Diana: In Her Own Words (2017)

Princess Diana began to record a series of video tapes in 1992. she was uninhibited, free talking and candid. These videos were recorded by her speech coach. The account starts in 1981 in the years of the Thatcher Govt. Unemployment is soaring. Britain is up in flames. Prince Charles was born to Princess Elizabeth in 1941.

Liz became queen in 1953 in a public Coronation arriving in a gilded stagecoach. Andrew Parker Bowles in a stage boy at the same Coronation. Diana was born in 1961 and was a rebel. in 1969, Charles is Coronated as the Prince of Wales (the official heir to the throne). Diana was 17 when Charles broke up with his girlfriend. A mutual friend introduced the 2 and they started going out. Diana never took unwanted comments and gave some back to Charles, and that's something that attracted him to her. Charles was 20 years her senior and yet Diana was besotted with the attention thrust on her. when she was 19, she was invited to the Balmoral castle for the Royal retreat. She found Camilla Parker Bowles already there, and met her for the first time. Camilla was everywhere Charles was. Diana and Charles get engaged on Feb 24th, 1981. They get married on July 29th, 1981. Andrew Parker is Camilla's husband and is Charles's very good friend. Soon, the honeymoon was over and within a few months Diana was in depression and openly tearful. By now she knew that Charles loved another woman. In 1982, the Falkland Islands were invaded by Argentina. As Britain went to war, pressure was on Diana to keep on a semblance of normality. She announced her pregnancy. William was born in 1983 and this was Diana's last attempt to save her marriage to Charles. Diana became bulimic and the family blamed the bulimia for the failure of her wedding to Charles and not his relationship to Camilla. Diana immersed herself in her public engagements. Diana & Charles were a good team in public but had issues in private. Buddy Manerkie was Diana's security officer who died in 1985 and Diana was very sad at his death. Diana admitted she was intimate with Buddy, but not sexual. Charles knew about Buddy and had him removed from the palace 3 weeks before he was killed. Ken was the security officer that replaced Buddy. He immediately knew that Camilla was Charles's mistress, and that Diana was not prepared to accept that. Diana approached Elizabeth for help and was rebuffed. As she got more and more isolated, Diana involved herself with social work, starting with AIDS. By 1986, Charles was with Camilla and Diana was having an affair with the captain of the guards. By this time everyone on the royal staff knew that this was a marriage in name only. At Camilla's sister's birthday, things come to a head when Diana confronts Camilla and Camilla retorts "what more would you want Diana, you have 2 wonderful boys". After this point, Diana gave up all hope of saving the marriage and immersed herself even more in her social engagements, without Charles. Diana was confident, modern, and flirtatious. Not everyone was pleased. By 1992, 40th anniversary of Liz's rule, Windsor castle was burnt, Princess Sarah Fergusson was found in sexual positions with a Texan billionaire and there was a campaign to discredit Diana to separate her from her boys. By Dec 1992, Diana files for divorce. It became a sign of British Nationalism to support Charles. But Diana built her case with the people and swayed public opinion towards her. She hired a speech coach for the same purpose. Diana started to raise her public profile and people began to ask if Charles would ever become King. In 1994 Charles went on an offensive, where he put the blame of the breakdown on Diana and questioned her competency as a Princess and as a mother and even her sanity. Diana smuggled the video tapes out of her castle with the help of a good friend. In 1995, she gave an interview to BBC's panorama telling her story. The manner of narrating that story, shocked the Royal family and gave the public sympathy vote to Diana. In 1997, Diana is seeing Dodi Al Fayed, when she and Dodi are killed in a car crash in Paris.