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Change Your Life! |
Princess Di's sons move on; fans still respects |
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August 28, 2000
LONDON (AP) - Princess Diana's survivors have moved on. Three years after her death, Prince Charles has brought Camilla Parker Bowles out of the shadows, and Diana's sons are on the brink of adulthood. They all remember her in private. But many of the millions of people who had never met Diana, yet grieved her loss, still pay their respects in public ways. They visit Kensington Palace and pose for snapshots at the ornate gates where a mourning nation heaped flowers after the princess died in a car wreck Aug. 31, 1997. They still arrive by the busload at Althorp House, the Spencer family estate where Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, assembled an exhibition in her memory. In its third year, the exhibition has had little press attention, "yet the visitors are still coming," said Althorp spokeswoman Shelley-Anne Claircourt. "It's really remarkable that the numbers are still so high." The opening day gathering this year, as in previous years, included some of Diana's most devoted admirers. Dale Kramer, 47, from Ohio, told The Sunday Express that he had saved his earnings as a restaurant table cleaner so he could be at Althorp on what would have been Diana's 39th birthday, July 1. "She was my inspiration," Kramer said. "I look at her picture when I drive and I look at her picture when I eat." Kramer said he had been at Kensington Gardens in London the day before for the inauguration of a new playground built in Diana's memory. The event received news coverage, but mostly because the royal family did not turn up. Buckingham Palace said family members had previous public engagements. Prince William, 18, and Prince Harry, 16, had declined their invitation - "a very private and personal decision they made for themselves," the palace said. Prince Charles and his sons have made clear they do not want to perpetuate public grieving. Two days after the first anniversary, William and Harry appealed to the public to let their mother and her memory rest in peace. "Constant reminders of her death can create nothing but pain to those she left behind," they said. Nor does the family want to condone a "Diana industry," making money off her memory. The river of books, videos and magazine stories may have abated, but there is still no shortage of reading material for the fans. The latest book - "Diana, Her Last Love" by Elizabeth Snell - and an accompanying TV documentary contended that Diana was in love with a Pakistani heart surgeon when she died and that her yacht trip with Dodi Fayed was a fling to make the doctor jealous. A couple of tabloids picked up on the story, but it caused no sensation. Britain's tabloids have faced up to the need for new faces to sell newspapers, with entertainers Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham, Elizabeth Hurley and Catherine Zeta Jones decorating the front pages in steady rotation. But it just isn't the same. Publicist Max Clifford, the most successful negotiator of kiss-and-tell sales to the tabloids, said editors are "desperately" looking for a celebrity to match Diana. "No one has taken her place. She's the biggest star that we've produced in this country in a very long time - probably since the Beatles. There is no one that's even remotely close," Clifford said. A reliable best seller, of course, is Prince William, with his Diana-blue eyes and shy smile. "Most people regard William as the next major star," Clifford said. "There is huge worldwide interest in him - apart from anything else, he looks so much like his mum." Now a graduate of Eton, William has left behind some of the stricter protection of Britain's voluntary press code on coverage. Although not exactly fair game for the telephoto lenses until he graduates from college, he is more vulnerable to press attention than he ever has been. He managed to slip quietly away to the jungles of Belize soon after graduation to start a year off, traveling and working, before beginning his studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. The Sun - Britain's biggest-selling daily tabloid - has taken a public vow of conscience. Days before William's 18th birthday in June, the paper promised to "play fair" with the prince. "We will cover real news. We will not intrude. We will not pry," the tabloid wrote. Clifford said the newspapers are more cautious now than they ever have been, in part because they know the public is more critical of their actions since Princess Diana died, pursued by photographers to the last minutes of her life. "It's all a question of what they can justify, what they can get away with," he said. "They're straining at the leash, but they don't want to do anything that has the potential to alienate their readers." |