Diana Was A Rare Gem In The Royals’ Stuffy Crown

Our world is divided into thinkers and feelers, and thinkers usually get the good press. They are smart, rational, systematic. Feelers are messy, embarrassing, chaotic.

Princess Diana was the first feeler to enter Windsor World in many centuries. No wonder the rational royal family freaked out in its controlled way. This is the family who prefers dogs and horses to people. Who left the rearing of its children to nannies and boarding schools. Who didn’t ever get the Diana magic and tried to quash it.

In the end, they couldn’t kill the spirit and legacy of Diana, royal feeler. She touched lepers and AIDS victims. She hugged. She displayed emotion without shame. She let her boys know it’s OK to have fun, giggle, play.

She would never have allowed them to go church the day after a tragedy, the way the Windsors did. She would have said: “Stay home in your pajamas, drink hot chocolate, cry, scream, act out. That’s grief. Feel it now, boys, or you’ll be locked in forever like your father.”

Those precious boys lost their mother, the feeler. Maybe they had enough time with her to know it’s OK to touch others, to show emotion, to grieve, to rebel against the Windsor intelligentsia. Maybe they already know that people are way more important than corgis and polo ponies. , DataTimes MEMO: In death as in life, Princess Diana was never far removed from the press. The Spokesman-Review’s photo editor, John Sale, and five Opinion Page writers (Rebecca Nappi, John Webster, Jamie Tobias Neely, Doug Floyd and D.F. Oliveria) offer brief observations about that relationship and about Diana as a public figure.