Princess Diana-Her Troubled Life-Part 1

What was it about Princess Diana that touched so many hearts and led to a well pool of grief when she died so tragically at only 36 years of age?

Was it that she lived her life so publicly giving the illusion of being able to see within her soul? Yet her friends say she could be secretive.

Some say it was her air of innocence and vulnerability which made both men and women wish to protect her from life’s hurts. Yet her friends and family say she could be manipulative to a high degree.

From the beginning of the romance between Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer the question needs to be asked, did Diana love Charles the man? A man who was haunted by his childhood, who had been severely bullied at school and was still full of insecurities about himself and his role in life? Or did she love the Title and the fact that it would put the Spencer dynasty in the history books.

Princess Diana upon marrying Prince Charles found herself plunged into a very sophisticated world of which she had no means of coping. For unlike Prince Charles or his then mistress Mrs. Camilla Parker Bowles, both of whom were in their 30's and had lived life to the full. Princess Diana was a very young and naive 19 years old when she became engaged to the Prince.

Princess Diana described herself many times as 'a lamb being led to the slaughter' but was she entirely unkowing of the hold Camilla Parker Bowles still held over Charles? Before her engagement was announced the newspapers ran a headline which screamed ' A Blonde on the Train with Prince Charles'. This was in November 1980 before she became engaged to the Prince. Tina Brown in her book speculates that the blonde was Diana herself, hence Diana never mentions this incident in any books or interviews. This is difficult to believe in that Prince Charles was not wildly in love with the then Lady Diana why would he take the risk? Why the silence from Diana? If Princess Diana had acknowledged that she knew the 'blonde' was not herself then would she not lose her 'victim status'?

Was Lady Diana as trapped by her circumstance as the Prince himself? Neither being able to stop the train wreck which their marriage would become. Lady Diana Spencer belonged to a Noble Aristocratic family, which had served the Monarchy for many generations. Her own maternal Grandmother was Lady Ruth Fermoy who was Lady in Waiting to the Queen Mother. If Lady Diana had dumped Prince Charles a scandal would have ensued, something the Spencer family would do anything to avoid.

So the young Lady Diana Spencer married her Prince. Though the world wanted this marriage of Prince Charles to his young bride to be a modern romance that could have set the world on fire. Instead it blazed as an inferno within the marriage itself which would consume and destroy it.

The first salvo was fired by the Prince Charles 'set' when in a popular magazine Princess Diana was described as a 'bully' as 'hysterical' and was 'controlling and manipulative'. The story made the claim that it was Diana and not Charles who was destroying their marriage by her volatile and unpredictable behavior towards her beleaguered and confused husband. Many papers also ran with this story and described Princess Diana as a 'mad woman bent on destroying her marriage', and as 'the mouse that roared'. So was it unpredictable that Princess Diana would be smart enough to know where the leaks of her private life were coming from?

So began the 'War of the Wales' which played out in every tabloid newspaper, magazines and television documentaries. What was left untold were the casualities of this 'war'. The children of Prince Charles and Diana and the Parker Bowles children.

Princess Diana to her credit refused to be 'managed' by the Palace machinery. Unlike other members of the Royal family who stood back from the crowds and proffered their gloved hands for a handshake. Diana launched herself into the crowds, she hugged the children and disabled, shook hands with AID's sufferers and visited people who were on the outskirts of acceptable society. Diana was about to become 'The People's Princess'.

Part two will be concluded tomorrow