BLIZZARD: The iconic Princess Diana died far too young 25 years ago

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Most people remember what they were doing, that awful late August night when the news broke 25 years ago.

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Diana, Princess of Wales, had been injured in a car accident in Paris alongside her beau Dodi al-Fayed.

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We held our breath until the shocking word arrived: Diana died at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital. She was only 36 years old.

Fayed died in the Mercedes, with driver Henri Paul.

The sole survivor was bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones who suffered serious injuries.

It was August 31, 1997, and the world fell into an abyss of mourning for the woman described by then British Prime Minister Tony Blair as ‘the people’s princess’.

In real life, Diana was a divorced princess looking for love in the wrong places. In death, she became a style icon – someone who bucked trends, spoke truth to power – and a powerful force for change.

Buckingham Palace’s slow response to her death brought the Queen to one of the lowest points of her reign. When Diana died, the Queen and Prince Philip were at Balmoral in Scotland with Diana’s sons, Princes William and Harry. They chose to remain in solitude, helping their grandsons to cope.

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In the days following the crash, more than a million bouquets were left outside Diana’s home at Kensington Palace as people demanded the Royals return to London.

In the years that followed, many conspiracy theories were floated about his death, particularly one fueled by Fayed’s father, Mohammed Al-Fayed, who accused the Duke of Edinburgh and Mi5 of collusion.

An extensive inquest, during which Prince Charles was asked about the death of his ex-wife, concluded the deaths were caused by drunk driving and passengers not wearing seat belts of security.

A former police officer recently described to the London Daily Telegraph how the team of 14 officers investigated Diana’s death in great detail for three years. They spoke to his two sisters and close friends, looking for evidence that the crash was anything but a terrible accident.

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Two years earlier, Diana had confided to her butler, Paul Burrell, that she expected to die in a car accident staged by Charles, so he could marry nanny Tiggy-Legge Bourke.

Much of this paranoia was based on an outrageous manipulation by TV presenter Martin Bashir, who coerced Diana into giving him an interview based on false evidence. He insinuated that Charles was having an affair with the children’s nanny and wanted Diana away.

Bashir and the BBC recently apologized for their deception and Legge-Bourke was awarded « substantial » damages.

Former det.-insp. Scotland Yard’s Jane Scotchbrook has revealed she gained the trust of Diana’s inner circle to ask for intimate details about her life – including the possibility that Diana may have been pregnant at the time of her death or that she was engaged in Fayed.

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It’s easy to think of Diana as a doe-eyed ingenue. In fact, the young woman who became Princess of Wales when she was only 20 years old was smart and good at the media. Her star power quickly eclipsed that of her stuffy husband. And yet, she was a bundle of insecurities, which manifested in her bulimic eating disorder.

She had a huge influence on the style and mores of the time and she used that stardom for good. She allowed herself to be photographed shaking hands with an AIDS patient and hugging a patient in a Harlem hospital. It was a time when AIDS was stigmatized and few people touched a patient for fear of contracting the disease.

While she could be kind, she could also be cruel.

In her book The Palace Papers, author Tina Brown recounts how Diana’s relationship with English ruby ​​captain Will Carling broke up her marriage. Carling’s wife publicly blamed Diana for their divorce.

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In an interview with Piers Morgan, to which Diana brought her son, William, Morgan asked about the case.

« I keep a picture of Julia Carling on my dartboard at Eton, » William told Morgan, which Brown says is an amazing thing for a son to say of his mother’s love rival, especially given that he idolized Carling.

Although Charles’ affair with his longtime girlfriend Camilla Parker-Bowles was widely publicized, Diana was also guilty of extramarital affairs. One of his protection cops had to be reassigned after it was revealed they were having a banter. Another of her lovers was her riding instructor, James Hewitt, who betrayed her in a tell-all book published in 1994.

Her butler, Paul Burrell, said the love of her life was cardiologist Hasnat Khan, whom she had a relationship with from 1995 to 1997 and used to smuggle into Kensington Palace under a blanket in the back of a car. Khan was at Westminster Abbey for his funeral.

During her brief mercurial life, Diana became one of the most glamorous and prominent women in the world.

It’s hard to believe she would have turned 61 this year and impossible to imagine her as a grandmother. Diana is frozen in death as a young and beautiful woman whose tragic death came far too soon.

— Read Part 2 of Tomorrow’s Toronto Sun: William and Harry 25 Years Later