May 10, 2026

4. Diana's Death

Show Notes
Transcript

Diana dies in a Paris tunnel, fleeing paparazzi with her new boyfriend Dodi Fayed. Charles flies to Paris to bring her body home. He must tell William and Harry their mother is dead. The nation's grief is overwhelming, the anger at the royal family palpable. Charles walks behind Diana's coffin with his traumatized sons. His guilt about the failed marriage will haunt him forever. The ghost of Diana will shape everything that follows.

While no one truly knows what happens behind closed palace doors, this series uses news sources, on-the-record quotes, and some artistic license to craft this entertainment series. Some moments have been dramatized for storytelling effect. AI narration was used in creation of this series.

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Calaroga Shark Media. The summer of nineteen ninety seven was,

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by most visible measures, a good one for Diana. She

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was thirty six years old, and, according to those who

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knew her, lighter than she had been in years. The

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humanitarian work was going well. Her land mine campaign had

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taken her to Angola and Bosnia, where photographs of her

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walking through minefields in body armor had circled the globe

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and applied real pressure on governments to act. She was

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planning further campaigns. She had purpose and she had freedom,

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and for perhaps the first time in her adult life,

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those two things existed simultaneously. She had also that summer

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begun spending time with Dodi Fayed, the son of the

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Egyptian businessman Mohammed al Fayed, who owned the Ritz hotel

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in Paris and the Harrod's department store in London. Dodie

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was charming and attentive, and the two had known each

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other socially for some time before their relationship deepened. In

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the summer of nineteen ninety seven. Photographs of them together

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on a yacht in the Mediterranean were published around the world.

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Diana appeared relaxed and genuinely happy. The press speculated endlessly

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about the seriousness of the relationship. Diana did not comment publicly.

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What the photographs also showed was the relentless nature of

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the paparazzi pursuit that had defined her life since she

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was nineteen years old. Photographers in speedboats, cameras with long

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lenses trained on private moments aboard a private vessel, the

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machinery of celebrity surveillance that had followed her across two

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decades showed no sign of slowing. If anything, the new

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relationship had intensified it. Late August, Diana and Dodi were

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in Paris. They had been staying at the Ritz, owned

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by Dody's father, which offered a degree of privacy that

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hotels without that connection could not provide. On the evening

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of August thirtieth, they had dinner at the hotel, outside,

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photographers gathered. Their movements were being closely followed by photographers

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as the evening wore on. Shortly after midnight on August

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thirty first, Diana and Dody left the Ritz through a

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rear entrance in an attempt to avoid the waiting photographers.

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They were accompanied by a bodyguard and driven by Henry Paul.

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The hotel's deputy head of security, who had agreed to

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drive them that evening. A second car was used as

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a decoy at the front of the hotel. The Mercedes

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carrying Diana and Dodi entered the Pondillalma tunnel at high speed.

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A subsequent French investigation found that Henry Paul had been

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drinking and that his blood alcohol level was significantly above

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the legal limit. Investigations later concluded that a combination of factors,

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including speed and driver impairment, contributed to the crash while

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photographers were following the vehicle that night. Official investigations did

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not find them solely responsible for what happened inside that tunnel.

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Inside the tunnel, the car struck a pillar and then

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a wall. The impact was catastrophic. Dodi fayed and Henry

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Paul died at the scene. Trevor Rhyse Jones, the bodyguard

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in the front seat, survived with serious injuries. He was

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the only occupant wearing a seat belt. Diana was alive

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when emergency services reached her, but critically injured. She was

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treated at the scene for an extended period before being

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transported to the Pitty Salpetriere Hospital in Paris. Surgeons worked

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to save her life for several hours. At four minutes

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past four in the morning Paris time, Diana, Princess of

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Wales was pronounced dead. She was thirty six years old.

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This is Crown and Controversy. King Charles Episode four Diana's death.

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At Balmoral Castle in the Scottish Highlands, where the royal

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family was spending their summer, Charles was woken in the

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early hours of the morning with news from Paris. The reports,

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at first were incomplete. Diana had been in an accident.

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The situation was serious, and then as the hours passed

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and the calls continued, the situation became something far worse

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than serious. By most accounts, Charles was deeply shaken. Whatever

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the complexity of their relationship, whatever the pain of the

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years between them, Diana had been the mother of his children,

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and she had been young, and she had been alive

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only hours before, and now she was not. But before

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he could process any of that, he had to do

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something that no parents should ever have to do. He

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had to wake his sons and tell them that their

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mother was dead. William was fifteen, Harry was twelve. What

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was said in those rooms at bal morrel in the

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early hours of August thirty first has never been fully reported.

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It is one of the genuine private moments of this

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very public story, shielded even from the accounts and biographies

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and documentaries that have dissected almost everything else. What is

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known is that both boys were devastated. What is known

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is that Harry, by his own later account, did not

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fully cry in those first hours, a response he has

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since described as a kind of shock that would take

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years to work through. What is known is that the

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world they woke up to that morning was permanently and

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irreversibly different from the one they had gone to sleep in.

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Charles flew to Paris that day to accompany Diana's body home.

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He traveled with Diana's two sisters, Lady Sarah mccukwdale and

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Lady Jane Fellows. The decision for Charles to go personally

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to be the one to bring her back was both

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a human response and a considered one. It was widely

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seen as an acknowledgment of everything that had passed between them,

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and of what despite everything, he still owed her memory.

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The body was flown back to Britain and taken to

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the Chapel Royal at Saint James's Palace, and then in

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the days that followed, something unexpected happened, something that caught

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the palace entirely off guard and would come to define

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the immediate aftermath of Diana's death as much as the

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death itself. The British public began to grieve in a

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way that the country had not seen before and has

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not quite seen since. Flowers appeared outside Kensington Palace within

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hours of the news breaking. By the end of the

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first day, there were thousands of bouquets. By the end

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of the week, the sea of flowers stretched for hundreds

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of yards, a vast improvised memorial that grew larger with

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every passing hour. People came from across the country and

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from abroad. They stood in silence, or they wept openly,

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or they left notes, handwritten messages addressed to a woman

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they had never met but felt they knew. The scent

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of the flowers hung over the whole area. The royal

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family remained at Balmoral. This was standard practice. The family

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retreated in times of private grief, and grief was considered

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within the institution to be a private matter. The flag

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above Buckingham Palace flew at its standard position, because Royal

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protocol at the time did not call for it to

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be lowered for anyone other than the sovereign. The public

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did not understand this, or rather, the public understood it

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and rejected it. The absence of the royal family from London,

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the absence of a flag at half mast, the apparent

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silence from the Institution while the nation, convulsed with grief,

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began to harden into something that looked from the outside

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very much like anger. Newspapers ran front pages demanding to

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know where the Queen was, Where was the flag, Where

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was the acknowledgment of what had been lost? Letters poured

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in phone lines were overwhelmed. The mood outside Buckingham Palace,

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where more flowers continued to arrive, shifted from mourning to

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something sharper. The Palace, by most accounts, was slow to

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read the severity of what was happening. It had procedures

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for these situations. Those procedures were being followed. What it

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had not fully accounted for was that Diana had not

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been an ordinary member of the royal family. In the

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public's understanding. She had been something else, entirely, something the

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institution had never quite known how to categorize, and her

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death had released a wave of public feeling that the

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institution's normal procedures were not designed to absorb. It was,

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according to those close to the events, Prime Minister Tony

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Blair's team that helped communicate to the Palace the urgency

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of the situation. Blair had spoken publicly within hours of

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Diana's death, calling her the People's Princess, in remarks that

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captured the national mood with a precision the Palace had

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not managed. His team understood that the public needed to

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see something from the institution, some acknowledgment, some visible grief.

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The Queen returned to London, she made a live television address,

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a rare and significant act from a monarch who had

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always kept the camera at a careful distance from her privateself.

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She spoke about Diana with warmth and care, in a

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rare break from royal protocol. The flag above Buckingham Palace

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was lowered to half mast, a gesture that carried enormous

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symbolic weight, precisely because it was so unusual. The public responded.

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The anger did not disappear entirely, but it softened. The

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institution had, at the last possible moment shown that it

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understood what had been lost. On September sixth, nineteen ninety seven,

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Diana's funeral was held at Westminster Abbey. Two billion people

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around the world watched the broadcast. The streets of London

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were lined with mourners who had traveled from across Britain

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and beyond. The coffin was carried on a gun carriage

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through the city, draped with the Royal standard and topped

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with white flowers and a card in Harry's handwriting addressed

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to his mother. Charles walked behind the coffin. Beside him

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were Philip, William, Harry, and Diana's brother, Charles Spencer. The

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walk was long, and the cameras were everywhere, and the

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grief of the crowd pressed in from both sides. William

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was fifteen years old, and he walked the whole way

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with a composure that seemed almost impossible for a boy

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his age. Harry walked beside him, head down. It was,

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by any measure, one of the most watched and most

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devastating public moments of the late twentieth century. Charles walked

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that route carrying a sense of guilt that many believed

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would not lift for a very long time, The awareness

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that the public, at least in part, held him responsible

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for the unhappiness that had defined Diana's royal years. The

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knowledge that his sons had lost their mother, and that

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no amount of duty or discipline or institutional procedure could

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fix that or make it less. He had waited his

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entire life to become king. He had not imagined that

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the path there would run through this. Next time. On

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Crown and Controversy, King Charles, the nation's grief slowly gives

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way to a new question. Can Charles ever rehabilitate his image?

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Can Camilla ever become acceptable to a British public that

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still mourns Diana? The answer will take years, a carefully

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managed campaign, and a very quiet wedding in a Windsor guildhall.

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Crown and Controversy is a production of Calaroga Shark Media

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executive producers Mark Francis and John McDermott. While no one

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truly knows what happens behind closed palace door, this series

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00:13:01.440 --> 00:13:05.360
uses news sources, on the record, quotes, and some artistic

185
00:13:05.480 --> 00:13:09.919
license to craft this entertainment series. Some moments have been

186
00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:16.279
dramatized for storytelling effect where appropriate character perspectives and motivations

187
00:13:16.639 --> 00:13:23.039
are drawn from reported accounts, interviews, and biographical sources. AI

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00:13:23.159 --> 00:13:28.720
narration was used in the creation of this series. To

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keep up with the modern day Royal family, follow our

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podcast Pallace Intrigue, a seven day a week, ten minute

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update on the Royals.