Tribute To Diana Queen, Called Stodgy By Critics, Gives Address ‘From My Heart’
Queen Elizabeth II heaped praise upon her late former daughter-in-law Princess Diana on Friday night in a virtually unprecedented address palace officials said was the monarch’s first live broadcast in nearly 40 years.
“What I say to you now, as your queen and a grandmother, I say from my heart,” said the queen, hatless and wearing simple street clothes as she stood against a backdrop of mourners milling outside Buckingham Palace.
Friday’s four-minute address by the queen was the royal family’s pointed response to heavy criticism leveled at it by Britons for the family’s seeming coldness and indifference toward the death of Diana, who was killed in a Paris car crash Sunday along with her millionaire boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, and his driver, Henri Paul. It was also a rare public discussion by the queen of personal matters.
“First, I want to pay tribute to Diana myself,” the queen said. “She was an exceptional and gifted human being. In good times and bad she never lost her capacity to smile and laugh, nor to inspire others with her warmth and kindness. I admired and respected her for her energy and her commitment to others, and especially for her devotion to her two boys. … I hope that (today) we can all, wherever we are, join in expressing our grief at Diana’s loss and gratitude for her all-too-short life.”
The 36-year-old Diana, Princess of Wales, is to be eulogized and buried today in what is being called the largest public event in Britain’s history. A crowd estimated at up to 6 million is expected to stand in somber attendance as her coffin was carried on a horse-drawn carriage in a silent procession through London’s central streets.
In a sudden change late Friday, Diana’s own family, the Spencers, decided she will not be buried as planned in the small rural church of St. Mary of the Virgin in Great Brington, where 20 generations of her family are interred. Instead, her burial will be on the private grounds of her family’s estate in nearby Althorp - a move that apparently was taken because locals feared the small church would be overwhelmed by visitors who would turn it into a public shrine.
In London, the queen; her husband, Philip; Diana’s former husband, Prince Charles; and their two sons, Princes William, 15, and Harry, 12, appeared in public to personally greet mourners standing outside Buckingham Palace and St. James’s Palace, where Diana’s body lay until Friday night. In what was viewed as another attempt to repair their tattered image, members of the royal family had returned to the capital a day early from Balmoral Castle in Scotland, where they had been secluded since Diana’s death.
There were moving scenes in central London Friday afternoon as the two young princes, with faint smiles on their faces, were hugged and patted by crying mourners who reached out to them across the barricades.
Earlier Friday, the family of Fayed said that the two of them had been in a relationship “that was a sincere one on both sides” and confirmed that Dodi had given Diana a $215,000 diamond ring just hours before they died.
The Fayed family Friday also released hotel security tapes showing the fated couple - Dodi’s arm firmly around Diana’s waist - as they left the Ritz Hotel in Paris minutes before the crash early Sunday. They could be seen being greeted on the tape by their driver, Paul, who Paris officials have said had a blood-alcohol level several times above the legal limit when the couple’s blue Mercedes-Benz crashed into a wall in a Paris underpass, pursued by photographers on motorbikes.
It was impossible to tell on the jerking tape if Paul in any way appeared to be intoxicated.