The Murder of Princess Diana

Day 2 of Diana-watch.

Here's another hard truth that people aren't willing to hear: Diana was not as significant as people want to believe. The Lifetime movie, The Murder of Princess Diana, strives to say she was. It adapts the non-fiction book of the same name by Neil Botham into a fictional tale of a female journalist cottoning onto the "conspiracy" surrounding Diana's death. The movie seems to want to say that Diana was a female version of Kennedy.

While the production values are fine, the basic premise is not. While Diana had matured professionally and brought much to the institution of monarchy, there simply wasn't enough time for her to gain the kind of stature this movie asserts she had. Diana remained mostly a pop cultural figure, not a state figure, not even as solidly a humanitarian figure as Mother Theresa was. If she had had enough to time form a relationship with an organization similar to what the Princess Royal has with Save the Children, she might have reached that status. Unfortunately there was no time. Moreover, Diana's reckless disregard for the monarchy as an institution embodied by her in-laws showed that she still had more professional maturing to do.

More tomorrow.