Twenty-nine years ago, on August 31, 1997, a woman was ‘hunted’ to her death.
asserted
woman → hunt → death
And yet her carcass still finds its way onto paper and television screens, every few years hollowed out, stuffed and reconstructed into whatever we think it is best for her to become.
asserted
her → find → whatever
Diana Frances Spencer, who later became the Princess of Wales, has lived two lives but has been only allowed to die in one of them.
asserted
who → become → them
There is the Diana who lived, and died as the paparazzi hunted her on a fateful night on the roads of Paris.
asserted
paparazzi → be → Paris
And there is a Diana we keep after her death, one we constantly remake and eulogise.
asserted
we → be → death
She now exists as versions – a princess, a wife, a mother, a fashion icon, a beguiled lover, a kind-hearted woman, a celebrity, a victim – but did all these versions truly belong to her or do we continue to impose her with a history we create in the present?
File photo: Princess Diana called and
asserted
Diana → exist → photo
This month, Diana’s younger brother, Charles Spencer, has painted his version of his sister onto the pages of a memoir titled, ‘Swan Song: Diana, My Sister’.
asserted
brother → paint → memoir
And in an excerpt from the book he creates a portrait of the relationship the now-King Charles shared with his first wife.
asserted
Charles → create → wife
According to Spencer, in the days after Diana’s death, he and the then-Prince Charles argued over whether William and Harry should walk behind their mother’s coffin.
uncertain
William → accord → coffin
Spencer recalls Charles ending the argument with the words: “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough.”
asserted
we → recall → her
Buckingham Palace has disputed the recollection, saying that grief can cloud memory and affect judgement but Spencer has stood firm by his account.
asserted
Spencer → dispute → account
Copies of Princess Diana's brother Charles Spencer's book "Swan Song: Diana, My Sister" are displayed at Waterstones bookshop in London, Britain.
asserted
Copies → display → London
But is Charles right, have we forgotten Diana in her essence and replaced her with a mythologised version?
asserted
we → forget → version
To even pose this question is absurd, twenty-nine years from her death our eyes and ears still follow her.
asserted
eyes → pose → her
We stand pressed against the door hoping to eavesdrop onto another conversation she may have had.
uncertain
she → stand → conversation
We cannot forget Diana given how good we have become at remembering her.
asserted
we → forget → her
Spencer remembers her as his Diana, his elder sister; the Palace has their version of her; and we, some who weren’t even born back then, have our version, constructed secondhand, through screens and pages.
asserted
who → remember → screens
And in all this remembrance, the woman herself becomes harder to see.
asserted
woman → become → remembrance
The remaking of Diana
But perhaps we should have seen this coming, Diana was being remade long before she died.
Even when she was alive, the world was already busy deciding what she meant.
asserted
she → see → what
Prescribing meaning onto her every move, making a photograph of her as a child evidence of her love for children.
asserted
photograph → prescribe → children
Her tears could become evidence of her sensitivity, her unhappiness could become a story about the woman trapped inside the institution.
uncertain
unhappiness → become → institution
Diana and her story were growing alongside each other, very much in the public eye, devoid of the privacy it desired and deserved.
asserted
it → grow → privacy
Edward White, author of Dianaworld, describes her as a cultural “cut-and-shut” — a term borrowed from the practice of welding parts of different wrecked cars together to make something that looks whole from a distance.
asserted
that → describe → distance
Diana, he argues, became a figure made up of very different, sometimes contradictory identities.
asserted
he → argue → identities
Perhaps that is why there has never been just one Diana, she ended up becoming someone the public could take for themselves.
uncertain
public → end → themselves
Even her designers were not simply dressing a princess, they were helping construct one.
asserted
they → dress → one
Catherine Walker spoke of creating an “Arthurian Princess” for one of Diana’s Middle Eastern tours, while another dress deliberately invoked Elizabeth I. Even her image could be made to carry history, fantasy and national mythology.
Diana’s ‘fairytale’ never had a textbook happy ending.
uncertain
fairytale → speak → ending
She first became a princess, who won the hearts of whoever witnessed her.
asserted
whoever → become → her
Then she became a victim of infidelity that supposedly stemmed from the heart of a jealous man.
asserted
that → become → man
And all her years shaping up to be an icon, she may now have ended up becoming a reflection of herself.
uncertain
she → shape → herself
And eventually, the reflection starts to look more familiar than the woman herself.
asserted
reflection → start → woman
Diana becomes Diana ji
asserted
Diana → become → ?
Even in her death, Diana travelled, and as she travelled she changed.
asserted
she → travel → death
For some people in Pakistan, White wrote, she became something closer to the daughter-in-law that an Asian family might recognise.
uncertain
family → write → that
After her death, a reader writing in the Eastern Eye even imagined her as “Raj Kumari Diana ji of Southallpur”, giving the Princess of Wales an Indian honorific and, jokingly, an imaginary kingdom of her own.
asserted
reader → write → own
A woman arrives from somewhere else and, over time, becomes slightly less of the woman she was and slightly more of what the people looking at her need her to be.
asserted
her → arrive → her
For some South Asian communities, Diana’s story came to carry their own tensions with family, tradition and individuality.
asserted
story → come → family
She became the daughter-in-law who rebelled against familial expectations, young brides could identify with her.
uncertain
brides → become → her
Women struggling for their own identity but adamant enough to have it, saw themselves in the Princess of Wales.
asserted
Women → struggle → Wales
What happens when the person is gone but the story keeps travelling?
asserted
story → happen → ?
…and 15 more, not listed.
The Aporia
