Word: diana
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Despite the elder Al Fayed's wealth, prestigious holdings and good works, he has never managed to be accepted into British society. He has lived in England for 20 years, and the four children of his second marriage are all British citizens. He was a friend of Diana's father, the late Lord Spencer, and employs her stepmother Raine, Countess de Chambrun, as a director of Harrods International, the store's duty-free arm. Al Fayed sponsors the Royal Windsor Horse Show, at which he shares the Queen's box. Still, the British government has for years denied his requests...
There have been suggestions in the London press that Al Fayed encouraged his son to court Diana as a way to get back--or, as the Independent put it, "cock a snook"--at the British Establishment. Nothing would have made him happier, some royal watchers contend, than for his son to become stepfather to the future King of England. Dodi and Diana's liaison reportedly began when the elder Al Fayed invited the princess and her two sons to vacation with his family at his villa in St.-Tropez. Adnan Khashoggi told a Saudi newspaper last month, "We welcome Diana...
...Some of Diana's friends, however, believed that Al Fayeds' wealth could do more for the princess than she could do for them. With Al Fayeds' seemingly endless supply of mansions, boats, helicopters and bodyguards, Dodi had the material resources to provide her with the stability and privacy that her life was so lacking in. The elder Al Fayed's decision to auction off the contents of the Windsor villa set off speculation that he was cleaning it out so that Dodi and Di could marry and move in. There would have been rich symbolism in the two of them...
...takes nothing but fate to be born a princess; how much harder it is to become one. Maybe one reason we could not take our eyes or our hearts off Princess Diana was that she made it so easy to claim her as secretly, subversively...
Grace Kelly proved America could dress up, go to the ball and come back with a prince. She left Hollywood and found royalty. Diana crossed the other way, dancing with John Travolta at the White House. She was the next chapter, the princess who insisted, with the innocence of a New World conqueror, that love could be brought into the royal chamber. Hers was another American revolution, which said we don't want to shed this crown, we want to reinvent it. She was an entrepreneur, not content to marry the title but apparently determined to live...