Princess Diana

REASONING

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales on 31 August 1997. 10 years ago Princess Diana's death and funeral brought some 33 million viewers to network news stations, among the highest ratings for the year. Then and since her face has launched a thousand books and magazine covers.

Princess Diana was probably the most photographed, perhaps the most famous woman in the world, and her stunning death has had an impact equivalent to that of a presidential assassination.

The most charismatic and publicly adored member of the British royal family, Diana, Princess of Wales not only imposed her own distinctly modern style and attitudes on Great Britain's traditionalist monarchy, but served to plunge that institution into its lowest level of public unpopularity, fueling support for Republicanism and, after her death, forcing the Royal family to moderate its aloof image. However, as a glamorous and sympathetic icon of an image-driven and media-fueled culture, Diana's celebrity status and considerable influence traveled across continents. Her fame, matched by only a handful of women during the twentieth century, notably Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Princess Grace of Monaco (Grace Kelly), made her a significant popular figure in the United States, where her visits were welcomed with the fervor once reserved for the most famous stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Diana was the most photographed woman in the world, and from the time of her marriage to her premature and appalling death in 1997, she forged a public persona that blended her various roles as princess, wife, mother, goodwill ambassador for England, and international humanitarian. Diana's fortuitous combination of beauty and glamour, her accessible, sympathetic, and vulnerable personality, and an ability to convey genuine concern for the affairs of ordinary people and the world's poor and downtrodden, set her apart decisively from the distant formality of the British monarchy. She became an object of near-worship, and her lasting fame was ensured. Ironically, the intense media attention and public adulation that came to define her life were widely blamed for the circumstances of her death. Her untimely demise, however, served only to amplify the public's romantic perception of her as a modern goddess cruelly destroyed by a faithless husband, unsympathetic in-laws, and prying paparazzi. The life and death of the Princess of Wales, is, indeed, a monument to sad contradictions and ironies.

Princess Diana's impact on our world was so immense. Her untiring work on behalf of God's children and people has earned her the title Her Majestic Majesty in the Realm of Heaven. She holds court in her Heavenly role in the Church of England as HMM. God Save the Queen, Her Majesty Elizabeth II. May she be guided by HMM Diana's spirit during her rein.

10 years after her death, Princess Diana remains the focus of much media attention.

BIOGRAPHY

NAME: DIANA SPENCER

NICKNAME: Lady Di

BORN: July 1st, 1961

BIRTHPLACE OF: Sandringham ( Norfolk – England ) PARENTS: John Edward Spencer(1924-1992)

Lady Frances Spencer(1936)

divorced since 1969

SISTERS AND BROTHERS: Sarah, Jance, Charles

LENGTS: 1.77 m

COLOUR OF EYES: blue

COLOUR OF HAIR: blond

RESIDENCE: Kensington Palace in London

MARRIAGE: On July 29th married Prince Charles

CHILDREN: Prinz William, 21st June 1982

Prinz Henry, 15th September 1984

DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE: August 28th, 1996

DIED: August 30th, 1997

PLACE OF DEATH: Paris

CHILDHOOD AND TEENAGE YEARS

Diana, Princess of Wales, formerly Lady Diana Frances Spencer, was born on 1 July 1961 at Park House near Sandringham, Norfolk. She was the youngest daughter of the then Viscount and Viscountess Althorp, now the late (8th) Earl Spencer and the late Hon. Mrs Shand-Kydd, daughter of the 4th Baron Fermoy.

Earl Spencer was Equerry to George VI from 1950 to 1952, and to The Queen from 1952 to 1954. Lady Diana's parents, who had married in 1954, separated in 1967 and the marriage was dissolved in 1969. Earl Spencer later married Raine, Countess of Dartmouth in 1976.

Together with her two elder sisters Sarah (born 1955), Jane (born 1957) and her younger brother Charles (born 1964), Lady Diana continued to live with her father at Park House, Sandringham, until the death of her grandfather, the 7th Earl Spencer. In 1975, the family moved to the Spencer seat at Althorp (a stately house dating from 1508) in Northamptonshire, in the English Midlands.

Lady Diana was educated first at a preparatory school, Riddlesworth Hall at Diss, Norfolk, and then in 1974 went as a boarder to West Heath, near Sevenoaks, Kent. At school she showed a particular talent for music (as an accomplished pianist), dancing and domestic science, and gained the school's award for the girl giving maximum help to the school and her schoolfellows.

She left West Heath in 1977 and went to finishing school at the Institut Alpin Videmanette in Rougemont, Switzerland, which she left after the Easter term of 1978. The following year she moved to a flat in Coleherne Court, London. For a while she looked after the child of an American couple, and she worked as a kindergarten teacher at the Young England School in Pimlico.