Like many others around the world, I sat through the early hours of last Saturday watching the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales.
In the commentary surrounding the funeral, as indeed in the preceding week, the talk was of who was reponsible for her death. Her brother, Earl Spencer, clearly blamed the tabloid press.
Diana, arguably the most photographed woman in the world, had a well-known love-hate relationship with the press; she would apparently talk to some members of the press for hours, send birthday cards to their children, then try to turn them off and shut them out at will.
Read Also
Late season rainfall creates concern about Prairie crop quality
Praying for rain is being replaced with the hope that rain can stop for harvest. Rainfall in July and early August has been much greater than normal.
She never quite learned that it doesn’t work that way. The paparazzi (the group of photographers who made a living taking and selling photos of her) would not go away that easily.
It is easy to blame the paparazzi for her death, given the circumstances as we know them. However, we must all stop and think who the pictures were taken for. Not just the tabloids used the pictures, but also mainstream magazines and papers.
And who looked at the pictures? The same people who watched the funeral; ordinary citizens in Canada, in Britain and far, far beyond.
If there is blame, it is widespread and reaches even, it must be said, into the depths of the Palace itself.
Diana entered the Royal Family as a callow youngster, thinking she could change a man 13 years older who had already given his heart to another woman.
As the marriage droned on to its inevitable conclusion, Diana was embarrassed by her mother-in-law the Queen who chose to show her support for her son’s extramarital affair by having the mistress to tea. Given that her mother-in-law is the Queen, Diana, and the marriage, didn’t have a chance.
Had the Royal Family been prepared to give her help and support when it was obviously so desperately needed and been prepared to tell the royal heir, who one day will be head of the Church of England, an institution which expressely disapproves of adultery, to pull up his socks, Diana would probably never have been in that speeding car.
The whole story of that fatal night has yet to emerge. But what is known is that this tragedy provides the best advertisement there could possibly be as to why people should not drink and drive. Whatever the circumstances, whatever the past, in the end it was a combination of speed and liquor that killed the princess.
