Circumstances at the time
Reader comment on item: Diana and Arab Conspiracy

Submitted by Monty (United Kingdom), Sep 1, 2007 at 10:05

I would like to examine the background of the people concerned at the time of the accident. Join me, if you will, for a stroll down memory lane. Al Fayyed senior was hardly respectable; dubbed the phoney Pharaoh, he was soundly lampooned in every edition of Private Eye. Much was made of his inability to qualify for a British passport, and the many seedy tales of his exploits with young women in his employ. In all, he was regarded as a rather base unwholesome character.

The son was almost unknown, but generally regarded as a wastrel and playboy with no real direction in life. Diana's reputation was riding high, but would have been sullied by any formal association with that family. Furthermore, she had only known Fayyed junior for a very short time, so rumours of a serious romance between the two are somewhat implausible. The precipitous break-off of Dodi Fayyeds longterm engagement to a US model may fave fuelled the post-mortem speculation of an engagement, but had they lived, the opportunist nature of that prior disengagement would have provided tabloid fodder of a most unsavoury kind for both Diana and Dodi. She had already gained a track record for marriage wrecking in the UK.

Taking all that together, had the Royal family wished her ill, they needed only to stand back and let her destroy her own image. Her main constituency in the UK would have turned away, especially if she was percieved to remarry out of spite against her in-laws, and any profession of islam by Diana would have sunk her. Instead, they died and became martyrs. Al Fayyed gained, as the onslaught from the British tabloids was tempered by the need to take his bereavement into consideration. His only fear was the risk of public blame for the lack of care that led to the crash. But I doubt whether any negligence on his part contributed greatly to the outcome. No passenger gets into a car with a driver who is obviously incapacitated by drink. But the idea that any subsequent marriage of Diana would have brought unwelcome third parties, islamic or not, into a position of influence over the two young princes is risible. The house of Windsor is famously impenetrable to outsiders, and averse to controversial characters. Even dead ones.

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