Princess Diana’s Final Night Revisited as FOX Recreates the Paris Crash Nearly 30 Years Later

0:03 Calorogus Shark Media. Yeah, hello and welcome to Palace Intrigue. I am your host, Mark Francis. Princess Diana's death is getting another television examination, this time using virtual recreation technology to revisit the fatal nineteen ninety seven crash in Paris. Fox will air celebrity crime Scene Princess Diana on Thursday, with the special becoming available on Hulu the following day. The program will reconstruct the crash that killed Diana, Dirty Fayed and driver on repall while examining some of the theories that have persisted in nearly three decades since. Investigators Kerry Dane's Rich Star Pauli and Jackson Bujaj will look at questions surrounding unidentified vehicles reported near the pontd' alma tunnel, as well as much more controversial claims involving the monarchy and international arms dealers. The program promises to use virtual technology to recreate the events surrounding the crash from perspectives viewers have not previously been able to see, including an attempt to depict what Diana might have seen from inside the Mercedes. For anyone old enough to remember the summer of nineteen ninety seven. The announcement that Diana had died is one of those pieces of news where you may still remember exactly where you were when you heard it.

1:20 Diana was thirty six years old, divorced from Prince Charles for almost exactly a year, and trying to establish what the next stage of her life was going to look like. She was no longer her Royal Highness, she was no longer a working member of the royal family, but she was still the mother of Prince William and Prince Harran, quite possibly the most photographed woman in the world that summer, much of the attention had focused on Diana's relationship with Dodi Fayed, the son of Harod's owner, Muhammed al Fayed. Diana had been photographed with Dody aboard the Fayed family yacht in the Mediterranean, and the images had become a major tabloid story. Wherever Diana went, photographers followed, and by the final weekend of August, that pursuit had moved with her to Paris. Diana and Dody arrived in the French capital on Saturday, August thirtieth, after flying in from Sardinia.

2:09 They went to the Ritz Paris, which was owned by Dody's father, and initially planned to go elsewhere for dinner. The presence of photographers made moving round the city increasingly difficult, than they ultimately remained at the hotel. Later that night, Diana and Dody decided to leave the Writs and traveled to an apartment Dody maintained near the Arc de Triomphe. An effort was made to confuse the photographers waiting outside. A decoy vehicle left from the front of the hotel while Diana and Dody departed from another exit. Shortly after midnight, they left in a Mercedes Bends driven by Onrepall, the Ritz's acting head of security. That night, bodyguard Trevorice Jones sat in the front passenger seat, with Diana and Dody in the back. Photographers followed the Mercedes as it moved through Paris, and within minutes the car entered the Pont Dielma tunnel and crashed into a concrete pillar. The impact killed Henri Paul and Dirty Fayad Rhys. Jones survived despite suffering extremely serious injuries. Diana was alive when emergency workers reached her. That detail is sometimes lost in the way the story has been remembered. Diana did not die instantly in the tunnel. French emergency crews treated her at the scene and then transported her to the Petite Salpetriere hospital, where doctors continued trying to save her. Her injuries were ultimately too severe. Diana was pronounced Dan in the early hours of Sunday, August thirty first. She was thirty six years old. Back in Britain, the royal family was at Balmoral for the traditional summer holiday. Prince William was fifteen

3:39 and Prince Harry was twelve. Their father now faced the unimaginable task of telling them that their mother had been killed. For the family at Balmoral, those first hours were understandably about William and Harry. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were grandparents trying to protect two children who had just suffered an enormous loss. Charles was deal with the death of his former wife and the mother of his sons. The news spread around the world within hours, Television schedules were abandoned, Broadcasters went into continuous coverage, and people began gathering outside Kensington Palace, Diana's London home. Flowers appeared at the gates followed by more flowers, photographs, cards, and handwritten messages. The scale of it became difficult to comprehend. Diana had spent sixteen years as part of the public consciousness. People had watched her arrive as the shy Lady Diana Spencer, watched the engagement to Prince Charles, watched the enormous wedding at Saint Paul's Cathedral, and watched William and Harry grow up.

4:39 They had also watched the marriage deteriorate in public, followed by the separation, the interviews, the competing biographies, and finally the divorce. Even after leaving the royal family, Diana remained one of the most famous people on the planet. In some ways, she had become even more fascinating because nobody quite knew what she was going to do next, and suddenly there was no next more palace in just a moment. The public response to Diana's death became so intense it also created one of the most difficult weeks in the modern history of the monarchy. The royal family remained at Balmoral with William and Harry, while the center of public mourning was increasingly concentrated in London. From the perspective of a family protecting grieving children staying in Scotland made sense.

5:30 From the perspective of television cameras showing enormous crowds outside Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace, it began to look like the Royal family was absent. The controversy over the flag at Buckingham Palace became symbolic of the larger problem. People wanted to know why a flag wasn't flying at half mast. Royal protocol provided a perfectly logical explanation. The Royal Standard traditionally flies when the sovereign is in residence and is not lowered to half mast because the monarchy continues from one sovereign to the next. The Queen wasn't at Buckingham Palace anyway, so the Royal Standard wasn't flying. Technically, the explanation made sense. Emotionally, it didn't matter. Britain was experiencing something much closer to mass public grief than a traditional royal mourning period, and the Palace initially responded according to the established protocol rather than the mood developing outside its gates.

6:25 Tony Blair, who had become Prime Minister only a few months earlier understood that mood remarkably quick. Speaking on the morning of Diana's death, he described her as the people's princess. It became the phrase of the week because it explained the strange position Diana occupied at the time of her death. She was no longer a working royal and no longer married to the heir to the throne, yet the public still regarded her as part of the royal story. Whatever the constitutional or institutional reality might have been, emotionally, Diana still belonged to them. As the days passedaticism of the royal family intensified. Newspapers demanded a more visible response. Crowds continued arriving, the sea of flowers grew. What had begun as grief was becoming a debate about whether the monarchy understood the people it represented. Eventually, the royal family returned to London, and on September fifth, Queen Elizabeth delivered one of the most unusual broadcasts of her reign. Speaking live from Buckingham Palace, the Queen addressed the country and paid tribute to Diana. Significantly, she framed her remarks not only from the perspective of the sovereign, but from that of a grandmother whose grandchildren had lost their mother. The following day came the funeral, William and Harry walked behind Diana's coffin, alongside Prince Charles, Prince Philip, and Dana's brother, Charles Spencer.

7:44 It remained one of the defining royal images of the twentieth century, a fifteen year old boy and his twelve year old brother walking through London behind their mother's coffin while an enormous television audience watched. Harry has since spoken about how extraordinary it was to expect children to make that walk in public, and it is difficult to look at those pictures now without seeing the event differently than many people did in nineteen ninety seven. At the time, the procession was viewed as an extraordinary display of royal composure. With the benefit of everything William and Harry have subsequently said about losing their mother, it also looks like two grieving children being asked to participate in one of the largest public spectacles imaginable. The circumstances of Diana's death would of course become the subject of years of investigation and speculation.

8:30 Questions about the paparazzi, the speed of the Mercedes on repall seat belts and other vehicles reportedly in the area eventually became intertwined with much larger conspiracy theories suggesting Diana had been deliberately killed. Those allegations were investigated extensively. French authorities conducted the original investigation, and British authorities later launched Operation Pegette specifically to examine the conspiracy claims surrounding Diana's death. The British inquest concluded in two thousand and eight, with the jury finding that Diana and Dirty had been unlawfully killed through the grossly negligent driving of Henri Paul and the pursuing paparazzi. The official investigations did not substantiate the elaborate assassination theories that continued to circulate, and that is worth remembering. As a new television program once again takes viewers inside the Pont deale materunneal, the largest story of August thirty first may actually be more interesting than any conspiracy theory. Diana's death changed the relationship between the monarchy and the public because it demonstrated that old royal instinct to remain quiet observed protocol and allow emotions to remain private was becoming increasingly difficult in a twenty four hour media culture. It also permanently changed William and Harry. William is now Prince of Wales, holding the title his father held when Diana was alive, and he has repeatedly spoken about keeping his mother's memory alive for his own children.

9:54 Harry has made Diana's death, and particularly his belief that an aggressive tabloid culture contributed to the circumstances surrounding it, central to the way he explains many of the decisions he has made as an adult. The monarchy that woke up on August thirty first, nineteen ninety seven was not quite the same monarchy that emerged from Diana's funeral a week later. The public had demonstrated that it expected something different from its royal family, not simply duty and dignity, but visibility, responsiveness, and at moments of national emotion, some evidence that the people inside the palace were feeling what everyone outside the gates was feeling. And then you habit by Mike Francis My thanks to John McDermott, This is palace intrigue.