Diana who?

I can hear my father’s question like it was yesterday. “Diana who?”  

I’d called home because at 11:20 at night, I was certain they’d still be up, just finishing watching the weather on the local London, Ontario news before going to bed. I was up too, later than normal because it was Saturday night.  I was watching my Toronto news when the news broke: Diana, Princess of Wales, had died when the car she was in with her new boyfriend was hit by a paparazzo in a tunnel in Paris. It was too late to call anyone else so I called my parents, in tears, and simply said “Diana’s dead!” 

I’ll never know whether dad was playing with me and my fascination with the royals. He’d left England in part to avoid the class-based society that informed his childhood. Although he would have bristled at the notion, my dad was a socialist, and he demonstrated that with all he did.  As a luthier, his post-farming career, he made sure his instruments were priced so those of modest means could afford them. Unless you’re YoYo Ma, life as a musician would never be easy but he knew having a hand-made double bass or cello might make the difference between making it as an orchestral player or not.

But honestly, the royal thing is a life-long one for me.  In the 70s I pestered mom to buy People magazine each time a royal was on the cover.  They didn’t have the same international profile then, or that’s how I remember it.  But once in awhile, one of their number would do something People-cover-worthy.  (Oh, I wish I’d thought to keep those covers.)  

Things really ramped up for us all - and me in particular - when Charles married Diana who was just five years older than I was.  I didn’t analyze this in feminist terms then, and of course, it would be years before we really realized the hell that was Diana’s life.  I was desperate to watch the wedding but TV fell into the broad classification of things “Chandlers didn’t need” so on July 28, 1981, I went to a friend’s house where we camped on the living room floor in front of the wooden console ready to reach up and turn the knob to ‘on’ at 4 a.m. Thankfully, we had a CBC affiliate station in Wingham so the reception was pretty good if the aerial was positioned right.  And we made darned sure that was done before we went to bed just a few hours earlier.  We watched in fascination as this seemingly innocent but glamorous woman became a princess before our eyes. We didn’t know of the controversy that the vows were modernized by removing “obey” although frankly it didn’t matter much. Hers was a marriage characterized by obeying not just her husband but the Firm and the UK press and everyone else who felt inclined to control her. Or so we know now. 

I started the magazine collection then.  Yes, indeed, I have Time magazines from 1981 with Diana and Charles on the cover.  

The next year, my parents took me to the UK to visit relatives. We’d been as a family twice before but this was my time as a sullen teenager. I got dragged reluctantly around the motherland with two notable highlights: I went to the Brixton Reggae Festival in South London with some badass cousins and at the other end of the continuum, an aunt gave me a commemorative royal wedding plate. I don’t remember the festival much - not for the reasons you might think, probably more because the whole experience was just so different from anything I’d experienced before I didn’t have anything to hang those memories on - but I know exactly where my plate is: right there in the china cabinet where, like a true royal follower, I’ve kept it for 40 years. 

   Nine years later, when the wedding was reportedly on the rocks Charles and Diana came to Toronto City Hall. As a young City employee, I jostled colleagues for a position with a good view from the Clerk’s office over Nathan Phillips Square.  We collectively marvelled at the beauty of the stunning pink jacket Diana wore. 

Just a year later, I experienced it firsthand as Londoners reeled from the news that their beloved royal couple could split up.  Yes, royals were allowed to have marital discord and obviously many had affairs, but split up! This was nearly unprecedented. I was on my first solo vacation in London at the time and revelled in the scandal of it all.  

There were other royal weddings over the years. When Will & Kate got hitched in 2011, I watched - of course - but also joined friends for a special royal wedding meal at The Queen Mother Cafe (where else?).   Jack and I watched Harry and Megan say “I do” from our bed - him dozing and wondering what the hell was happening that he as being forced to watch such bullshit and me crying quietly, happy for them and sad for me, since by then Jack was ill although I couldn’t have known he’d die exactly six months later. 

COVID has been made more tolerable by regular donations of Hello Canada magazines from a friend whom I won’t ‘out’ here but who subscribes to this delightful romp through the lives of the endlessly fascinating royals.  

My interest with the Windsors is at odds with my worldview. It doesn’t make one bit of sense that by virtue of birth, some people live a life that is so remarkably different from the majority of people.  It’s messed up. And it messes them up. And it messes a whole bunch of other people up.  Prince Andrew is a good example. And Princess Margaret. And Edward VIII.  These are not nice people.  

So why do I follow them?  I dunno.  It’s like the airshow:  I know I shouldn’t like it but I just do.  Maybe people are interesting because of the pieces that don’t fit - the ways their ideologies are not constrained. 

I took an important step this week, though. Despite the great new material that will doubtless come out because of today, the Elizabeth’s 70th anniversary as Queen, I decided to try to sell my collection of Diana magazines. Any takers?