At the time of her death, Princess Diana was—as her brother Charles Spencer said in his searing eulogy—"the most hunted person of the modern age." Everything the princess said and did—from the time she became engaged to Prince Charles in 1981 right up until the last moments of her life on August 31, 1997—was exhaustively covered by journalists and photographers around the world.
In the two decades since her death, there have been all kinds of investigations attempting to answer the lingering suspicions and "what ifs" surrounding the circumstances of the car crash that killed Diana, her then-boyfriend Dodi Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul. Sadly, there are details surrounding that fateful night in Paris that still raise more questions than they do answers. Here are the biggest questions that remain unanswered about the night the People's Princess died.
1 | What was Diana doing in Paris?
Trinity Mirror / Mirrorpix / Alamy Stock PhotoEarlier this year, a royal insider told me Diana never intended to go to Paris—or to be with Dodi at all. “She was not supposed to spend her summer with the Fayeds,” said the source at the time. “And she most certainly had not planned on being in Paris with Dodi at the end of August. In fact, she was tiring of the whole episode and was eager to see [Prince] William and [Prince] Harry before they went off to school. It was Dodi who insisted they stop off in Paris for the night before heading back to London. Sheps the most heartbreaking question of all. According to several published reports after the crash at 12:23 a.m. on August 31st, Diana was still alive when rescuers first responded to the accident. Before a medical team arrived, photographer Romuald Rat was among the first on the scene. According to Brown, Rat took some shots of the crash then approached the car to see if anyone was alive. Rat discovered Fayed and Paul were dead, while Diana was still breathing and Rees-Jones was so badly injured, his face looked almost flat.
Less than a minute after the crash, Dr. Frederic Mailliez, who was on his way home after attending a friend's birthday party, saw the crash, called emergency services and then attended to the princess, who he said was conscious and moaning in pain. Minutes later, emergency workers arrived and gave Diana oxygen and wrapped her in a blanket. Diana reportedly asked, "Oh my God, what's happened?"
In The Diana Chronicles, Brown notes that in France, it is believed there is a better chance of recovery if a patient is stabilized at the scene. French ambulances were reportedly outfitted with more advanced cardiac care devices than what was used in the United States at the time. The doctors worked on stabilizing Diana's breathing at the crash site and finally put her on a stretcher at 1 a.m. Shortly afterwards, her heart stopped and she was put on a respirator.
The trip to Pitie-Salpetriere hospital was just four miles away, but the ambulance took 40 minutes to get there, passing another hospital, the Hotel-Dieu, along the way. Once at the hospital, ER doctors attempted to restart Diana's heart, but she was pronounced dead at 4 a.m. This time, concluded Brown, "Diana's broken heart would never mend." And for more facts about the People's Princess that've been muddled by hearsay, Here’s the Truth Behind 17 Myths About Princess Diana.
Diane Clehane is a New York-based journalist and author of Imagining Diana and Diana: The Secrets of Her Style.
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