When Princess Diana died in a horrific car crash in Paris in August 1997, Britain went
into mourning. But the beloved royal's death has since unleashed many revelations about
her and those she was closest to. These are the shocking things we learned about Princess
Diana after her death.
In 2004, NBC aired the first installment of their highly controversial two-part documentary
on the late Princess of Wales, which was released under the title Princess Diana: The Secret
Tapes. The docuseries was comprised of footage taken at Princess Diana's Kensington Palace
home between 1992 and 1993 by her friend Peter Settelen, whom the princess had decided to
confide in.
She spoke of many things in their recorded interview sessions, but the beloved royal
began by telling her former voice coach that she suffered a great deal in childhood, stating,
"It was a very unhappy childhood. [My] parents were busy sorting themselves out. I remember
seeing my father slap my mother across the face and I was crying on the floor...Mummy
was crying an awful lot."
The BBC also got its hands on the tapes and reportedly planned to release its own documentary
on the princess at the time, but bosses at the broadcasting company decided to axe it
over fears it would upset her ex-husband, Prince Charles.
Princess Diana's former royal protection officer, Ken Wharfe, became one of her closest confidants
during his time by her side, though after he left the role weeks before her tragic death
in Paris, he decided to go ahead with his own personal memoirs in 2002.
Diana: Closely Guarded Secret blew the lid on a number of stories that had previously
been dismissed as nothing but rumors, the most sensational of all being Princess Diana's
alleged affair with British Army officer James Hewitt.
"In July 1986, Diana met James Hewitt at a party. She arranged for Hewitt to give her
riding lessons and more."
Wharfe would reportedly accompany the princess to her secret meetings with Hewitt, who she
took as her lover after she discovered that her then-husband, Prince Charles, was seeing
his then-mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles, again. In his book, Wharfe wrote,
"Shattered by her husband's betrayal, the Princess was ready for an affair. Hewitt,
a natural womaniser, gave her the attention and affection she relished, and then the passion
she yearned for."
In his memoir, Diana: Closely Guarded Secret, Ken Wharfe made it perfectly clear what he
thought of ladies man James Hewitt, recalling the first time he took Princess Diana to meet
him at his mother's isolated cottage in the Devon countryside, which he referred to as
the couple's love nest. Hewitt reportedly came out to greet them with an over-enthusiastic
welcome, though Diana's bodyguard found his over-the-top behavior laughable, recalling,
"It seemed absurd, and confirmed my preconceived ideas: not all Army officers were public-school
buffoons, but many seemed to be doing an excellent impersonation."
That enthusiasm would eventually wane, however, and Hewitt later decided to confide in Wharfe
when the secretive relationship became too much for him to handle. He said to Wharfe,
"Ken, I need some time off. The Princess can be so demanding."
His chance for a break came when he was promoted to Major and took a two-year posting in Germany,
reportedly leaving Diana heartbroken and threatening to approach his commanding officer. According
to Wharfe,
"Hewitt was aghast. To say the Household Cavalry would have frowned on any officer cuckolding
the future king is a massive understatement."
He’s probably not wrong.
Relationship pressure was something that Princess Diana was all too familiar with, having suffered
from its side effects long before she even walked down the aisle with the Prince of Wales.
Diana developed an eating disorder early on in her relationship with Charles, whose reported
flippant comments about her weight started a chain of events that would affect his wife
and marriage for years to come.
In her recorded remarks, Diana recounted these events, stating,
"Bulimia started the week after we got engaged. Charles said, 'You're getting a bit chubby,'
and that triggered something off. The first time I made myself sick I was so thrilled.
It relieved me of tension."
She went on to reveal that she was making herself throw up her food multiple times a
day, but it all came to a head when she fainted during an event in Canada.
"They all blamed the failure of the marriage on the bulimia. And that’s taken some time
to get them to think differently."
The press referred to it as, quote, "the wedding of the century" after thousands upon thousands
packed the streets of London to celebrate the new princess. The one person who didn't
get swept up in the fairy tale royal wedding day, though, was Princess Diana herself. After
getting cold feet, she revealed in those secret tapes that she'd confided in her sisters:
"I said, 'I can't marry him. I can't do this. This is absolutely unbelievable.' And they
were wonderful and said, 'Well, bad luck, Duch. Your face is on the tea towel, so you're
too late to chicken out.'"
It was later revealed that Prince Charles reportedly shared similar doubts about their
compatibility.
However, the royal couple made their way to the world famous St. Paul's Cathedral, where
750 million people watched Diana walk down the aisle. While the bride was a vision of
royal beauty, inside the princess-to-be felt like, as she put it, a quote, "lamb to the
slaughter."
Diana later recounted,
"My wedding day. I think that was the worst day of my life."
As the '90s reached their midway point, it started becoming clear that this royal marriage
had faced major trouble in paradise, the extent of which wasn't fully known until Princess
Diana's secret tapes were released. Not only was the princess severely depressed about
the state of her failing marriage, at times her relationship with Prince Charles caused
her to try and take her own life.
She said of the period,
"I was so depressed, and I was trying to cut my wrists with razor blades."
Queen Elizabeth the second even witnessed one of Diana's attempts first hand during
her pregnancy with Prince William following an argument with Charles. Diana stated,
"I was crying my eyes out. He said I was crying wolf. 'I'm not going to listen,' he said.
'You're always doing this to me. I'm going riding now.' So I threw myself down the stairs.
The Queen comes out, absolutely horrified, shaking, she was so frightened...When he came
back, you know, it was just dismissal, total dismissal. He just carried on out of the door."
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call or chat online with
the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
According to unnamed sources who spoke with the Daily Mail, the revelations inside Ken
Wharfe's memoirs have made him a sworn enemy to the royal family. In fact, the establishment
sought to strip him of his royal honors in the wake of his explosive book. Perhaps one
of the most shocking chapters, considering how Princess Diana met her eventual fate,
claimed that the princess would encourage her protector to exceed the speed limit while
driving her home from the Hewitt family cottage. This speeding almost landed them in a huge
PR disaster.
As Wharfe put it,
"After these clandestine meetings, Diana would be exhilarated. She often insisted on driving
much too fast, which is how we came to be stopped by a patrol car when we'd been doing
around 100 mph. 'Ken, you'll have to sort this out,' said the Princess as we pulled
over, but I told her firmly that it wasn't my job to cover up offences, particularly
as I had warned her repeatedly about her speed."
Diana reportedly took it upon herself to resolve the situation, using her status and good looks
to influence the policeman. Wharfe recalled that,
"The traffic officer got the shock of his life when he realized who he'd stopped. Diana,
with her eyes at their most doe-like and her head tilted to one side, was let off with
a polite reprimand."
Through no fault of his own, Prince Harry's birth caused his mother heartache, as Ken
Wharfe found out first hand. Princess Diana's biggest regret about her affair with James
Hewitt was that it brought the legitimacy of her second son into question, with many
assuming that the child was not Prince Charles' doing when he popped out with a fiery head
of red hair, remarkably similar in color to Hewitt's. Charles certainly noticed.
"First comment was, 'Oh god, it's a boy.' Second comment: 'Oh, and he's even got red
hair.'"
Despite being generally thick-skinned when it came to the media, the rumors about Harry
reportedly drove Princess Diana to tears on many occasions, meaning Wharfe avoided the
topic like the plague where possible. The one time he did discuss the stories with the
princess, she supposedly told him that it was nothing but a malicious lie, stating,
"I don't know how my husband and I did have Harry, because by then he had gone back to
his lady, but one thing that is certain is that we did."
While Wharfe is no longer on the Windsor Christmas card list, he has always backed the princess
up on this one, claiming that it is, quote, "mathematically wrong" for Hewitt to be the
father as he didn't meet Diana until 1986, two years after Harry was born.
After her divorce from Prince Charles was finalized in 1996, Princess Diana reportedly
became convinced that there was a plot afoot to have her killed. During the inquest into
her death, her lawyer, Lord Mischon, testified that the princess had heard from, quote, "reliable
sources" that she would be killed in a staged accident. It later transpired that those sources
were a series of mediums, psychics, and astrologists, one of whom reportedly told Diana about a
premonition she had in which she saw the brakes of a black Mercedes being tampered with, adding
that she, quote, "felt a connection with France."
The paranoid princess reportedly went as far as writing a letter to friend Simone Simmons,
a holistic healer by trade. Diana claimed, quote, "the brakes of my car have been tampered
with" following a minor fender bender she had in London. A mechanic later confirmed
it was simply down to normal wear and tear, though Sally Morgan, Diana's most trusted
psychic, still maintains there was something fishy about her death.
According to Morgan,
"The truth will come out. Diana would definitely want the facts to be revealed. She'd be torn
between it all being dragged up again and upsetting her boys, but William and Harry
are men now, so they can handle it. I think they want the truth, too. But I think it'll
be 200 years before it comes out. It'll be Prince George's grandchildren who'll allow
the truth to be printed."
Princess Diana is said to have clashed with Princess Michael of Kent, the wife of Queen
Elizabeth the second's cousin, Prince Michael of Kent, on numerous occasions. The people
that knew her best claim Diana often took issue with Princess Michael's rigid approach
to royal life. According to Ken Wharfe, the free-spirited princess had a less than flattering
nickname for her stuffy elder. According to Wharfe,
"Diana used to refer to her as the U-Boat Commander. It was really common knowledge."
The two princesses were once neighbors at Kensington Palace. They would act friendly
toward one another whenever they crossed paths, but Wharfe testified, quote, "it was all a
bit of a facade." And Wharfe wasn't the only royal insider to come forward about this unspoken
feud. Diana's former personal trainer claimed she used to enjoy embarrassing Princess Michael
by greeting her while wearing skimpy gym outfits. According to Carolan Brown,
"Diana had a huge sense of humor. She hated any kind of stuffiness and she thought Princess
Michael liked to be very regal."
In 2005, Princess Michael's true feelings on Diana came out in a scandalous fashion.
The unwitting princess told notorious undercover journalist Mazher "Fake Sheikh" Mahmood that
Diana was, quote, "nasty and bitter" in a recorded sting. Princess Michael also claimed
that the People's Princess was just a, quote, "womb" for Charles. Ouch.