R.I.P. Diana. Your sons have and will carry on your work and legacy.

I was laying in bed with my new boyfriend (now my husband).

He was asleep, I was watching the late night news.

I began shaking like a leaf. I was in an "illicit" relationship. Nobody knew, not even my abuser (he only knew that I'd left him).

I flashed back to Diana's wedding. I was a pre-teen, but I stayed up late to watch it, fantasizing about my own fairy-tale coming true one day.

I had the same rude awakening that she had. A "loving prince" can hid a secret, harmful side. He can woo your friends and family into thinking you are the luckiest girl in the world. He can make you feel that way too.

I thought I had made my break for freedom. To be honest, I'd kind of forgotten about Diana, although I was aware of her troubles.

And then came the tragedy. And I felt it in my own body, my flesh and bones.

This is what happens to "bad girls" who leave their partners.

RIP, sweet Diana. I'll never forget crying for you, crying for me, crying for all the emotionally and / or physically abused women throughout history.

Whatever form it takes, and that she is at peace, happy, and loved as she deserved to be in this life.

My story DID have a happy ending. My current partner and I have a respectful love between us.

I know that for MANY MANY others, it doesn't turn out that way.

that the heir to the throne HAD to marry a virgin.

Otherwise he'd have just married Camilla in the first place.

In a sense, Diana ended up being the world's last sacrificial virgin.

The conservative sects of the Abrahamic faiths still produce them in great numbers.

I know, because I was one of them.

Or, I came within a hair's breadth of being one, but I managed to escape, although at great cost to myself and a big scandal in my family.

The psychological damage of such an upbringing is something I will always carry with me.

Would you like me to self-delete that post?

Don't worry about it.

I only wanted to make the point that sadly, Diana's story is still one relevant to today.

I'm sorry you and other women are still subjected to those experiences, and wish that all of you will find justice and healing.

It is true that Diana had to pass a virginity test by a gynecologist before the wedding could go forward.
And, the results of it were made public.

It sounds barbaric to us now, but it was required by the royal family at the time.

I'll pm you in a moment with some other context to that poster.

It's hard to imagine having to pass a virginity exam in 1981, but it did happen. Only one member of the couple had to submit to the barbaric scrutiny.

I'm in the UK and to the best of my knowledge no such event occurred.

I've just suggested the scenario to three other people in my household and they laughed at me.

The "virginity exam" is bullshit as most doctors know the hymen breaks long before sex in adolescent girls, especially one who rode horses as Diana did as a child.

It was absolutely NOT required, or administered.

that she was checked by Elizabeth II's ob/gyn.

I really don't remember any news reports of such an event, I've also looked for reliable corroboration and can't find any.

Do you have any reliable sources?

But I remember being really embarrassed for her over the public issue that it became.

I didn't make that up out of thin air, but I will admit that my memory might not be 100% accurate in the details.

Unbelievable that posters here are actually discussing a woman's sexual experience or lack thereof,

Disgusting.

Unless I'm going mad.

This thread is amazing, and not in a good way.

Reading some of the assertions, I feel like I've fallen down a rabbit hole

A virginity test?

The tabloids were sniffing around the subject of her virginity and Diana's uncle made some statement or other but I don't remember any talk of a test.

Most people I knew didn't give a toss.

Do you have a source?

Here's is some further, and more accurate reading, on the issue of Diana's virginity.

BTW, there's also nothing that requires the heir to the throne to marry virgin, which is also covered here.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/04/a-very-different-engagement-the-cult-of-dianas-virginity

I agree with the overall premise of this OP, but some of the comments here are wildly inaccurate.

Certainly there was no such formal dictate, but there did seem to be a social expectation that she not "have a past" - which even as a teen at the time I knew was code for "have any former lovers looking to sell stories to the tabloids".

I distinctly remember some royal commentator being quoted as congratulating Charles on finding "the last non-Catholic virgin in Europe". And there was some male relative (recent reports remind me it was her uncle and that this may have been in response to tabloid reports of Charles receiving overnight female company on the royal train) basically guaranteeing her virginity. Pretty gross.

Than a woman, who by the way was part of British aristocracy herself, being drug off to an obgyn to have her vagina examined to see that the hymen was intact, which is what the other poster was asserting.

Charles was under no obligation to be chaste before marriage himself, but was expected to marry a virgin(I believe that that's been abandoned now, thankfully).

Charles clearly never had any feelings for Diana, the Windsors treated her horribly after the marriage, and to cap it off, when she did divorce, the Windsors vindictively stripped her of the title "Her Royal Highness".

I write in compassion and outrage for what she was subjected to. And I totally agree with the assertions in the article about her death, in some way, being punishment for escaping the royal cage and trying to escape the paparazzi. The Windsors didn't plan it or order it, but it was a product of her wish to live life on her own terms.

Either woman's sexual history was immaterial.

From what I've read, she dated Charles in the early 70's while "on a break" from boyfriend Parker-Bowles, who she was crazy about but he wouldn't commit. When he found out about Charles he got jealous and proposed to her; since Andrew was her "true love" she said yes. By this time Charles was at sea on Navy duty and she wrote him a Dear John letter. She married Andrew and had 2 kids, but he was always a player and never faithful to her. She reconnected with Charles in the late 70's mainly seeking solace over her unhappy marriage. Knowing she would never be consider a suitable wife, she encouraged him to marry Diana.

Her divorce was years later, as Muriel Volestrangler ponted out below.

I thought divorce was the issue rather than virginity these days.

Various royal brides in recent years have been known to have had previous relationships and I can't remember anyone turning a hair.

Granted I don't pay a lot of attention to the monarchy, but your post did surprise me.

So no.

n/t.

until he left to complete military service in 1973. He made no commitment to her, and he asked for none from her.

Camilla married Andrew Parler Bowles in 1973. When Prince Charles married Diana in 1981, Camilla Parker Bowles had already been married for 8 years and was the mother of 2 children.

From what I've heard, the relationship ended because Charles proposed and Camilla was made to feel obligated to turn down his proposal, due to the fact that she had had sex.

But because she had lots of it and wasn't discrete. Further, when he went off she decided she didn't want to wait around.

And that it was common for the royal MEN to continue rampant promiscuity long after entering into marriages intended mainly to produce "an heir and a spare".

The root of all of the problems here was the medieval hypocrisy.

(Not meaning to quarrel with you on this-on the whole structure of the monarchical system.

Had Charles and Camilla been able to marry at that point, what happened to Diana would never have happened.

I'm glad the double standard seems to have been abandoned for Kate and (I assume) for Meghan Markle.

Her family simply wasn't up to the standard of the time required for a future king. Her grandmother bedded Charle's great grandfather.

“Her name was Alice Keppel. When she met the future king she was 29, dazzlingly good-looking, famously witty, and already had a reputation as a woman with a voracious sexual appetite who expected lavish rewards for her favours. ‘Love is all very well,’ she liked to say, ‘but money is better.’

Mrs Keppel became the Prince of Wales’s mistress in 1898 and remained his favourite until his death 12 years later. Throughout his reign, which began in 1901, she liked to say she was the real Queen of England, and that his wife Alexandra was not his soulmate — she was.

But Bertie, as he was known to friends, was far from being the first wealthy man Mrs Keppel seduced for his money. Almost from the day she married the Hon George Keppel, third son of the 7th Earl of Albemarle, and discovered he was not the millionaire she had imagined, Alice was determined to be rich.

She would get money by the only means open to her: the sale of her body to wealthy men. Alice had two children, but her husband was father of neither — the first, Violet, was the daughter of an MP and banker named Ernest Beckett, and the second, Sonia, was almost certainly the child of the King himself.”

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3782534/What-naughty-girl-Former-maid-reveals-Camilla-s-great-granny-Alice-Keppel-famously-seduced-Edward-VII-bedded-men-money.html#ixzz4rU8oxoSi
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

to live with the obligations of a Princess, all the duties and the spotlight on her etc. She wanted to live her own life. Then they went their separate ways. She married and finally he married.

That was a tabloid media creation and obsession. Albeit a deeply demented and misogynistic one at the time.

The issue with Camilla, as I've read it in several books, was her divorce, which was archaic and misogynistic enough. There's no need to perpetuate even worse misogynistic tabloid rumors.

Thanks to your post I actually read people here believe she was "checked" for her "virginity" whatever that actually means, by a physician. Seriously, in this day and age people believe that's just that simple? Hymens are varying and fragile things, as anyone whose ever owned one knows. They aren't any longer protected by keeping a woman on a shelf until its worth comes into play. You know, like in the old days when women were bartering chips designed to link empires, and an assurance that the potential future heir came from its sire. <--- That's where all that insanity actually came from.

I can assure you Great Britain was at least to that extent well within the 20th century at that time. Why check for her "virginity" when a simple pregnancy test would suffice? Think about it.

And Camilla wasn't divorced until years after Charles married Diana, let alone at the time she and Charles were initially involved.

You said he had to marry a "virgin" your words. Stop and actually think about it for just a moment. What you said is archaic, unprovable (on a woman's body, to be clear) , demeaning and not even necessary in the era she was married in. That's what I'm pointing out here. It was faux tabloid blather people bought wholesale because it was scandalous. No actual people near them ever did anything but pooh pooh the claim. There's zero validation of the rumor and a myriad of reasons why it's total bullshit. I provided you but one, which you ignored and deflected on. Whatever.

You're correct about the time frame of the divorce, but that's completely irrelevant here. It has been the formal/informal reasoning as to why they cannot marry now. I shouldn't have added trivia, and only did so since you mention why he didn't marry Camilla. I thought you meant now, not then. She'd married while he was off in the RB Navy or some such. He didn't marry her not because her hymen was breached, but because she moved on. Irrelevant beyond your "otherwise he'd have married her" comment.

Edit to add: what did you mean by "otherwise he'd have married Camilla" then? In context I find myself confused with your reply?

She really won her bid to make a place for herself away from the family that only wanted to use her.

The Tories. The Classical Conservative seeks to protect the Patriarchy with a strong sense of your position in life is never to change.
For the Conservative, what you are born with is your fate.

They read as if Murdoch was paying dozens of people to post anti-Diana screeds.

Endless repetition of the "she courted the press/she should have worn a seatbelt/it was her drunk driver's fault" posts.

They sound WAY too coordinated-there's no way rank-and-file Brits would be THAT overwhelmingly protective of the tabloid press and patriarchy.

... that there's no escape from the thoughtless things that people are willing to post online. Sad.

n/t.

What's wrong with either of those true statements?

I don't believe she was murdered. Horribly hounded, certainly but not murdered.

And she'd probably be here today had she used a seat belt. I believe the survivor body guard put his on at the last minute probably when he realized he was being escorted by reckless drunk driver.

Last edited Sat Sep 2, 2017, 03:25 AM - Edit history (1)

Obviously everybody should wear seatbelts and no one should drive drunk, but it's nowhere near as simple as that. Diana ended up in that car, WITH that drunk driver because the paparazzi were hounding her and the man she loved mercilessly. They were tormenting her because she had not only divorced Charles but was on the verge of marrying an(extremely secular)Muslim.

She died because of a mixture of media greed and media xenophobia.

If the "paps" had left her alone, she'd never have been in that car.

The paps weren't 'tormenting her' because she was or wasn't going to marry a muslim. They were following her because they would receive a mint for a photo of the two of them kissing. He could have been a frigging mormon it wouldn't have mattered. A picture of the kiss was the goal.

Is wrong with either true statement but this was an uncommon person so her death cannot have been caused by such a tragic and common way.

The light of humanity dimmed when it lost her.

some fairly recently.

Also, anyone who reads National Enquirer or watches TMZ feeds the beast that chased Diana to her death.

What is wrong with letting prominent people have private lives where no one cares what they look like without makeup, or what they do in their private lives when they are doing nothing wrong?

That is by far the dumbest post I will read today, and the day hasn't even started yet.

And is said to be a major reason the Queen has professed her preference to bypass Charles and have Williams take over from her.

The Queen is 100% about tradition and the dignity of the monarchy. That's why (for better or worse) she was horrified by Diana's reaction to Charles' affair; she should have been a "good" royal wife and ignored the whole thing like her great-grandmother Queen Alexandra. Tradition holds that Charles is next in line, case closed. Also why she will never abdicate due to old age; it's never been done before.

In addition to the article below...it seems Charles wants Camilla to be queen not consort and that isn't going over well. In addition, nothing would stop a queen from letting a preference be known even if not binding.

“Her majesty is just delighted that Kate has turned out to be such a star for the royal family,” the source said. “After all the scandals of the past, the queen is glad Kate has brought stability to the family.” The biggest scandal the queen is reportedly referring to is Prince Charles, 68, and Camilla‘s, 70, affair while Charles was married to Princess Diana. “When news first broke of Charles and Camila’s affair, the public sided with Dina. But as time went by and the couple tied the knot, the negative publicity died down,” another source told the media outlet. “Now the anniversary of her death has reopened old wounds. The royals knew it would be much talked about, but they never expected so many to speak out about the suffering Di went through…Once again, critics are turning against Charles.”

"It’s for that reason the queen wants to pass the torch directly to Kate and William — and pass over her own son in the process. “Initially, Charles was opposed to the idea of abdicating, saying he had waited his whole life to be king,” an alleged high-level courtier told the mag. “But he is coming around to the idea. In a funny way, stepping aside could make Charles incredibly popular. People would regain their respect for him.” Either way though, the mag insists Kate is most likely in the early stages of pregnancy, and that the palace will be making an announcement soon."

http://hollywoodlife.com/2017/08/30/kate-middleton-baby-pregnant-3rd-child-next-queen-prince-william/

And then there is this...

“However, as Royal Central points out, the British Parliament does have a say in who succeeds the monarch under a doctrine known as 'Parliamentary supremacy'. "It is, therefore, not the Queen who determines who succeeds her but Parliament," the site explains, although this would inevitably cast doubt over the succession line altogether.”

http://www.redbookmag.com/life/news/a50343/royal-heir-things-to-know/

preference for William over Charles.

The link you posted was to a gossip site. The Queen is about tradition. The abdication of her uncle is still in the country's consciousness - and the Windsors' - so she will never express any preference.

It would be de-stabilizing to the monarchy.

So we'll see. And frankly, I don't agree that this would be destabilizing to the monarchy. Don't forget, the last abdication was viewed, in private at least, as an escape from what could potentially be a huge problem, that of his clearly fascist leaning.

as opposed to musings on what the Queen's thought process on succession would be.

The abdication was a stain on the tradition of the monarchy, as well as traumatic for the Queen's family - the Queen mother expressed that the abdication contributed to the bad health and subsequent death of her husband George VI. She never forgave the Duke of Windsor for that.

and the Queen Mother, especially never forgave him for that. But times have changed and so has the Queen. We shall see what we shall see. While not privy to the confidences of the Queen it's easy to see that William and his family would be a better fit than Charles especially if he's going to insist she be made queen after he said he wouldn't press that matter. And yes the monarchy has never been one for convenience, but its popularity has been an issue for quite a while and that is taken extremely seriously.

I don't think the Queen gets to pick her successor, even if she wants to.

A bunch of baseless, tinfoil nonsense pushed by Fayed's daddy, which has been debunked endlessly.

She was in a car, driven by a drunk guy, who was ordered by her boyfriend to go 75 on 35 mph street through a tunnel with concrete supports, which he plowed into - while she refused to wear a seatbelt. You do the math.

Elvis, Diana, Cobain - sometimes, beautiful, famous people die young, as a result of their own choices. Society is so immature, they cant accept it, and build idiotic conspiracy fanfics to try to explain it.

A bunch of baseless, tinfoil nonsense pushed by Fayed's daddy, which has been debunked endlessly.

Beyond that, okay: everyone who has ever bought one of those stupid carrot IQ-level celebrity rags at the supermarket checkout aisle- there, you're responsible.

to the list? You are quite correct in stating the role of the people who consume "celebrity gossip" to the list of the killers.

Are you serious???

Too funny.

I'll assume you have special knowledge on this as a person who may be Welsh(or at least a Gwynno fan), so would you mind telling us what that poster has wrong?

Your facts were totally correct.

Those kids used a "patty cake" chant to help them remember what happened to each Tudor spouse:

"divorced, beheaded, died...divorced, beheaded, survived."

They'd be chanting this on the playground, from what I've heard.

Diana spoke to a market, but it wasn't predominantly male. Absent the commercial motive, there wouldn't have been any funds to pay the "hunters."

But as has also been noted, even then, she could have protected herself by fastening her seatbelt. Her death was almost as stupid as it was sad.

I wasn't a fan of hers (one of the few, apparently . I thought she brought most of the mess of her life on herself (jmho).

But if I were in a limo (or limo type car with a driver) - I might forget my seatbelt, too. I always (always) wear one when I'm driving or with someone. But I can see how it might not happen in that situation.

I don't know any guys who followed any of that crap, before or after she died, and I myself couldn't care less about anything having to do with "royals."

that people who think they are driven someplace by a chauffeur or in a limousine think they are exempt from the laws of physics.

And tabloids always CREATE the demand for their wares. People buy them because the tabs have methods to make people want to buy them.

...Life in the Fast Lane. But, I do see how she could represent a silly role for women. The whole "Princess" thing bothered me... I only liked her a bit when they removed her "title". I never appreciated the royals. Her kids could memorialize her by ending the royal thing.

We fought a war, that my ancestors participated in, so I could not give a shit. Not that their bravery reflects on me at all. But their sentiment does.

Why do any of us care that a privileged white woman in Britain died in some crazy adultery driven drama? You know how many regular women of al color die unnecessarily in this country?

I never understood the fascination with their marriage, their divorce, or her death.

I have always felt that giving a shit about any of the royal family stuff is an insult to our founding fathers and mothers.

If the British want to be subjects not citizens that is their business, but I'll be damned if I consider anyone my better. I'll take the French way in the day. Because they learned it from us.

Have a nice evening.

but I somehow strangely feel the desire to comment on it.

You are quite correct on the "adultery driven drama" part, in my opinion. I guess that people who don't have lives have to live vicariously through the lives of people they see in the media.

The day that the National Enquirer, People magazine, and TMZ all go away is a great one for humanity, but sadly, it's not going to happen in my lifetime, maybe not in yours, either. People with empty lives need to fill them with something that passes for meaning, even if it's only an illusion.

DIVORCED, so the "crazy adultery-driven drama" is pure bs.



and, since you so clearly don't give a ****, it fascinates me that you actually took the time for reading it and responding.

Fayeds neglected her.
The royal family.
Her family.
She made some bad decisions.
No " murder" involved.

Maybe the stupidest thing I've ever read.

Also a complete 180 flip by the U.K. media who went in less than 24 hours from calling her a crazy sex fiend to calling her the nations sweetheart. It was a bizarre time.

"Germaine Greer blasts Princess Diana: 'Worst f*ck in the country'"

"The Australian star replied: “I expect not actually, but it’s interesting to think would we still like her if she was 56? And I think we probably wouldn’t, we didn’t even like the Queen when she was 56.

“We don’t like middle-aged women very much. How would Diana have middle-aged?”

Germaine continued to make a jibe about Diana’s love life, adding: “I mean, what would the tally be of the men who had dumped her by that stage? It would be 40 or 50 probably. Worst f**k in the country, by all accounts.”"

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/germaine-greer-blasts-princess-diana-worst-fck-country-102729106.html

that's what killed her.

literally running for their lives? right, got it. and perhaps you could have actually read the article, because it wasn't about seat belts.

It sucks.. but if she had her seat belt on and she didn't get into a car with a very drunk driver, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

completely missing the point.

of not wearing a seatbelt and being a passenger in a vehicle where the driver is intoxicated.