CHAPTER 3
The death of Diana shocked the world. Curiously, it provoked a show of emotion, at times hysteria, rare for the British. The reasons for this were not at all obvious, but may be linked in some mysterious way to her hidden destiny. It was as though people knew instinctively that someone with a rather special role had gone out of all our lives and, as a consequence, those of us left behind were so much poorer.
The mood of the nation was well captured by Tony Blair, Britain’s newly elected Prime Minister. In a total breach of protocol for such an occasion, he delivered an impromptu speech to the BBC. At times with a quivering voice, he eulogized the Princess almost as if she were a saint. He reminded the nation and the world that her paparazzi image was only one facet of her character. Behind the glossy pictures there was a real woman: the mother of two vulnerable boys; the patroness of numerous charities that did valuable work, everything from the disposal of landmines to caring for the sick and hungry in Africa. For those in need she always had time and displayed, over and over again, her compassion and a feeling of common humanity. She also, he said, possessed a strange charisma so that just a look or gesture from her made people feel better.
Blair offered no answer to the question as to how she might have come by such a power, but in what many interpreted as a dig at the Royal Family, he referred to her as ‘The People’s Princess’. By awarding her this unofficial title (Diana had recently been stripped of her formal appellation of ‘Her Royal Highness’), he was perhaps reminding her now-divorced husband that an unloved monarchy has no future. He implied that by not making a success of his marriage to ‘The People’s Princess’, the Prince of Wales had shown a failure in judgement that could yet cost him the throne.
At first, the Queen tried to distance herself from a tragedy that she saw as being clearly of Diana’s own making. However, following Blair’s speech and the chord it evidently struck with the public, it became clear that such a hard-hearted attitude did not accord well with the public mood. Realizing this, she ordered that the Royal Standard, the monarch’s personal flag that is raised over Buckingham Palace when she is at home, be flown at half-mast. She also felt compelled to deliver her own eulogy for a young woman who she must secretly have wished had never become involved with her family at all. Nevertheless, and perhaps surprising even herself, she too was affected by the sense of unfolding destiny. She referred to the dramatic emotional impact Diana had had on her and reminded her subjects that she herself was a grandmother as well as being their queen. She paid tribute to Diana’s wonderful qualities: her compassion, her dedication to her two sons and her ability to keep on smiling through adversity. With some ambiguity, she said that no one who had met Diana would ever forget her. She also acknowledged, though she didn’t say what these were, that there were lessons to be learnt both from her life and from the people’s reaction to her death.
On 6 September 1997, just six days after the accident, Diana was given a state funeral: something that, prior to Blair’s speech, few would have expected. By now, the gates of Buckingham Palace and also those of Kensington Palace were piled high with floral tributes. From the latter, her coffin, draped in the Royal Standard as befitting a member of the Royal Family, was taken to Westminster Abbey on a horse-drawn gun carriage with mounted police and soldiers in attendance. At The Mall, Prince Charles, Diana’s brother Charles Spencer and her two sons joined the funeral cortege. When it arrived at the Abbey, it was taken off the gun carriage and carried into the church by eight sturdy members of the Prince of Wales Company, 1st Battalion of Welsh Guards.
The Abbey church was packed for the service that followed, and the Royal Family, which had clearly been caught on the back foot by all that had happened, could be forgiven for thinking that they had weathered the storm. It was then that Diana’s brother Charles dropped a bombshell of his own. Speaking with eloquence and passion, he delivered a superb funeral oration for his sister. However, his eulogy proved highly controversial: for both in tone and language, he implied that she had been betrayed by her husband’s family – the Windsors. As head of the Spencer family – he was now the holder of the ancestral title of Earl Spencer – he promised to make sure that her values rather than theirs would be passed on to her two sons. He also vowed to protect them from the fate that had befallen her. He did not say what had caused his sister’s anguish, but then he didn’t need to. It was common knowledge that the cold, formal nature of the Windsor household, emotionally repressed and still living in the Victorian age, was at least partly to blame for her divorce and untimely death.
Then, in another dig at the Windsors, he declared that her ‘blood family’ would see to it that the boys were educated in the sort of loving and imaginative way that she would have wanted: a way that would enable their ‘souls to sing openly’. Exactly why the Spencer family’s blood was special again he did not say, but the implication was that from their souls’ point of view, especially with regard to ‘emotional intelligence’, it provided them with possibilities over and above their inheritance from the Windsors.
Following the funeral, Diana’s body was transported back to her old home – the family seat of Althorp in Northamptonshire. There, much to the amazement of those present, the Earl ordered the removal of the Royal Standard, which, from the time it left Kensington Palace to its arrival at the gates of Althorp, had remained draped over the coffin. In its place he ordered that a flag bearing the arms of Spencer should be spread. A further surprise, at least for those with some knowledge of heraldry, was that these arms were almost identical to those of the medieval family of le Despencer whose repeated rises and falls are woven into the very fabric of English history. The implied symbolism of the Earl’s act – or at least the way that it was interpreted by the media – was that the unfeeling Windsors (symbolized by the Royal Standard) were being left at the gate. In death, Diana was returning to the warm bosom of her own family, the Spencers. The implication was that their blood was every bit as good as the Windsors and maybe, in some unspecified way, even more special. Then, also somewhat surprisingly, the Earl announced that her body would not be placed in the family mausoleum, but rather buried on an island in the middle of Althorp’s Oval Pond. Here, away from the prying lenses of the paparazzi and the souvenir-hunting hands of her millions of admirers, her body would be able to rest in the peaceful surroundings of the lake she used to swim in as a girl.
Diana’s place of burial is marked by a plaque, but her most important legacy is her two sons, the elder of whom, God willing, will one day be crowned King of Great Britain. This is not an empty title, for the succession to the throne matters greatly for psychological as well as political reasons. In Britain, the monarchy is associated with a half-remembered golden age when King Arthur sat on the throne. According to the legends, he ruled over Britain during the period of chaos that overwhelmed the country following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. A formidable warrior himself, he is said to have rallied the ancient Britons in their desperate struggles against the invading Anglo-Saxons.
The source of Arthur’s power lay in his magic sword, Excalibur, which was given to him by a mysterious water fey, the Lady of the Lake. Using it, he won a series of 12 battles culminating in a decisive victory at ‘Badon Hill’ (generally thought to be Solsbury Hill near Bath). This victory, for which he was credited with slaying 900 of his foes by his own hand, brought about a period of peace that lasted for some 30 years. During this time he ruled over the island of Britain – or at least the western parts of it – from a magnificent fortress-city called Camelot. Here, he set up a Christian Brotherhood, an order of chivalry whose members sat around a Round Table. Noted for their high standards of honour, valour and discipline, these ‘Knights of the Round Table’ policed the Arthurian kingdom, protecting women and the weak from the predations of lawless foes. However, all was not perfect. Arthur’s wife, Guinevere, proved unfaithful, while his nephew Mordred (the son of his half-sister Morgan-le-Faye), who was also his son according to some versions of the story, plotted against him. Meanwhile, the majority of his knights perished in a forlorn quest for a sacred cup, the ‘Holy Grail’, which was said to have been used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper. According to other legends, this cup was later used to collect some drops of his blood as it poured from his wounds while dying on the cross. Because of this link with the Blood of Christ, the Holy Grail was said to have powerful, healing energies associated with it. Indeed, it was so powerful that it could prolong the life of its custodian almost indefinitely. Unfortunately, by the time it was found by an exceptionally saintly knight called Perceval (in some versions of the story it is Galahad who finds it), Arthur’s kingdom was close to collapse.
In the final chapters of the story Arthur is betrayed by Mordred, who usurps the kingdom while Arthur is away in Brittany. Furious, he returns to Cornwall with his remaining knights to confront Mordred and his Anglo-Saxon allies. The two armies clash in the Battle of Camblan, with disastrous consequences for both. Tradition says this battle was fought near a bend in the River Camel, not far from the town of Camelford, but it could have been somewhere else entirely. By the end of the battle, Mordred is dead and Arthur too is mortally wounded. He is taken by barge to ‘Avalon’ (usually identified as Glastonbury in Somerset), while a faithful knight, Sir Bedivere, is tasked with throwing Arthur’s magic sword, Excalibur, back into the Lake from where it came. The myth finishes by saying that Arthur is not dead, but merely asleep; one day, at Britain’s hour of greatest need, he will return as the ‘Once and Future King’.
The story of King Arthur (with its associated legend of the Holy Grail) is the most important myth to come out of Britain. Ever since his death there has been a yearning for the return of the island’s greatest hero-king. Arthur was popular in the Middle Ages not just because he was victorious in battle, but rather because he symbolizes all those virtues expected in a Christian monarch that are often sadly lacking: courage, justice, chivalry, leadership, magnanimity and, above all, triumph over the forces of darkness.
Despite the yearning for his return, Arthur has proved a hard act to follow. So it is perhaps not surprising that there have been no kings of this name since the old Kingdom of Logres was renamed England and the remnant of the native Britons surrendered the title of over-king to the Anglo-Saxon English. Nevertheless, so powerful is Arthur’s legend that even though he fought against the Anglo-Saxons, he has been effectively anglicized; today most people in England think of him as an English king.
There is no doubting that Diana was fond of Althorp and also its pond; however, there may have been reasons other than security for the Earl’s curious choice for her burial site. She was born under Cancer, the sign of the astrological zodiac that is ruled by the Moon and is particularly associated with lakes, ponds and other stationary bodies of water. In Greek mythology, Diana, the huntress sister of Apollo, was similarly associated with wild places and again the Moon. Whether or not Earl Spencer knew of these associations or had any interest in astrology, his choice of a river island for Diana’s final resting place seemed inspired and, from a symbolic point of view, wholly appropriate. Without reading too much into it, it links her tragic story to that of the ‘Lady of the Lake’: the mythical fairy-queen whose outstretched hand gave King Arthur his magical sword Excalibur and received it back after he died.
In death as in life, Diana was to receive mythic status. This was appropriate, for as I was discovering, she was not just anyone. Indeed, in some ways it can be said that she was even more royal than the Queen, and the way I came to understand this was a long journey of the mind which, given her title ‘Princess of Wales’, begins appropriately enough in Glamorgan.