Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy's Fight for Survival

Despite Princess Diana’s death in a car crash in 1997, she continues to be a huge part of the monarchy’s story and persists in the public’s memory. For Harry, especially, her presence is a large part of his life; he has felt her guiding him through difficult moments and decisions, including leaving the monarchy. Part of the latter was even motivated by Harry’s determination that Diana’s story does not repeat with his own wife.

For the monarchy, Diana’s story is one they wish to partly escape. Her life was of the Palace’s making: They rejected Camilla and picked out Diana as a more suitable consort for Charles because she was “slim, virginal, and aristocratic” (245). However, Diana proved to be far more difficult to tame than the Palace thought. She was modern, strong-minded, and immensely popular, and she was dubbed the “people’s princess.” This, in combination with Charles’s affair and Diana’s depression, led to their already unhappy marriage imploding. The last straw was the 1995 BBC Panorama interview with Martin Bashir where Diana openly spoke about her mental health struggles, and both hers and Charles’s infidelity. She wrested control of her story during a time when the royal family was still holding fast to the

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