Word: diana
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...ancient Greek mythology, Diana was a patroness of virgins and goddess of the hunt, and any man who trespassed upon her privacy was likely to be punished by death. In our less supernal era, Princess Diana had been a virgin cynically used by the so-called "royal family" of Britain, of whom her husband Prince Charles was the most manipulative. And she was the one to be hunted, both symbolically and with a terrifying literalness, to her death. If Diana had possessed any flickering consciousness in these last minutes of her life, it would have been of those human jackals...
...courting the tabloid media, not only bring her fate upon herself, but deserve it? So commentators have begun to speculate, with that instinct for blaming the victim that characterizes the most puritanical sense of justice. By refusing to live a lie for the sake of patriarchal order, Princess Diana exposed the hypocrisy of the Establishment to the glare of commoners. She did not, or could not, play the role of Prince Charles' wife, but chose rather to live by the truth. And the bad luck, the repeated "poor judgment" of the princess in choosing lovers--isn't this...
...fact, the hunt that resulted in Princess Diana's death began almost 20 years ago. When Diana was in her late teens, and Prince Charles was turning 30, royal courtiers were casting about for a worthy (i.e., unsullied, virginal) bride for the heir to the throne. It would not matter, evidently, that these courtiers, like the members of the royal family, knew of Charles' semisecret relationship with the married woman Camilla Parker Bowles. The princess-to-be was required to be virginal in every sense--to be ignorant of the very conditions of her marriage. With the cruel logic...
...drama in the princess's life had exclusively to do, it seems, with her often desperate search for love. This hope to be loved is in fact a wish to be loved for "what I am." Yet for one of Diana's status, to be loved would be as difficult as manning a canoe through treacherous whitewater rapids; for most people, paddling in calmer waters, with no distractions, no temptations, no ravenous paparazzi, no billionaire playboys pressing $205,000 diamond rings into our hands, this quest for love is not nearly so difficult. The paradox of the celebrity's quest...
...said to have left her heartbroken. Following Hewitt was an equally disastrous relationship with James Gilbey, which ended in scandal when a tabloid publication printed a tape of a private phone call between them. Then came a rugby captain, Will Carling, and then a prominent businessman, Christopher Whalley. Next, Diana was said by the tabloids to have fallen in love with a Pakistani-born heart surgeon, Hasnat Khan, whom she reportedly hoped to marry; except the intensity of public scrutiny may have been too much for Dr. Khan...