The Times of London wrote about the documentary a couple weeks ago:The documentary DIANA: IN HER OWN WORDS answers much of what you’re asking pic.twitter.com/85gFfVir7h
— NetflixFilm (@NetflixFilm) December 1, 2020
“I’d never had a boyfriend,” Diana says on tape, “because emotionally I was so screwed up.” The whole idea of getting married “was ridiculous, hysterical”. Diana’s uncle Lord Fermoy goes on the record to vouch for her virginity. TV anchormen speculate happily that, at 19, she’s a good age for childbearing....
“In my immaturity, which was a lot, I thought he was in love with me,” Diana says. “Which he was; he had a sort of besotted look about him, but it wasn’t the genuine sort.”...
[Her wedding day] was, she says, “the worst day of my life”, but she also thought that she was “the luckiest girl in the world, and so in love with him”. She became bulimic a week after the engagement, “after he put his hand on my waist and said, ‘Ooh, bit chubby, aren’t we?’ The first time I made myself sick I was so thrilled. I thought, ‘Right, this is the release of the tension.’ ”...
“[Psychiatrists] came plodding in to try and sort me out . . . they put me on high doses of Valium.” It kept them happy, she said, “so they could go to bed at night and sleep knowing that the Princess of Wales wasn’t going to stab anyone”.
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54 comments:
My impression from watching the crown is that the Royal family is a collection of individually competitive Machiavellian attention whores.
Good thing we don't have a royal family (1776 and all that) so only the Brits care.
This is the first time I agree 100 percent with Howard.
I watched the documentary, and my insight is that everything was set in motion by the rule that Charles had to marry a virgin. Diana kept herself "tidy" — as she put it — so she didn't have competition from the young women who were providing Charles with his sexual experience. Then when it came time for him to get sexual with her, he did not do it in a way that fit her sensibilities. He didn't want to, he didn't know how to, and he didn't seem to have put any effort into figuring out how.
She had an unworldly combination of high self-esteem and low self-esteem. And so did he!
In case you missed it: The Crown season 4 in 2:15
I thought it was creepy that a 33 year old married a 20 year old.
That is some brutal and tragic stuff.
He is perhaps a jerk even beyond the Diana context. And we don't need to cry for him given his benefits of title. But in Charles' heart of hearts he might not have wished to be in his position either. Harry certainly didn't. Anyway, Edward VIII did it right.
Blaming Diana's fans because Camilla and Charles were having an affair on her behind her back is really rich. I would never watch the crown, the truth is devastating enough
Germanic inbreeding.
Not surprisingly, the people who made The Crown really hated Maggie Thatcher.
The portrayal of Charles is exaggerated, but on the right track.
I did like the way they did Prince Phillip - especially the Billy Joel thing.
I’m normally not one to speak ill of the dead but If she’d had the brains to put on her seat/shoulder belt she could tell us herself today. One person in the car did that. He survived with the radiator in his lap.
Having a difficult time caring about any of these spoiled creatures. Sort of a Hollywood on the Thames.
By the way, she and Charles were both frequenting psychics during their marriage, a fact neither "The Crown" nor the public myth-making machine will allow, since it implies there was a "Hidden Hand" in this disaster.
There was, of course.
Maybe this is all an example of how no one's supposed to have any heroes anymore other than Obama. We can lazily think everyone's actions can be reduced to base motives. Do defenders of Diana really want to point fingers when it comes to self-absorbed attention whores? Diana had about the worst taste in boyfriends of any woman who's ever lived. She died because boyfriend of the moment had hired one limo and one no good driver, no security, not even asking someone for advice about security. The loving couple go to dinner, the driver goes to the kitchen and gets drunk. As they leave, they see some paparazzi. Boyfriend simply tells the driver to boot it. Diana dies in one of the stupidest car crashes ever. Did they collectively have an IQ of 50? What the fuck was wrong with them?
I'm going to try that ‘Ooh, bit chubby, aren’t we?’ line with my wife. I'm sure that'll be a hit.
I never did pay much attention to the Charles & Diane saga, and was taken by surprise at the world seemingly coming to a halt upon her death. As well as the industry that has been built around it ever since and seems to not be slowing down a bit. I'm sure this is a very interesting story. I just never did give it much time, so I should leave now.
I watched the documentary, and my insight is that everything was set in motion by the rule that Charles had to marry a virgin.
I agree with this.
I wasn't never a Camilla fan, but Charles and Camilla have now been married quite a while and they seem happy with it.
The Crown was really hard on Charles, but I doubt Diana was much of a treat either. You notice they say they are always going to know that the other one is feeling unappreciated, so they vow to give each other that appreciation. But the moment the crowds adore her, she can't tell Charles that he is appreciated. She isn't there for him.
And in real life, it would be weird to have the DIL you aren't close to call you "Mummy" and try to give you warm hugs.
I was not asking.
The Crown seems to be a less horrible thing that my wife is watching all day than the never ending Handmaids Tale.
-XC
Di's travails and death marked an inflection point in the anglosphere. It signaled the triumph of actually existing feminism--women are special, and the entire culture must cater to their feelings.
See what happens when you get mixed up with a Dynasty and its nasty imperatives.
When Diana was alive I barely thought about her. I can remember the exact moment when I read of her death, though. I broke down crying. Dead princess. It struck some archetypal chord, I can only guess.
In the same vein, I pity her. Princes and their mistresses are common fare, but it's not usually part of the princess fairy tale. And, in real life, it's not right.
>>I thought it was creepy that a 33 year old married a 20 year old.
I was 30 when I married Mrs. DtM. She was 20. Many many years later we are still together and still crazy about each other.
Don't judge me, you racist oppressor bigot ageist Nazi! ;)
The wife rewatches Downtown Abby Road. I always ask her: is he paralyzed yet? Then is he dead yet? For some reason I never liked the Matthew character.
Dan: 30/2 + 7 = 23 so you're in the a perve in millennials eyes.
At least the British know they live in a monarchy, and the royals--most of them anyway (Harry excepted, obviously)--acknowledge they have a duty to perform. We live in a quasi-monarchy where the President rules with his pen and telephone--reminiscent of Caesar Augustus's Principate, the hollowed-out form of a Republic. Duty takes a backseat to the lust for power and accumulating millions. Personally, I'd prefer George III to Swampy Joe--at least they locked George up when he lost his marbles.
What Lloyd W. said.
Diana turned out to be quite good at playing the publicity game. Everyone thought the Palace was good, but it turned out they'd just been treated gently, forever. So when Diana spotted an opening and jumped in, the Palace (and by that I mean the staff that handles publicity) was caught flat-footed with no good way to reply.
She may have been a neurotic, inexperienced nanny, but she learned quickly and played her cards very well.
>>Dan: 30/2 + 7 = 23 so you're in the a perve in millennials eyes.
Dad was 21 years older than mom. No telling what they'd think about that. :)
Only Audrey Hepburn truly mastered the art of being a Princess, but she had a good director and a talented Commie screenwriter. Princess Grace was okay in the role, but there was a surprise twist. Grace discovered that being a movie star beat being a Princess in terms of fame, glamour, public adulation and just all around fun. It's all very well to boff the equerry, but that's not the same as fooling around with a Hollywood leading man... Princess Grace didn't have such a hard life, but its pleasures were considerably diminished by the awareness that she had had a better life in the recent past.....It's probably better to be, like Audrey Hepburn, a movie star who plays at being a Princess than to actually be a Princess. I would advise any young woman of my acquaintance to become a movie star rather than a Princess if she wants a happy, fulfilled life.....Princess Di would have been well advised to seek a career in the performing arts rather than in the royal household. She really did have a star quality that was wasted in the role of Prince Charles wife'. I see her more in a period drama playing against someone like Robert Downey. She was not meant to play tragedy. She made a poor Iphegenia.
That she sounds calm years after the fact tells you nothing about what she was like at the time. Never trust one side in a divorce.
You can sort of see how Charles felt it was a bit unfair that he had to marry someone he wasn't particularly in love with, given that his mother and his grandfather had both married for love. It's a bit less clear with his great-grandfather George V (apparently among eligible princesses of that generation, there were few available candidates who weren't his first cousins), but he seems to have been pretty devoted to his wife. It isn't until his great-great-grandfather Edward VII that you see the heir apparent regularly looking for satisfaction outside of his marriage.
By the time Diana appeared, though, Camilla was already married, so she was pretty clearly off the table, under the precedent set with the Duke of Windsor. And as far as I know Charles didn't have anyone else. Well, Lord Mountbatten's granddaughter, I suppose, but she seems to have had a pretty clear understanding of what marrying the heir apparent would entail, and turned him down.
My take seems very different from most. The ONLY thing I like about Charles is that when push came to shove and with the whole world pushing him to go with young, glamour us, good looking one he picked the old, unattractive one for love.
I never liked her either. A faux-naïf attention whore living the high life. Let’s not forget she made tearful adverts about land mines while sleeping with one of the world’s biggest illegal arms traders, high on dope all the while.
Pox on both.
William,
Scotty Bowers said he was at parties where Princess Grace would show up, having sneaked away from Monaco, and she would hook up with William Holden, among others. Perhaps that's why she had that pinched expression in her later years. She wasn't getting any.
She had an odd look about her.
One minute she is girl-next-door cute.
The next (especially when she gets older) she can be a hottie.
From the looks of it, Charles has only one son...
My go-to on Diana is about the people who fare interested in her, by Jane Gross in the NYT in 1997, here.
"Much of the drama is fictionalized."
Queen Elizebeth is a very boring person.
Much of the second season of the UK version of House of Cards revolves around the emptiness of the royals. It's quite good.
"The wife rewatches Downtown Abby Road. I always ask her: is he paralyzed yet? Then is he dead yet? For some reason I never liked the Matthew character."
When he walks from the wheelchair it's one of the most absurd moments in TV history.
"(Harry excepted, obviously)"
Harry was cool until he fell under Markle's spell.
Poor Queen Elizabeth. She's been a good queen. Classy. But her family? Yikes! Starting with Philip, his petulance, even immaturity, and dalliances, particularly in the early years. Then her sister, and all the way through Diana, her bodyguard, Harry and Meghan. Then there's Andrew. Where is Andrew these days? Supposedly Andrew was her "favorite," but wasn't it really more that she was worried about him more than the others? She must've seen something wrong going on there with little randy Andy. Poor Queen Elizabeth. But she has been a good queen.
We have watched all four seasons. If the royals are even a fraction of the assholes they are portrayed to be in 'The Crown', then we in the US are doubly blessed to have thrown the crown off when we did.
I do like the expression both actors that portrayed Queen Elzibeth have shown that if she could still put people in the tower and have their heads whacked off, there are a lot of people who would have gotten the treatment. Lucky for them she cannot do that anymore.
We find it well acted, but recognize that it is historical drama based on real events. Since no one really knows (even those present for the events) what was actually said, they make dramatizations for effect.
It is after all entertainment.
what prevented Charles and Camilla marrying before all this eventuated?
Never trust one side in a divorce.
Exactly. I see no reason to believe her version entirely, yet the media does. A wife who makes herself barf daily doesn't sound appealing.
It would not surprise me if Kate does it too. Her body does not look human, much less like a 39 y.o. with 3 kids.
Re: Narayanan:
what prevented Charles and Camilla marrying before all this eventuated?
Most obvious reason is she married someone else first. Reading up, it seems like Lord Mountbatten also counselled Charles that he needed someone virginal (i.e. not Camilla), and may have arranged to have the prince dispatched overseas on military business to keep them apart.
Fantastic clip. I will watch that before I ever get started on the Crown.
Ralph L, I have 3 women in my family with bodies like that after 3 kids (one blood, two married into). It's not inhuman, but it does take great discipline.
Narayanan: "what prevented Charles and Camilla marrying before all this eventuated?"
Camilla was a "player" and deemed unsuitable by the royals.
She was a typical woman. Give her 100 good things, and 1 bad one, and she'll go on and on about the one bad thing.
Why did she have to become bulimic? Why didn't she just get more exercise? Anyway, most people understand that no marriage, or marriage partner is perfect. But I guess its more interesting to complain.
The love life of the windsors has always been a disaster area. Queen Liz is unusual in that she seems to be normal.
Rehajm,
Thank you, thank you.
You fully appreciated something until its been well satirized.
Very funny.
Diana is one of the few people in modern times whose shadow grows longer the longer she is dead. Charles was no great catch who bet on the wrong horse by hanging on to Camilla. Maybe he thought he would be living the life of a medieval monarch, rather than facing the senses and sensibilities of the late 20th Century.
If the UK is lucky, Charles dies before Elizabeth.
And, if (as we all know) Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself, who can believe that Diana died in an accident?
If the UK is lucky they will abolish the monarchy.
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