls he wanted a woman and a woman who would provide him with a home life he felt that he never had a home life with his parents he used to say Queen Mary his mother was very cold and he was terrified of King George the faith so he felt he'd never had a home life and he wanted a home life and the way to get a home life was to be a part of a family which is what he had when he had his mistresses in 1936 David by then King Edward the eighth gave up the throne for the woman he loved and became Duke of Windsor they married the following year and never returned to live again in Britain all hated her they thought that she had you know she had sold and the King she had made him lose his crown they all thought she was a terrible adventuress they all thought you simply art the position and what they all thought was that once she had got him one she had married him and wasn't the Queen that she would ditch him as she ditched two other husbands they assumed she was simply an adventuress who was after the throne and why she didn't get it that she would care off if that fact didn't happen but that is why they thought you just really a goodtime girl is what they thought she was after their marriage the couple lived in France in a villa in Paris the Duke was always resentful that after their marriage his wife was not made a royal highness well he thought that she was absolutely worthy of it he thought this is the least he could do um if he couldn't make her Queen and he was determined at one state that she would be queen and she was the terms of be queen the least that he could do for was to make her a royal Himes and this is what he spent really his whole life battling for this is the one supreme battle of his life more important than anything was to make her Royal Highness the better of course which would she'd ever won the Royal Family's attitude to divorce and remarriage was severely tested in December 1992 when the Queen allowed her divorced daughter Princess Anne to remarry Charles and Andrew had both separated from their wives that year Charles only three days before he attended this wedding [Music] the quiet ceremony in bow morals tiny church marked a triumph for an by marrying in Scotland she had escaped the opposition of the Church of England to the remarriage of a royal divorcee the 42 year old princess had shaken off the scandal surrounding the discovery of love letters from her new husband Tim Lawrence then a neck worried to the Queen the combination of Palace protection for a princess of the royal house and her own capacity for a heavy workload ensured a smooth transition and vain' discretions were all forgotten Tim a naval officer was welcomed into the family he had once served [Music] on that occasion in Scotland Princess Anne's grandmother Elizabeth the Queen Mother must have recalled her own wedding in 1923 she had been handpicked by Queen Mary as a bride for the diffident Prince Albert known as Bertie the daughter of the Scottish Earl of Strathearn is a birth bowes-lyon was regarded as a commoner but Queen Mary found her eminently suitable Bertie became George the sixth after his brother abdicated to marry mrs. Simpson he called his family the firm their children princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were attractive unspoiled girls close to their parents the image of the ideal family in 1948 Princess Margaret fell for the Kings equerry Group Captain Peter Townsend sadly her love was in vain a divorcee he was barred from remarriage in the eyes of the church not in the moral climate of the time just after years after Thompson's departure Margaret married society photographer Antony armstrong-jones newly ennoble Daz Lord Snowdon the marriage began with great hopes but the couple may have been temperamentally unsuited Margaret was the Diana of her day and never off the front pages particularly when she was romantically involved with a younger man Roddy Llewellyn she was fightin a sexy attractive girl that's why any reason why she shouldn't have bloomers she's got this nice crowded line and didn't mystique a lot of people would like to get close to Princess Margaret because she's wrong because she's glamorous because she's famous a lot of young men probably young men would would want to become her lover I would say and she's had a few Princess Margaret survived the scandal of her divorce in 1978 years later she carries out her royal duties with resignation and royal decorum but Margaret is sometimes seen as a difficult even arrogant woman Princess Margaret has not rarely been a very sympathetic personality because she's never rarely known how to play the princess role in terms of friendship you know one minute she's very down-to-earth and very much the way Diana could be where people would call Diana Diana and she wouldn't mind well Princess Margaret Mary indeed Princess Margaret 9 did awful if people called her Margaret so you know she'd be so relaxed with them and allow them to be so relaxed with her that they would take it to the ultimate and obvious conclusion of treating her completely as if she were a human being without royal status at which point she would clamp down and remind them that she was the Queen's sister and you know that she was ma'am and that so you know she's gone through her whole life with many people who are genuinely fond of her calling her mom Darlene swimming that's ridiculous [Music] older Royals can recall times when their private behavior was concealed within Great Houses among aristocratic friends and kept secret from the public one of those mansions was broadened the elegant former home of Lord Mountbatten it was bought by his beautiful and wealthy wife Edwina [Music] edweena Mountbatten made frog you look like the sweetest most innocent baby she was promiscuous she was sexually avaricious she was bisexual she was wagga indiscreet she didn't care who knew what she was up to as long as she was gratified her marriage to Lord Louis Mountbatten survived for the very simple reason that and we you know Ashleigh as she was was one of the greatest arrises of the her time and he who was a son of Prince Louie of Battenberg had no money at all he also loved her he genuinely did love her he did not impinge upon her in any way he allowed her absolute freedom which she took you know she would put on her tiara and go to Buckingham Palace and the following morning take off for India with the lover broad lands in Hampshire has been an important retreat for the Queen and Prince Phillip who spent their honeymoon there Prince Charles took Diana there in July 1981 to spend their wedding night he knew the house world through his extreme closeness to Lord Mountbatten the man he called his honorary grandfather [Music] always the little afraid of his own father Prince Philip Charles looked to the much decorated war hero for manly guidance smart button was aware that Charles was shy about entertaining women under his mother's roof he gave Charles advice about his love life and the need to keep secret liaison out of the papers Matt baton allowed him to use broad lands as the love nest for his affairs with single girls and with married women among the married women was Camilla parker-bowles she came to dominate his life he would also have counsel charge the Charles that if he was going to have a love affair with another woman particularly a married woman that it was to going to be kept strictly quietly and strictly on the islands on the side man batten himself could be the most indiscreet of men but where relationships were concerned he could be ultra discreet and he would have been impressed upon Prince Charles and upon Diana the need for the utmost discretion and he certainly wouldn't have allowed them either any of them either of them to have made the public confessions that they subsequently did in earlier times Royals kept their secrets they expected deference from newspapers who kept silent over scandals the new generation of royal women particularly Diana and Fergie emulated the marital behavior of previous worlds such as the parents of Princess Alexandra her father the late Duke of Kent was the son of George v known as Prince George he married the beautiful Greek Princess Marina a glamorous couple they had many indiscretions in terms of what goes on nowadays it wasn't really shocking it was just sort of very human you know he had a coke problem he was bisexual had an affair without neural code that sort of thing well she was widowed very young and she had a very healthy respectful masculine flesh and availed herself of it at every turn the problem is of course that she lived by the rules of her day which were that a married woman should usually have an affair with a married man so there were many wives who absolutely loathed Princess Marina because she was busy leading their husbands by the nose so to speak but she never put a foot wrong publicly she was always beautifully presented she was a beautiful woman beautifully turned out always charming always impeccably behaved in public what she did in the previously of her own bedroom was her business and her children understand this and respect the fact that she was she had an absolute appreciation of royal decorum and never put a foot wrong like Edwina Mountbatten and Princess Marina dire and Fergie expected their dangerous liaison to remain hidden behind the veneer of loyal respectability Dyna remained loyal to the royal family up until the point where she felt threatened by Charles's friends and by the palace machinery of courtiers Meredydd name only in 1986 she had fallen in love with a young officer James Hewitt their on-off affair lasted five years she confessed their relationship during her 1995 panorama television interview did your relationship go beyond a close friendship yes it did yes were you unfaithful yes I had told him yes I was in love with him that interview in which she questioned Charles's suitability to become King shattered the uneasy peace she had held with the royal family since the 1992 separation her situation became untenable the Queen demanded divorce [Music] really essentially because of personality she was this extraordinary woman we didn't think so at first but she turned out to be this quite extraordinary woman she had a certain kind of common touch dare I use the word a sort of vulgarity which was easy sexual in a popular institution in an age of mass democracy there was something else too it was her very unhappiness and the dreadfulness of the marriage which she decided to treat in a very different way she of course decided not very far he would tell all now these two things the vulgarity on the one hand and the determination to tell all on the other ripped apart the two central themes in the 20th century he destroyed the great selling if you like the great advertising slope of the British monarchy the touch of vulgarity also did something else this monarchy which was a popular monarchy a very successful monarchy also depended on maintaining a distance a certain remoteness and she reached out she cut through that she broke it so she broke both the etiquette and the slogan it's hard to think of a more complete demolition job in India Diana publicly humiliated her husband expecting a token kiss Charles was rebuffed by a deaf turn of Diana's head this gesture brought the battle from the royal home out into the public arena they have their generals they had their left tenants they had their plans of campaign and there were famous battles weren't there Diana's warhorse was a sleek limousine her battle dress selected to upstage Charles who foolishly admitted adultery with Camilla parker-bowles during a televised interview there was this extraordinary moment when Diana turned off at the serpentine gallery deliberately choosing the sort of mark Charles wearing about a dress and you would never seen so much royal leg since the proxy marriages of the little lady when a princess was married by proxy in the Middle Ages she was put naked into bed whilst the visiting ambassador who was marrying her by proxy put his naked leg down beside her but as I said you've never seen so much royal leg this is one of those things I've extra or dress it was magnificent men and women were equally in chance by Diana's startling beauty and her powerful presence she had learned every cosmetic and fashion trick to enhance her appearance against her dazzle Charles look dull and old-fashioned too rooted in tradition [Music] but Diana's death seems to have liberated him seen weeks after her funeral Charles toured South Africa with Prince Harry he seemed a new man the burden of rivalry was gone everyone's noted how his own behavior seems to have transformed since Diana's death how much more outgoing I think he always found himself at playing second fiddle to her he always found himself overshadowed by her whatever card he played she seemed to Trump and I think he must desperately have hoped that divorce would somehow put an end under this awful story of course it didn't it didn't only her death to Charles no longer had to share his elderly grandmother's popularity with the public I think that what has happened to him is a genuine tragedy because I think for many years his work was completely ignored and the sort of person he was was twisted and perverted by the media the press had long tracked Charles's friendship with an attractive Australian lady Dale try on an old confidante from his Bachelor days he nicknamed her kanga and wrote her many letters but tragically within a few weeks of Diana's death she died in hospital following an operation Dale Tryon had been wheelchair-bound after falling out of a clinic window the previous year the daily try on the time you was in some ways of wonderfully exuberant and really delicious personality and in latter years quite a sad woman danes holy identity was caught up in having been a confidante of the prince of wales she was obsessed with the prince of wales unlike camilla the other woman in Charles's life Kengo run a successful dress shop in london's Knightsbridge when shawls went back to camilla dale hoped that he would have gone back to her as well and he didn't he and daily remained friends but that former intimacy had gone forever and Dale and I had one very close friend in common who used to say to me and has to remain nameless because she's so well placed that it would be impossibly embarrassing for her name to be used but she used to say to me oh you know Dale is still implying that she and Charles are still on what do you think and I used to say absolutely not he's not on with her but Dale went around implying to people that she was still a confidant long after she wasn't in an exclusive interview shortly before her death kangas spoke of her relationship with Charles just because he happens to be Prince of Wales doesn't mean he's any different from lots of other friends and I love my friends and I love him a lot but this very different thing saying in love a sermon then that you loved them and my friends have been a wonderful wonderful support of the three women who love Charles only one survives Camilla parker-bowles is still a powerful force in Charles's life she had become the mistress who will not go quietly Charles and Camilla can continue for the rest of their lives without getting married and in some ways it will suit both of them better he won't have the fuss that making her his wife will cause and she will not be condemned to being a princess of wings because believe me to her it will be a condemnation he always understood that anyone who became the Princess of Wales entered into amethyst awfully and bargain with the media and with the courtiers but she was sacrificing her freedom her independence and to a large extent her individuality he knew this and Diana knew this because he told this to Dan but Donna was too young to appreciate what she was rarely swapping and what she was really getting into Camilla knows it Camilla doesn't want it after her divorce Diana resolved to leave the past behind in the summer of 1997 she holidayed in San Tropez with the family of Mohammed al-fayed diana stayed in the fired sumptuous villa and cruised on their luxurious yacht among the party was fired 42 year old son Dodi a film producer with a well-documented interest in beautiful women in the San Tropez heat diana and dodi fell in love their first meeting was captured on film in June 1988 at a polo match at this time diana was still married to Charles I think Anna's affair with Georgie was the Royal Family's dream come true you see it suited the royal family for Donna to be wound down publicly and for Charles to be wound back up and Diana was doing with Dodi what nothing else could have done had she lived her relationship with Dodi would have been an answer to the royal families there were no happy endings diana and dodi died after paris car crash on the 31st of August 1997 her death and the incredible outpouring of grief forced the royal family to adapt to public opinion Diana and Fergie had played a dangerous game and lost their status and titles Diana's indiscretions began a chain of events which ended in the ultimate tragedy two young boys lost their precious mother and will grieve for her all their lives the Queen at 71 faces urgent changes in the royal family values she has accepted from the cradle she had believed that the monarchy was a modern institution evolving gradually with social changes now she knows that Diana's instincts and desire for reform were right even she admitted that lessons had to be drawn from Diana's death in this new image this sort of double reaction is the right thing but he can only keep that he can only as it were oddly enough be now the inheritor of all the sentiment that was directed at Diana this is the extraordinary thing he can only do it so long as he doesn't marry Camilla Camilla I think he's now permanently the mistress she is now permanently behind the scenes she will never become queen she will never have a coronation there there will be always a ghost Queen Diana by a deep paradox Diana's death put her back into the royal family she was buried underneath the standard of a royal highness although the time commencement for Prince Charles behaved as though he was still married to her and he's almost as though her death wiped out the divorce she will always be Charles's wife she will always be mother the two princes and then a funny kind of way she's Queen and from beyond the grave she went home to alter up her family's ancestral estate back to the Spencer's whose forebears lie with her father in the nearby church at great brington the village she knew as a girl diana is not there she was buried away from public gaze on an island in the middle of his small lake at all throb where she played as a child her memory will be adorned by myth and fable and legend her death has shown that no one can predict the fortunes of the House of Windsor diana is finally at peace [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: FilmRise Cinematheque

Views: 229,152

Rating: 4.5368419 out of 5

Keywords: Documentary, World Cinema, Princess Diana, Queen Elizabeth, Royalty, Britain, United Kingdom, Prince Charles, Free, FilmRise

Id: 3WOXTVWtqSU

Length: 48min 50sec (2930 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 06 2017