Princess Diana’s Complicated Legacy
She didn’t change the monarchy, but she did change celebrity
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People have short memories.
Painfully short, in fact. Unbelievably short. The news cycle may be brutal for those in it, but at least it’s short.
There’s no single celebrity that epitomises this more than the late Diana, Princess of Wales. I was seven when Princess Diana died. Most British adults older than me will remember the world before Diana passed. Yet so many seem to have forgotten that Princess Diana was widely regarded as a ‘bimbo’ by the British Press. She was almost a laughingstock, and many column inches were dedicated to how she was little better than a clothes horse or a vapid beauty queen.
The serious members of the commentariat did not consider her a political figure or a statesman. To them she was a wrecking ball with a pretty face, determined to attack valuable British institutions such as marriage, and, of course, the Monarchy. The tabloids loved her but that probably had more to do with her ability to sell newspapers. This did not stop them printing their wicked words. The sexism of macho Fleet Street in the 80s and 90s is most palpable when reading about Diana.
What strikes me as interesting is that Diana was so popular, so likeable, so uniquely endearing people seemed to enjoy reading both good and bad things about her. Newspapers only write what people want to read and the public’s appetite for stories about Diana was truly insatiable. Voracious. Her adoring fans would read negative stories just to tut at the paper’s audacity to print them. Tabloids with bad stories about her sold better than tabloids with no stories about her at all. The Public would happily drain the cup to its dregs.
Diana was treated like a calamity though she was a fairly inert figure most of the time. After a privileged, but sad childhood she was famously thrust onto the world stage at the age of 19. A blank slate of youthful love the Public could project their hopes, dreams and fantasies onto. She didn’t hurt anybody even though she was reckless, she wasn’t responsible for writing any laws, and in terms of ‘hard power’, well, she didn’t have any. She was more akin to an influencer, able to promote her charitable causes through association alone.
As if by magic, her death changed the entire narrative surrounding her throughout the media in the most astonishing 180-degree turn. Her death was so shocking, so tragic and so unexpected, the public’s appetite for negative stories disappeared over night — like a game that suddenly wasn’t funny anymore.
When taking account of Diana’s legacy, one of the clear ways her death provoked lasting change was Britain’s privacy laws. The same Public who lapped up every salacious detail of her life came to feel uneasy with that level of voyeurism projected at any other celeb. Britain now has the strongest privacy laws in Europe. The type of Paparazzi photos that filled the Red Tops in the 80s and 90s can only be found online by deliberately searching the American and European media outlets.
But what about the institutions Diana supposedly took a sledgehammer too? Not the Monarchy, surely? Diana softened the Monarchy’s rougher edges — and definitely made the Palace more media savvy — but the Monarchy has not been transformed into something unrecognisable from its pre-Diana days. The Monarchy, as an institution, has a prescient survival instinct and will change just enough to put things right but will never enact anything revolutionary. Whether Diana liked it or not, the Monarchy works, and the British are simply too small ‘c’ conservative to jettison something that works so well even if it is flawed in countless other ways.
But Diana did take a wrecking ball to another institution: marriage. People forget that even in the early 90s committing adultery was a scandal. In the 80s and 90s, adulterers were shamed by the Press until they had to leave public life — as cheating Tory MPs from that time can attest. ‘Tory Sleaze’ arguably brought down Major’s government. But Diana (and Charles’s) palpable unhappiness was so excruciating to witness, even by total strangers, that she received unprecedented empathy for her adultery rather than scorn. Why should a pretty young woman so unhappy in her marriage not be free to leave it? Only a generation before Diana’s mother Francis had been called a ‘bolter’ and lost custody of her four children for the exact same behaviour.
The most visible and pernicious legacy of Diana’s is not the changes to Press rules, marriage, or the Monarchy — but on celebrity itself. There’s never been another celebrity quite like Diana since, but plenty have modelled themselves on Diana’s image. It’s no longer enough to just be a glamourous starlet. Once having reached the echelons of theatrical or musical fame; one must now prostrate oneself at the altar of philanthropy too. Diana, who once joked that she did charity work “because [she] had nothing else to do,” is emulated by every actor or model who wants to be known for more than what initially made them famous. It’s hard to believe that stars such as Angelina Jolie would be such ardent philanthropists had Princess Diana not trailblazed the way. UNICEF now has a raft of “celebrity ambassadors” visiting far flung places earnestly urging us to think of the children. At the same time, celebrity activism doesn’t feel the same. It feels shallow and self-aggrandising. Corporate pandering to the cause de jour even more so.
The reason for that is simple: for all her faults, Diana was incredibly brave.
Touching HIV/AIDs patients and campaigning against landmines were difficult, deeply taboo issues. They took courage. Real courage. A badass courage that most celebrities today just don’t have. What Diana did was campaign for causes that most celebrities wouldn’t touch then and wouldn’t touch the equivalent of now. Diana took real flak from politicians and social commentators at the time. Even today celebrities wouldn’t dare be associated with certain issues like gay rights or women’s rights in Saudi Arabia or just about anything that would get them cancelled. They don’t touch these issues because they’re just too afraid.
Philanthropy without courage rings hollow. This is a negative aspect of Diana’s legacy even if it isn’t what she would have wanted. Changing Britain’s privacy laws was a legacy of her death. Her philanthropy was the true legacy of her life. It saddens me that people only remember her unhappiness or her glamour but not the things about her that were really substantial. They don’t remember her bravery or her courage — qualities that are so conspicuously absent from public figures today.
Thank you for reading — I hope you found my thoughts interesting. You can find links to my other work here: https://linktr.ee/sayde.scarlett
