It has all the ingredients of a Greek tragedy. A person of high stature, with a larger than life façade, having a tragic flaw and meeting the tragic fate at the same time. England today needs a Marlow or a Shakespeare to tell her story to the world.

Diana, the “people’s princess”, emerges the main protagonist in this (un)fair(y) tale where her once prince-charming-turned husband, who deserted her, had to, after all, “identify” her body, literally torn into pieces. Well, this may be an irony of fate. But Diana, perhaps, entered a “tunnel” with a “dead end”.

Yes, the tunnel symbolises the pathway which her destiny had created for her, where there were no lights, no windows, no arms to stretch, nothing to look upto, no fresh air to fill the lungs and, above all, no U-turn!

Born with blue blood, deprived of parental caresses due to their separation, opting to cuddle kindergarten kids, being proposed on his knees by a prince charming, bearing two heirs, hounded till the end by “snoopies”, troubled by tabloids, “cold-shouldered” by the husband and ultimately divorced: all this gives a sub-plot of the Diana story.

Going through a transitional predicament, seeking to overcome the traumatic past, of an unhappy married life, and, rightly or wrongly, acquiring a new individualistic style of romance as personal preference, beginning to harbour a desire to settle away from “home” and suddenly providenced to “rest in peace”. This is the other side of the story.
London tabloids had said then...Where is our Queesn?Where is her Flag...!That was when the People’s Princes died. On her death anniversary let me recall what I wrote then in The Tribune.
“There is yet another angle to Diana’s personality. She was a woman of no ordinary calibre. The world has acknowledged this.

But does not all this prove that Diana was a human being too? Royalty might be made up of a sterner stuff, and I am reminded of Cleopatra, who said to her parting son, “Queens are not expected to display emotions, rather they are called upon by royalty to suppress them.” But what are we mortals, like the dead and gone Diana, made up of? The ordinary substance!

That is why those who knew Diana, those who had the opportunity to see her, those who even heard about her, those who read about her, identified themselves with her. It was only because of this unique trait of hers and that she became the queen of hearts, the people’s princess. She did not shake this factor off her personality even after having been ushered into royalty.

It is here that her former husband failed to recognise her and treated her as a mere princess and future queen. It is here that media people failed to recognise her and treated nothing more than a person who could provide them a good (photo)copy.

Adieu Diana, the prettiest face of the twentieth century.”