Princess of Diana: A Biography
Princess Diana was the princess of Wales, the peoples princess, a world wide fashion icon, donate to charities, devoted mother and divorced from Prince Charles. Childhood Princess Diana didn’t grow up as a princess, she grew up as Diana Frances Spencer, daughter of Edward John Spencer ; Frances Roche. Diana had two older sisters, but her mom and dad really wanted a son.
Because then they would have someone to inherit all of there money, and someone to carry on the family name. They thought that it would be a boy, and when they found out they were having a girl they didn’t have any names for her. She was born on July 1, 1961, and didn’t have a name until Diana was three days old she was given the name Diana Frances, her parents gave her then name Diana because they liked that name, and they gave her the name Frances after her mom. Since her family had been close to England’s royal family for generations, they were aloud to live in the Park House, a house on the royal family’s land. When Diana was 8, in 1969, her parents got a divorce and her mother moved out of the Park House.
Diana and her two older sisters and her little brother, would spend weekends at her mother’s house, and when they would leave her mother would cry because she missed them. The in 1975, when she was 14 years old her grandfather died, and her father inherited the Althrop Estate, so they all moved. Diana and her siblings hated the Althrop Estate, it was bigger then the Park Estate by hundreds of square feet, and in interviews Diana gave later in life she said, “The Althrop Estate was unfamiliar, big, empty and the floor was always cold no matter what season.” Teenage-Young adult years when Diana was 16 Diana got sent to Institut Alpin Vidamanette which was in Switzerland. Because she had failed the two exams that could have gotten her into college, but her family wanted her to be educated so they sent her to Switzerland to finish her education there.
At her boarding school Diana was one of the nine people who spoke English and she barley ever spoke in class because she was scared she would mess up and get laughed at and made fun of. Princess Diana hated her school, and the only part she liked about going there was that she was in the adopt a grandparent program. She went to the retirement home three times per week and enjoyed taking nurse lessons. Diana still had bad grades, but her teachers said she was a leader to the rest of her class. When Diana was 16 her father remarried, and Diana and her little brother and older sisters hated their step mother.
When Diana graduated, she moved into an apartment with her five closest friends. They went to a lot of parties and double dates, but Diana didn’t really have serious relationships. Diana was a pre-school teacher, She loved teaching and was great at it all of her student’s parents wrote letters to the school saying how much they all liked her. When Princess Diana started to date Prince Charles in 1980, she told her friends that he could be “the one” When he proposed to her in 1981 and they planed to get married everyone said they would last forever. Princess Diana and Prince Charles got married on July 29 1981.
Only a couple months after they were married Diana found out that she was pregnant, on June 21, 1982 she gave birth to her oldest son, Prince William. Two years later on September 15, 1984 she gave birth to her second and last son Prince Harry. Married life Once Prince Harry was born, princess Diana and prince Charles started fighting. Prince Charles had wanted a daughter and was upset that Diana had another boy, he also didn’t like prince Harry’s red hair that had come from Diana’s family. Diana was also hurt by the way the royal family treated her, she said to some of her friends that the royal family looked down to her and pushed her around. She also felt lonely, and after giving birth to Harry she went into a post-pregnancy depression.
Because of the age difference between Prince Charles and Diana (Prince Charles is 13 years older) they were interested in different things, and when the Queen told them to spend more time together they argued over what to do. Princess Diana opened the first hospital only for AIDS patients in Britain in 1987, and would go around shaking hands of the patients and hugging the patients to help show the country that AIDS wasn’t something that could be spread just by holding hands with some one who has it. In 1991, Prince Charles and Diana’s oldest son, Prince William cracked his skull playing golf, Diana stayed at the hospital and was there through the whole surgery, while Prince Charles went to the opera. This made a lot of rumors go around, and made Diana and Prince Charles fight even more. In 1992 when “Diana Her True Story” came out Prince Charles found out that she was Bulimic, he used that to his advantage to make the press like him more then her, but it actually made her more popular. When Diana’s dad died in1992, she didn’t want prince Charles to comfort her and took interviews saying that she didn’t want the royal family to make it seem like their marriage was working out.
At her father’s funeral she was mad that prince Charles came, and said it was her family not his. In December of 1992, Prince Charles and Diana were officially separated from each other. Life after divorce Diana was upset that William and Harry had to split their time out of school between her and Prince Charles, and in her will she said that when Charles and she were both dead, William and Harry will go live with her family and not the royal family. Diana was starting to do more and more to build her own image. She started having more charity events and working out at a gym.
But in 1993, the owner of her gym took pictures of her working out and sold them to the British tabloids When that happened Diana said that she had enough and that she wasn’t going to make any more royal appearances and would do less charity events, because she was tired of her personal life being everyone’s business. In 1994 prince Charles had a TV interview where he said his part of their marriage and said how it was hard for him to be married to some one with violent mood swings and someone who was always going into a sudden depression. Later in that year Diana had a TV interview, where she did admit that she did have mood swings and was unhappy sometimes and she said she was unhappy because of Prince Charles’ relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles. In the interview, Diana said, “There were three of us in this marriage” After Diana and prince Charles interview Queen Elizabeth told them that they had to stop, “Harassing each other by using the press as puppets, and get a divorce.” By August 28, in 1996 Diana and prince Charles were officially divorced and Diana got shared custody of William and Harry. She kept the right to be called the Princess of Wales and got to keep an apartment and a couple offices on the Royal family’s land.
After her divorce, Diana wanted to dedicate herself to her children and only five charities. For her five charities she choose,The National AIDS trust, Center point which is a charity for homeless children,The Leprosy Mission, The Royal Marsden cancer hospital, and the Great Omond Street Children’s Hospital. A couple months after deciding to only support five charities, she started supporting a sixth,The Victims of Land Mines. In the beginning of 1997, Diana went to Angola and built two land mine hospitals, and a land mine control office. After Diana and Prince Charles’ divorce they started spending time together.
They didn’t have a fling or even any kind of romantic relationship they were just starting a friendship. In 1997 Diana’s son, Prince William, who was only 14, was Diana’s head advisor and helped her decide what events she should and shouldn’t go to. Prince William also came up with the idea that Diana auction of some of her dresses and give the money to a charity. Only a couple weeks after she had her dress auction, Diana and her two sons went on a cruse on a yacht called the Jonikal. On the cruse Diana met a guy named Dodi. Diana and Dodi started to date.
Death After Diana and Dodi went on a second cruse together they went to Paris and to a hotel named the Ritz. Dodi and Diana had dinner and spent the night at the Ritz and went to leave around noon on August 31, 1997. Diana and Dodi were trying to avoid the paparazzi that had been following them, so they left through the back of the hotel and ran into the car, but the paparazzi was already behind the building and trying to get pictures. The driver, Henri Paul drove as fast as the car would go, which was estimated that it was 130 mph. Henri Paul was the only person in the car who was wearing a seatbelt, and when he swerved trying to not hit the car in front of him, he ended up hitting the car next to him.
Then as he continued to try and drive away from the paparazzi, he drove into a wall. Ambulances hurried to the scene trying to help save Princess Diana, she was taken to the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital, when Diana finally got to the hospital around 2:00 pm she was bleeding internally. Doctors tried to save her for two hours but by 4:00 pm on August 31, 1997 Princess Diana was dead. Within 24 hours of Diana’s death the Kensington Palace where she lived was surrounded with flowers. Queen Elizabeth wanted the royal family to stay at the Balmoral’s place, when its tradition for the royal family to fly to London to the Buckingham palace to show that they are mourning for someone important’s death. Finally on September 4 1997, 4 whole days after Diana was dead, Queen Elizabeth and the royal family went to the Buckingham palace and the Queen made a speech to the people about Diana’s death.
At Diana’s funeral, her coffin was carried across London, on her coffin were white roses and a card that said “Mummy” that 12 year old prince Harry had wrote. Prince Charles, Prince William, and Prince Harry marched behind the coffin, and most of London marched with them. And two and a half billion people watched her funeral on TV. Prince Harry still donates to the six charities his mother donated to, and on August 31, every year, Prince Harry and Prince Charles wear a memorial badge for princess Diana. Princess Diana, did die tragically, but her name lives on forever and she will always be remembered as, Princess Diana, The People’s Princess, a fashion icon, a role model, a charitable Princess, and a devoted mother.
