Diana, Princess of Wales (Diana Frances Mountbatten-Windsor; née Spencer; 1 July 1961 – 31 August 1997) was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, eldest son and heir apparent of Elizabeth II. Her two sons, Princes William and Harry, are second and third, respectively, in line to the thrones of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and 12 other Commonwealth Realms.
Diana Frances Spencer was the youngest daughter of Edward Spencer, Viscount Althorp, and his first wife, Frances Spencer, Viscountess Althorp (formerly the Honourable Frances Burke Roche) at Park House on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, England. She was baptised at St. Mary Magdalene Church in Sandringham, by Rt. Rev. Percy Herbert (rector of the church and former Bishop of Norwich and Blackburn); her godparents included John Floyd (the chairman of Christie's).
Diana's four siblings were:
* Lady Elizabeth Sarah Lavinia Spencer (b. 19 Mar 1955)
* Lady Cynthia Jane Spencer (b. 11 Feb 1957)
* Hon. John Spencer (b. 12 Jan 1960 - d. 12 Jan 1960)
* Charles Edward Maurice Spencer (b. 20 May 1964)
During her parents' acrimonious divorce over Lady Althorp's adultery with wallpaper heir Peter Shand Kydd, Diana's mother took her and Diana's brother to live in an apartment in London's Knightsbridge, where Diana attended a local day school. That Christmas, the Spencer children went to celebrate with their father and he subsequently refused to allow them to return to the capital and their mother. Lady Althorp sued for custody of her children, but Lord Althorp's rank, aided by Lady Althorp's mother's testimony against her daughter during the trial, meant that custody of Diana and her brother was awarded to their father. On the death of her paternal grandfather, Albert Spencer, 7th Earl Spencer in 1975, Diana's father became the 8th Earl Spencer, at which time she became Lady Diana Spencer and moved from her childhood home at Park House to her family's sixteenth-century ancestral home of Althorp.
A year later, Lord Spencer married Raine, Countess of Dartmouth, the only daughter of the highly eccentric romantic novelist Barbara Cartland, after being named as the "other party" in the Earl and Countess of Dartmouth's divorce. During this time Diana travelled up and down the country, living between her parents homes - with her father at the Spencer seat in Northamptonshire, and with her mother, who had moved north west of Glasgow in Scotland. Diana, like her siblings, did not gel with her new stepmother, sending her hate mail, allegedly throwing her down a flight of stairs and having a very public argument with her at her brothers wedding in 1989. According to some accounts, Diana threw her stepmother's possessions out of the windows of Althorp in black bin liners after her father's funeral in 1992. Diana was born into an aristocratic background with royal Stuart ancestry.
On her mother's side, Diana was Irish, Scottish, and American. Her great-grandmother was the famous New York heiress Frances Work.
On her father's side, Diana was a direct descendant of Charles II through four illegitimate sons:
* Henry Fitzroy, 1st Duke of Grafton, son by Barbara Villiers
* Charles Beauclerk, son by Nell Gwyn
* James Crofts- Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, leader of a famous rebellion, son by Lucy Walter
* Charles Lennox, son by Louise de Kérouaille, 1st Duchess of Portsmouth
She was also a descendant of James II and VII through an illegitimate daughter, Arabella FitzJames. Arabella's mother was Arabella Churchill, the sister of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, and so she is a distant relative of Winston Churchill
Diana's other notable ancestors included Robert I (the Bruce) and Mary, Queen of Scots (an aspect of family history in which Diana expressed great interest); Mary Boleyn; Lady Catherine Grey; John Egerton, 2nd Earl of Bridgewater; and James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby.
Additionally, Diana's great-great-great-grandmother Eliza Kevorkian was a native of Mumbai, India and of Indian descent, though family lore identifies Kevorkian as of Armenian ancestry. ("Kevork" and "Kevorkian" are Armenian surnames, which translate into English as "George" and "Son of George.") he Spencers had been close to the British Royal Family for centuries; rising in royal favour during the mid 1600s. Diana's maternal grandmother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, was a long-time friend and a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.
Diana was also a cousin of one of her favourite actresses, Audrey Hepburn Her other notable cousins include Oliver Platt and Humphrey Bogart. Diana was educated at Riddlesworth Hall in Norfolk and at West Heath Girls' School (later reorganised as the New School at West Heath, a special school for boys and girls) in Sevenoaks, Kent, where she was regarded as an academically below-average student, having attempted and failed all of her O-levels twice. In 1977, aged 16, she left West Heath and briefly attended Institut Alpin Videmanette, a finishing school in Rougemont, Switzerland. At about that time, she first met her future husband, who was dating her sister, Lady Sarah. Diana excelled in swimming and diving and reportedly longed to be a ballerina, but at 5 feet 10 inches was too tall.
Prince Charles's love life had always been the subject of press speculation, and he was linked to numerous glamorous and aristocratic women. In his early thirties, he was under increasing pressure to marry. Legally, the only requirement was that he could not marry a Roman Catholic; a member of the Church of England was preferred. His great-uncle Lord Mountbatten of Burma, who was assassinated by an IRA bomb in 1979, had advised him to marry a virginal young woman who would look up to him. In order to gain the approval of his family and their advisors, any potential bride was expected to have a royal or aristocratic background, as well as be Protestant and, preferably, a virgin. Diana seemed to meet all of these qualifications. They married at St Paul's Cathedral on the 29 July 1981, watched by a global audience of almost one billion. In the mid-1980s, the marriage of Diana and Charles fell apart, an event at first suppressed but then sensationalised by the world media, drawing in Camilla Parker Bowles, who was confronted by Diana at a society party and was also, allegedly, on the receiving end of late-night telephone death threats orchestrated by the princess. Both the Prince and Princess of Wales allegedly spoke to the press through friends, each blaming the other for the marriage's demise. In her famous television interview with Martin Bashir on Panorama, Diana admitted to an extra-marital affair with James Hewitt. Other men rumoured to have been her lovers, both before and after her divorce, included her bodyguard, Barry Mannakee, property developer Christopher Whalley, banker Philip Waterhouse, King Juan Carlos of Spain, car dealer James Gilbey, Islamic art expert Oliver Hoare, heart surgeon Dr. Hasnat Khan, singer Bryan Adams, John F. Kennedy, Jr., rugby captain Will Carling, Harrods heir Dodi Fayed. The true nature of her relationships with these men seems to have varied from platonic friendship to romance. The Prince and Princess of Wales were separated on 9 December 1992, by which time her relations with the rest of the Royal Family, excepting the Duchess of York, had also reached rock bottom. Their divorce was finalised on 28 August 1996. Diana received a lump sum settlement of around £17,000,000 along with a legal order preventing her from discussing the details. Starting in the mid- to late 1980s, the Princess of Wales became well known for her support of charity projects. This stemmed naturally from her role as Princess of Wales - she was expected to engage in hospital visitations where she comforted the sick and in so doing, assume the patronage of various charitable organizations - and from an interest in certain illnesses and health-related matters. Owing to Public Relations efforts in which she agreed to appear as a figurehead, Diana used her influential status to positively assist the campaign against landmines, a cause which won the Nobel Prize in 1997 in tribute, and with helping to decrease discrimination against victims of AIDS. Her work often drew an analogy with that of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. On 31 August 1997 Diana was killed in a high speed car accident in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris along with Dodi Al-Fayed and their driver Henri Paul. Fayed's bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones was closest to the point of impact and yet the only survivor of the crash. No-one in the car was wearing a seatbelt. Henri Paul and Dodi Fayed were killed instantly, and Diana—unbelted in the back seat—slid forward during the impact and, having been violently thrown around the interior, "submarined" under the seat in front of her, suffering massive damage to her heart and subsequent internal bleeding. She was transported by ambulance to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, but on the way to casualty went into cardiac arrest twice. Despite lengthy resuscitation attempts, including internal cardiac massage, she died at 4 a.m. local time. Her funeral on 6 September 1997 was broadcast and watched by an estimated two and a half billion people worldwide.
2007-03-31 05:01:39
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answer #1
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answered by Anonymous
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Diana, Princess of Wales (Diana Frances Mountbatten-Windsor; née Spencer; 1 July 1961 – 31 August 1997) was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, eldest son and heir apparent of Elizabeth II. Her two sons, Princes William and Harry, are second and third, respectively, in line to the thrones of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and 12 other Commonwealth Realms.
Prince Charles's love life had always been the subject of press speculation, and he was linked to numerous glamorous and aristocratic women. In his early thirties, he was under increasing pressure to marry. Legally, the only requirement was that he could not marry a Roman Catholic; a member of the Church of England was preferred. His great-uncle Lord Mountbatten of Burma, who was assassinated by an IRA bomb in 1979, had advised him to marry a virginal young woman who would look up to him.[citation needed] In order to gain the approval of his family and their advisors, any potential bride was expected to have a royal or aristocratic background, as well as be Protestant and, preferably, a virgin. Diana seemed to meet all of these qualifications. They married at St Paul's Cathedral on the 29 July 1981, watched by a global audience of almost one billion
In the mid-1980s, the marriage of Diana and Charles fell apart, an event at first suppressed but then sensationalised by the world media, drawing in Camilla Parker Bowles, who was confronted by Diana at a society party and was also, allegedly, on the receiving end of late-night telephone death threats orchestrated by the princess. Both the Prince and Princess of Wales allegedly spoke to the press through friends, each blaming the other for the marriage's demise.[7] In her famous television interview with Martin Bashir on Panorama, Diana admitted to an extra-marital affair with James Hewitt. Other men rumoured to have been her lovers, both before and after her divorce, included her bodyguard, Barry Mannakee, property developer Christopher Whalley, banker Philip Waterhouse, King Juan Carlos of Spain, car dealer James Gilbey, Islamic art expert Oliver Hoare, heart surgeon Dr. Hasnat Khan, singer Bryan Adams, John F. Kennedy, Jr., rugby captain Will Carling, Harrods heir Dodi Fayed. The true nature of her relationships with these men seems to have varied from platonic friendship to romance
On 31 August 1997 Diana was killed in a high speed car accident in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris along with Dodi Al-Fayed and their driver Henri Paul. Blood analysis shows that Henri Paul was legally intoxicated while driving. Tests confirmed that original postmortem blood samples were from driver Henri Paul, and that he had three times the French legal limit of alcohol in his blood. Conspiracy theorists had claimed that Paul's blood samples were swapped with blood from someone else—who was drunk—and contended that the driver had not been drinking on the night Diana died.Their Mercedes-Benz S280 sedan crashed on the thirteenth pillar of the tunnel. The two-lane tunnel was built without metal barriers between the pillars, so a slight change in vehicle direction could easily result in a head-on collision with the tunnel pillar.
Fayed's bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones was closest to the point of impact and yet the only survivor of the crash. No-one in the car was wearing a seatbelt. Henri Paul and Dodi Fayed were killed instantly, and Diana—unbelted in the back seat—slid forward during the impact and, having been violently thrown around the interior, "submarined" under the seat in front of her, suffering massive damage to her heart and subsequent internal bleeding.[citation needed] She was transported by ambulance to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, but on the way to casualty went into cardiac arrest twice.Despite lengthy resuscitation attempts, including internal cardiac massage, she died at 4 a.m. local time.Her funeral on 6 September 1997 was broadcast and watched by an estimated two and a half billion people worldwide.
2007-03-28 14:35:55
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answer #4
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answered by Monica =] 3
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