Diana, Dodi and Hasnat

Hello! Magazine reports that Princess Diana's former boyfriend Hasnat Khan testified at the inquiry the other day via a statement that Diana broke up with him not the other way around as been reported in various biographies since her death. He insists that she came back from her first vacation with Dodi and the Fayeds and told him that it was over. I wonder what Tina Brown makes of all of this? As the most recent biographer of the Princess of Wales, she stated that she had it from reliable sources that it was the other way around. I presume that his statement must have been taken under oath, so he would have no reason to lie.




"I think Diana finally realised that (he) could give her all the things I could not," wrote the doctor. "He had money and could provide the necessary security."



Hasnat added: "She wanted to be with someone who was happy to be seen with her in public and she could do that with Dodi."



Hasnat and the Princess met in 1995 when she went to visit the hospital where he worked. After accepting an invitation to go for a meal at his uncle's home, the relationship turned into a love-affair. "After this our friendship turned into a relationship. We had a normal sexual relationship," he said. Diana would sneak into the hospital and watch him perform surgeries, sitting up in the gallery (the way the surgeons do on Grey's Anatomy).

According to his testimony, Princess Diana loved to do "everyday things" that we ordinary people take for granted, like going out to pubs. During their relationship, they discussed marriage, and Diana told him that she desperately wanted to have a daughter. "Emotionally she felt she was still young," wrote Hasnat. "She wanted a husband to be there for her, to have a normal relationship with him."



I wonder why Diana told her friends that Hasnat had broken up with her? Was this another case of Diana playing the victim of her circumstances? Sort of "Oh poor me, I can't find a man because I'm a Princess?" And if she did break up with Hasnat, the man who was apparently the love of her life, then I have a feeling that she was trying to make him jealous with her relationship with Dodi Fayed. Hoping probably that he would propose to her if he thought that he was losing her. That he would get over his feeling that he would be nothing more than an appendage, that her life would get in the way of her career.



Dodi must have seemed so attractive after a workaholic like Hasnat Khan. Dodi was rich and dabbled in a career as a film producer. We know that Diana loved all the glitz and glamor of Hollywood and film stars. After all didn't Kevin Costner claim that they had talked about doing a sequel to The Bodyguard with Diana in the starring role? (Does anyone else find that idea as horrific as I do? A real actress, it might work, a real Princess, no way. Not that Queen Elizabeth wouldn't have nipped that idea in the bud real quick). Plus Dodi had plenty of money from his daddy, Mohammed, who would have had no problem opening up the purse strings for his son's relationship with a member of the Royal Family.




Still I doubt that the relationship would have lasted much longer. Despite Dodi's money and attentiveness, I have a feeling that after awhile, Diana would have looked again for a man with substance like Hasnat Khan. I think what she really wanted was someone like Prince Charles, but who would have lavished attention on her. All her life it seemed that she swung between men who lavished affection on her who were lightweights like Dodi and James Hewitt, and strong men who had lives like Oliver Hoare, Hasnat Khan, Prince Charles, men who she could look up to but who weren't about to change their lives for her.




What's really sad is that both Charles and Diana had both been starved of affection from their parents as children and seemed to be seeking it from their partners. Charles found it with Camilla, and briefly with Diana during their courtship days, but I don't think either one of them knew how to heal the wounds from their childhoods.



Thanks for reading,

EKM

In Remembrance - Princess Diana

Today marks 10 years ago that Princess Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris with Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul. The past few weeks have seen a flurry of Diana related programs, including the rebroadcast of the Martin Bashir interview (which I had to watch for work), and several Princess Diana movies, incuding one really bad one on Lifetime.

My first ever trip to London was the summer that Lady Diana Spencer married Prince Charles and I have been fascinated with her ever since. She was only 2 1/2 years older than me, and I had a hard time wrapping my mind around someone that young taking on the responsibility of being married and becoming a member of the Royal Family. After all, my most pressing concern that summer at 16 was the crush that I had on one our tour guides, Malcolm (who looked like a Jewish Paul Macartney), listening to Duran Duran, touring England and Scotland, and trying to decide what colleges I wanted to apply too.

I watched the Royal Wedding on the telly at the home of a friend, waving my British flag in solidarity. The next day when we arrived in Edinburgh, stores already had a copy of her wedding dress in the window! I brought piles of books on the Royal Wedding and Charles and Diana.

Three years later, I was doing my semester abroad my junior year of college. No sooner had I arrived in London, then Princess Diana gave birth to Prince Harry. I skipped class one day to go to the State Opening of Parliament where I managed to get a front row viewing spot to see her arrive in one of the coaches with her hair pinned up with a tiara.

Back in the States, I still kept up with my royal watching. I eagerly bought Andrew Morton's book, although by that time, although I was still a fan, I knew that the truth of their marriage lay somewhere between He Said/She Said. I went round to Christies to see the dresses that she was auctioning off for Charity.

That final summer that she was alive, I was again in London studying acting at the Royal National Theater studio. The tabloids were full of her vacations with Dodi Fayed. I'd already had another royal encounter when Princess Margaret was sitting two rows in front of me at the Royal National, and I'd passed her by on my way out of the theater while she was waiting for her car.

I had the impression that the whole Dodi thing was just a summer fling, something to pass the time while her sons were away with her father. Who hasn't found themselves involved in a relationship they might not ordinarily have considered out of sheer loneliness? I flew back to the States the week before she was killed.

I remember vividly sitting up in bed watching Saturday Night Live with ex-sweetie pie when the news hit, and how annoyed he was with me when I switched over to CNN. It was hard for me to believe that she was dead, and that her death could have been prevented so easily (she wasn't wearing a seat belt, she didn't listen to the security concerns of the Fayed security team, she and Dodi could easily have stayed at the hotel all night).

I watched the funeral at my apartment (it started at 5 a.m. NY time and I knew that ex-sweetie pie was nto going to watch it with me). Looking at the Princes walking behind their mother's coffin, along with Prince Charles and Prince Phillip and Earl Spencer is an image that will always stay with me with.

Her image and her life still continues to fascinate people even now 10 years after her death. Magazines still sell thousands of copies if her picture is on the cover. What is it about her that still fascinates people? I think it's her vulnerability, her very humaness, her kindness and her compassion. Even though she was a princess, she still somehow seemed at once both like us, and unlike us. Not even being a princess can keep you from suffering and being bulimic.

I don't believe that there was a conspiracy to kill her to get her out of the way so that Charles could marry Camilla. There are too many variables that contradict that theory (for one, who knew that Henri Paul would have been so drunk?).

My hope is that she's finally at peace, and that she's proud of the men that her son's have become.

Thanks for reading,

EKM