Now Windsors Must Live Without Diana

They threw her out of the royal circle. They took away her beloved title. Princess Diana still sparkled, undiminished, the brightest gem in the Windsors’ crown.

Without her, more Britons may see the House of Windsor as a collection of cold, unfeeling anachronisms.

“She was banished by the royal family, but she was the star member,” royal biographer Anthony Holden said Sunday, hours after Diana died in a car crash in Paris while fleeing photographers.

After 20-year-old “Shy Di,” as she was dubbed by the tabloids, married into the monarchy and the spotlight, she struggled to make the 1,000-year-old institution relevant to people of the late 20th century.

“She had begun to reinvent the role of the monarchy for the 21st century, starting when she shook hands with an AIDS victim,” Holden said.

Now, the challenge for the family that couldn’t live with her is to try to live without her.

The Windsors could be strengthened by her death because of the enormous outpouring of sympathy, especially for her sons William and Harry, the young princes.

Diana adored her sons, and they reciprocated. William developed a deep mistrust of the media from seeing how his mother was treated.

None of the Windsors have had an easy time of it lately.

Three of the queen’s four children have divorced in the last five years. Their private lives and loves have become daily fodder for the increasingly voracious tabloid press.

More than a year after Charles and Diana’s divorce, their appetite is unsated - and is being blamed for the crash that killed the princess and her beau, Dodi Fayed.

Without Diana, life might be easier for the royal family: She was living on her own and they never knew what tomorrow’s headlines would scream about a new romance or a new campaign.

But opinion on the street outside Kensington Palace, where Diana lived, ran high against the Windsors.

“She was the limelight of the royal family and I think that they could have real difficulty surviving now that she is dead,” said Londoner Derek Campbell.

“I used to be quite a royalist, but not now - because of the way they used Diana,” said Josephine BoegClarke, a retired caterer. “They just used her to produce an heir.”