Excerpt from Diana In Search of Herself by Sally Bedell Smith, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

In 1992, the Diana saga took a perilous turn with the publication of Diana: Her True Story, by Andrew Morton, a former tabloid reporter. The fairy tale, it was clear, had gone horribly wrong. The royal love match turned out to be a sad tale of adultery, mental illness, betrayal, mistrust, and revenge. Diana's secret tape-recorded interviews with an intermediary supplied the basic message of the book. Presented as the "true story," the book was actually her highly emotional perception of events, shaped by psychotherapy as well as astrological readings and alternative therapists who reinforced her efforts to assign blame. The account was one-sided and filled with inconsistencies that mirrored Diana's own tendency to embellish and contradict herself. It was Diana's view of the world, but the public came to accept the book as reality.

The Wales marriage ruptured following the Morton book, polarizing opinion among friends and the public. Most writers found it easier, and more appealing to their readers, to sympathize with Diana and demonize Charles. To an astonishing degree, they took the book's word at face value. In the last five years of her life, Diana actively encouraged their efforts by courting an array of British journalists. "It is an undisputed fact that the Princess connived with the media and exploited it for her own interests," wrote Sir David English, the late chairman of Associated Newspapers and one of her most ardent advocates, "just as much as we exploited her for ours."

As a result, Diana's version was reinforced by sympathetic chroniclers, especially tabloid reporters James Whitaker and Richard Kay, as well as various friends, therapists, and astrologers such as Penny Thornton. Even James Hewitt's bodice-ripping tale published in 1994 reinforced Diana's spin, with his own self-aggrandizing role woven through. Diana's televised interview the following year with Martin Bashir essentially cemented the Diana viewpoint.

Allies of the Prince of Wales tried to even the score, circulating a pro-Charles version of events that portrayed Diana as unstable and manipulative. But journalists took a jaundiced view of Charles's aristocratic friends, and despite the Prince's earnestness and a basic sincerity, he simply couldn't compete with Diana's more endearing qualities of warmth and empathy. He was further defeated by his own awkwardness and his reluctance to hobnob with the press. Diana's champions also tapped into a natural sympathy for her grievances against a royal family known to be aloof, chilly, and preoccupied by duty. A sober authorized biography of the Prince by Jonathan Dimbleby did little to undercut the prejudices against Charles.

After Diana's death, Simon Jenkins of The Times called her "the paradigm unhappy woman of today. She was a spokeswoman for those with impossible husbands, worried about their appearance, wrestling with divorce, careers, children, trying to match impossible expectations." In a sense, Diana had ceased to be a person and had become a symbol--of victimhood, rebellion, and emotional authenticity.

Because of its constant repetition as well as its compelling dramatic elements, Diana's life story often strayed from the facts. The lore regarding the divorce of Diana's parents is especially revealing. According to a 1992 account in the Evening Standard, the case was "publicly and bloodily fought out in the courts." That same year, the Daily Mail recounted that during her childhood Diana had "watched her parents publicly tear their marriage apart." On the first anniversary of Diana's death, MTV ran a biography set to music that even included a fake newspaper with the oversized headline THEIR DIVORCE WAS A TERRIFIC SCANDAL; EVERYONE TOOK SIDES to illustrate the film's assertion that when Diana's parents divorced, "a fierce custody battle" was "played out in the press."

Copyright © 1999 Sally Bedell Smith .