[Salon 31 August 1997]

BY SUSIE BRIGHT | the princess is dead.
                     
There are still a million questions
about Diana's hellish midnight
tragedy, but at the moment, the
media's outraged focus is on the
paparazzi, who so often bedeviled
the princess and made her cry for
mercy. It's easy to imagine these
demons chasing her through the
night, pursuing her to the bloody,
profitable end. 

But I don't think the tabloid
photographers are the ultimate
culprits. Of course, the police and
the press will toil strenuously to pin
the blame on someone -- was the
chauffeur of her Mercedes being
flailed to drive recklessly fast by
Dodi Fayed and the Princess, or
were the camera hounds on their
motorcycles careening out of
control? What interests me more
are the obsessions in Diana's life
that finally immolated her, along
with Fayed, her latest "fairytale
prince." 

Di's final paramour was a
billionaire Egyptian "playboy" with
a string of broken-hearted beauties
behind him, most recently the
litigious model Kelly Fisher. His
habit of bouncing checks and
stiffing the landlords of the luxury
homes he leased also got him in
legal hot water. His parents
brought Dodi up like a royal
demi-god, and his principal activity
in life was partying and having the
most glamorous women in the
world on his arm. 

Playboys of this description are
nothing new, on the arms of
princesses or commoners. But
Diana had never publicly dated a
man like this before. Since her
divorce from Prince Charles, she
has thrown herself into her "work,"
but while she has drawn much
strength from these charitable
activities, she has, always, and
masochistically, pursued a vision of
romance -- a "true love" that she
has never witnessed in her own
family. She was a sitting diamond
duck for a seducer like Dodi, who
could not have been more different
from stolid Charles. Here was a
sultan who reveled in making her
-- and himself -- the center of
attention, appealing to her every
Cinderella fantasy of being wooed,
pursued, charmed, and indulged.
Their affair was too short-lived for
her to experience what her fate
might have been after Dodi had fit
her with the glass slippers. 

All this man has known in his life
with women is conquest, and
practitioners of that game are
incapable of lasting devotion or
companionship or the
responsibilities of love. In falling for
him, Diana was sadly following in
the footsteps of her fellow
victim-princesses, Stephanie and
Caroline of Monaco, who also have
been humiliated by men like this. 

It's appalling for the media to
blather about Diana's affair with
Dodi as if it were the beginning of
Diana's future happiness -- "Rich,
protective Dodi appeared perfect
match for Diana," blared CNN
Interactive today. In reality, their
affair had a 99 percent chance of
making a complete ass out of her
-- and leaving us with even more
pictures of Diana, newly wounded,
her doe eyes tearing a little bit less
than after her last crucifixion at the
altar of romance, but nevertheless,
devastated. Indeed, the most
familiar picture of Diana is one of
her either heartbroken by love gone
wrong, or radiant that she had
finally found the "right" one. 

But all her Prince Charmings have
been wrong. Men who called her
Squidgie, men whom she called
desperately in the middle of the
night and hung up on, men she
starved herself for, men she proved
her virginity for -- none of these
male figures could ever fulfill her
yearnings. Her romantic illusions
of what love is, like so many
women's, are utterly
heartbreaking, because these
concepts don't have a heart in the
first place. 

Diana's parents are often described
as "loathing" each other. Diana
married a man who was in love
with another woman and
considered her a twit. In some
respects, he was right -- she was
woefully naive and fashioned as
attractive chattel from an early age. 

But Diana's longing for love was
also expressed in her sensitivity in
all sorts of areas that the non-royal
world was amazed to see in a
queen -to-be. She seemed to care,
and give of herself, in places and
situations where we were
accustomed to seeing Palace
aloofness and rote courtesy.
Camille Paglia once noted that
while many of us had never heard
the princess speak, her face had the
emotional impact of the most
notorious silent film stars: a Garbo,
a Lillian Gish, a visage that said a
million words. 

No one in a British royal family has
ever been so emotionally
transparent to the world, and when
she gave that emotion over to
comforting the sick, the war-torn
(and most recently, the victims of
land mines), she captured the
world's attention. But her gift of
passion in her charity work was a
demon in her personal life, that
little girl's vulnerability and hunger
for love. 

The press is saying that the world
has lost its most famous, adored
woman. Yet, her charitable acts
notwithstanding, why was this
36-year-old woman elevated to
such fame? It was, at first, for her
virtuous maidenhood, then the
world's-most-televised marriage,
her reproduction of two royal sons,
her scandalous adultery, bitter
divorce, and finally, ill-fated
romance with a billionaire
Casanova. Not to mention her
dresses. 

As a viewer of the Diana spectacle,
and as a woman, I mourn her and
feel nothing but sadness for her
sons. But also speaking as a
woman, when I look at her short
life, it makes me grieve in an
altogether different manner. A
woman who is internationally
renowned for her tragic sexuality
may be adored forever in our
nostalgic culture, but that legacy is
no gift to womankind, and it is
never a tribute to the cause of true
love between the sexes. 

Aug. 31, 1997 

Susie Bright is a Salon columnist.