Noble Blood - The People's Princess (with Michael Hobbes and Sarah Marshall)

Episode Date: March 2, 2021

Thanks to the popularity of the television series The Crown, a new generation has become captivated by Princess Diana—her life and her tragedy. She remains an enigmatic figure, undeniably captivating, for both her vulnerability and her power. To better understand her life, and her legacy, Dana speaks with Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes of the podcast 'You're Wrong About.' Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong,

dance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. As you probably know, I tend to shy away from Noble Blood episodes featuring modern figures, not least of all, because my aim is usually to uncover stories that haven't been told yet. But Princess Diana is a figure that looms so large in her collective consciousness, defining people's understanding of what it means to be a princess. It seems to me that in some ways the tragedy of her story emerged at the tension between the modern and the traditional.

Here was a woman very much of the 90s trapped in an archaic institution. and here was a global population with a very traditional obsession with the monarchy, with youth, with beauty, with power, but now armed with modern tools, cameras, and helicopters, and motorcycles. The myth of Diana looms so large, especially in the wake of her death and the conspiracy theories that surrounded her, that for me, actually getting an understanding of the woman beneath it all was daunting. And so today I've enlisted the help of the brilliant Michael Hobbs and Sarah Marshall to join me. They're the host of the podcast you are wrong about. And they did a phenomenal five-part series on Princess Diana.

And I am so excited to be with them here today. Sarah and Michael, hi. Hi. Hi, Dana. Thank you so good to be here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

You're very good at this. That was like more insightful than anything we said on our show. That's true. Dana's making some good points. Mike's comments do not reflect my beliefs, but I do. Sarah doesn't think I was insightful at all. I thought that we, I think that we're equally insightful and that I can compliment you without chipping away at my own work, which is what I intend to do. No, that was beautiful, though.

Thank you. I think that you were so insightful, and I listened to your five-part series, that I immediately had to invite you on the show to do a noble blood crossover. For me, it was, it's challenging because usually, I work with the historical record and with media. And with Diana, media itself seems like a character in the story. Yeah. Yes. And there's like overwhelmingly too many facts and too much information as opposed to like,

well, this is her hairbrush and this is what we think she looked like. It's also such an honor for you to ask us on because I hope people know that you're our royal correspondent. And you have talked on our show about Marie Antoinette and Princess Anastasia. And is Princess Anastasia correct? Yeah, she's a... Okay. See, I'm already tripping up a little bit here.

But anyway, you have been our Royal Correspondent for a while now, and those I think are some of our best episodes, or at least my favorite that we've done. Yes. Oh, this is just lovely. Well, I'm so honored to then have you back to return the favor on Diana, who, especially, I think, with the resurgence of the crown has sort of reemerged in the public consciousness

as like a fashion icon. I see influencers now in bike shorts and sweatshirts. I think she's really come back into vows. What do you sort of ascribe all that to the crown or do you think there's another factor

in sort of the public interest in Diana reemerging? Mike? I was going to have you take this one. You're a maligned woman correspondent. All right. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I think that the crown, the same way maybe that the people versus O.J. Simpson did give people a point of entry into the life of someone that they were willing to reassess or assess for the first time if they're zoomers.

So I feel like this is, you know, Princess Diana died in 1997. And so we now have a generation of young adults who either have no living memory of her or were born after her death. And so inevitably, at some point, people in that age group, I think, want to learn about what was happening right as they were entering the world. And then also learning how previous generations of media mishandled stories. I mean, I don't know. For me, that was a coming of age thing. Michael, what about you? When did you come online in terms of understanding Princess Diana's story? About three months ago and I started researching the series.

I mean, a lot of the feedback that we've gotten from people are like, you know, I liked the series in spite of the fact that I have no particular interest in the British royal family. And I think that's like where me and Sarah came to it from. Like neither one of us are particularly like into the British royal family or into royalty in general. I mean, I'm also into royal history. But like I really have never like when William and. what's her face, Kate, I guess. See, when they got married, I knew people who got up at one in the morning to watch it. And I was like, I'm going to read about it on inside edition.com the next day because I'm interested and I want to see the outfit and the pictures and everything.

But like, I'm not invested. Like, I'm invested in the tutors. But, you know, being invested in people who are living their lives in front of you right now seems weird and it'll break your heart. Something that I kind of thought, because I'm sort of on the periphery of that of like, really, I am interested in the British royal family just sort of as a power structure and like the historical legacy of that. But I found that Americans who woke up at like one in the morning to watch that, it was sort of like they wanted the pageantry of like an excuse to get dressed up and eat scones. Like they used the British royal family as mascots as like.

Like Derby Day or something. Yeah. Like it was just like a big, which I think then speaks to the larger picture where they're more symbols than people. It's like they are an excuse to like play fancy British, which is a very fun thing to do. Right. And speculate on someone having or perhaps not having a baby, and then what kind of baby, and then when we'll see the baby? A good or a bad baby. A good or a bad baby.

What will the baby be wearing? How is the baby looking? And it's like, look at your own babies. Yeah. It's very much that they become mascots, at least to me, like modern living day mascots more than people. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And that's kind of what makes it such an exploitative system. I mean, as we talked about in the show, there are a million reasons, economic, political reasons to get rid of the royal family, which like everyone kind of knows those arguments and they know the

counter arguments and you can play that debate out. But to me, one of the most compelling reasons why the royal family is bad is just that it's a massive human rights violation to make people be in this system. And Diana is an interesting sort of vessel for that argument because she wasn't part of the system and then she gets sucked in and you see all of the absurd injustices. Yeah. Yeah. And it seems to me that Diana was very bad at being the quiet, non-speaking mascot side of being a royal because her sort of personhood kept jumping out. Yes, exactly, that she understood the needs and the nature of modern celebrity in a way. that the royal family, because as Tina Brown talks about in her book, they basically have these

social mores of Britain 30, 40 years ago. Like whatever Britain was doing 30, 40 years ago, that is like their table manners, that is their etiquette for dinner table conversation. Everything is a couple decades old. And Diana came in, I mean, she grew up in a reasonably, she grew up in a royal adjacent household. So it's not like she was some complete common folk. But she would at least had something resembling the modern mores of British society in the 1980s. She rode the tube, right? Like she cooked. She did dishes.

Yeah. Like she knew what actual life was. The juxtaposition of what she understood celebrity to be and the kinds of celebrities that they thought they were is what makes the story so fascinating and also so sort of comical that over and over again, Princess Diana is just like, you people are acting insane? What are you doing? And because everybody around her is either in the royal family or these sort of footmen of the royal family, like part of that system, they're constantly just like. gaslighting her. Like, why would you want to go visit an AIDS ward? Why are you doing this? And she's like, uh, because I'm a good person. Like, why am I getting yelled at for this? What is the reason? And there's a story where she was rushing to see a friend who was dying of AIDS at the time. And they were like,

you can't leave because blah, blah, royal protocol. Oh, yeah. You don't leave bar moral on a Saturday. Yeah. And it's like you mustn't leave and you must curtsy to the queen seven times and then face west and curtsy 12 more times or whatever. Like, there was this weird protocol. And they're mad at her that she left to go literally see her friend on his deathbed. And it's one of those things where you just, you can very easily put yourself into her shoes and be like, why am I getting yelled at for this? This is outrageous. So here's my hypothetical question and not, I'm not on the side of anyone in this. I mean, I'm on Diana side because I think that she's a normal human being.

Yes. But Queen Elizabeth's sort of like non-personhood has led like longevity for the for the crown. You don't shine bright, you shine for a long time. Yes. You can't be a flare because flares then go down. You just have to sort of stay at the medium level this whole time. Is there something to be said for this idea that like if Princess Diana had lived, that people would have turned against her? Just because figures who are not volatile but just exist at all, like women who exist in any capacity with a personality and with flaws, like,

the media eventually tears them down. Like, does the crown know, sort of, that in order to survive this long, you just have to do nothing, basically? I mean, she would have carried on aging, so yes. I also like that you describe Queen Elizabeth's career as, like, the oil at Hanukkah. Yeah. I think that I really do think that is sort of what the role is to do. say as little as possible and just continue on as like a steady. Yeah.

Yeah. And that, well, and that also reminds me of speaking of the only way to age gracefully or the only way to age in a way that the public accepts and doesn't get mad at you about. I think at least historically, and probably now, you just have to do a Greta Garbo and disappear, right? You just don't exist and then no one will yell at you for getting older or forgetting. or for getting older in the wrong way because every way is the wrong way. When Greta Garbo was in Queen Christina,

there's a final shot where she's on this boat that's carrying her away from the man that she loved, who's now dead, and she's abdicated from the throne. And in real life, she was probably a lesbian, but who cares? And, you know, she's going toward her destiny, and the direction that she got for how to play the scene was like, just have your face be completely blank.

Just think of nothing. Try to promote nothing. because then people will project shit onto you and it'll be perfect. And that's what that ending shot is. And I feel as if that applies to the career of Queen Elizabeth, both as a female celebrity and as a ruler with a kind of power. But I'm curious about the nature of her power. And I would love to hear about what kind of power you think she had throughout her career

and also as a public figure during World War II as a pretty young person. But I feel as if, yeah, looking at her, that model seems to have worked, which is that you do as little as possible, and you also are as little as possible because the more people are seeing their own ideas of you when they look at you, the more merciful they will be, perhaps. I also think that if you do anything and have a personality that is anything beyond like us weekly idiosyncrasy. People will be like, why the hell are we bowing and putting a crown on you, a human person? Like, why am I bowing to a person? Yeah. I think Queen Elizabeth probably understands how silly the whole institution of monarchy is. And if you act, quote unquote, relatable like Diana did, it's like a princess can't be relatable

because why would people bow to just like the girl next door? It's like they're rumbling the entire. entire thing if people realize that Diana and therefore the rest of them are people. Yeah. So I'm interested a little bit in going back and talking a little bit about her biographical information. When I was a child, my only understanding of Diana was a purple beanie baby that came out when she died. I had that too. Yeah. And I always thought just as in my child head, like when she was the People's Princess, that she was a commoner. Me too.

Yes. Yeah. I totally thought People's Princess, like she must be reasonably normal person and she met Charles. Like maybe they went to college together and they bumped into each other at the quad or something. Like that was the sort of narrative that I constructed in my head. She was working at like a charming, nodding hill bookstore. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, that would have been great. So, Michael, who was she? But no, I mean, she grew up, like the royal family was her next door. neighbor growing up. And because they're on these country estates, next door neighbor means they live miles away because they brought up these like massive estates with like deer that they're hunting running around. But she went over to their house. They would come over to her house for various things. They were sort of in each other's orbit. Her great aunt was this sort of scheming, royalist person who was like trying to arrange these marriages.

Like she was very much a part of the royal system. And her dad was the Earl of something. And, oh, wait. And her dad was the Earl Spencer, not the Earl of Spencer, which is important for some reason. Yeah, Earl of Spencer's fancier. Yes. Or something. Yes.

And so she grew up in this royal system. And she actually, one of the only commonalities that she ever had with Prince Charles, Like one of the only things that would have helped them get along is that they both had these very similar childhoods where they had all this material wealth. You know, they had servants. They had amazing meals. They had horseback riding lessons, et cetera. But just they were completely emotionally bereft. That both of them had these parents that were absent and obsessed with protocol. Princess Diana's father would eat by himself in his sort of study. And then the kids would kind of scrounge for food in the kitchen.

And it's just you read this stuff in your. you're like, why? Like, why not just be with your kids for the night? But, like, that wasn't done, especially if you're a man and he's like a single father at that point. My parenting is for commoners. Yeah. And so she's kind of raised by these random nannies who keep quitting because she's like really shitty to them. So they keep leaving.

Because she's worried they're going to jump in the sack with her dad, right? Yes. And so she has this sort of rotating string of, you know, women in their early 20s who don't last that long. Her mom is living in London. They sort of go off to visit her mom after they get divorced. And this is like the closest thing to normalcy that she has. But she really has this like very emotionally empty upbringing. And this is something that like you never really get over. Just the fact that your parents aren't really there in any meaningful sense for most of the time that you're growing up. And our parents being divorced, I think, is a factor that might

have been in her mind as like, a. possibility where I think maybe for Charles, that's just like not a thing that is done. Yeah, I mean, these people don't really exist in any sort of normal institutions. It's actually very strange for parents to get divorced and then the father to get custody. Yeah. It's very odd that Princess Diana's father gets custody. But the reason is because he's the Earl, Spencer, something, something, the courts are just like, oh, yeah, he's royal. He gets whatever he wants.

Like, oh, okay. Like, this is all the ways that this system has the. has these weird little tentacles in the sort of official justice system that her mom never really has a chance to get custody of Diana and her brother. That's a weird thing of the weird juxtaposition between modernity and this antiquated system that doesn't really make sense. There's completely indefensible system that makes no sense. And of course, the minute that he gets custody, he's like, okay, you're both now going off to boarding school.

It's like, I really want my kids, I want to take them away from my ex-wife, but I don't actually want to see them. So I'm going to send them off to boarding school. Well, he couldn't trust her. to send them to the right boarding school. I guess? I think you're being hard on this guy. I find it fascinating that Prince Charles actually dated Diana's older sister before he dated Diana. How long and involved was that relationship?

This was like very much foreshadowing for what happens with him and Diana. That they date, I believe it's a couple months. But the reason why he stops dating her sister. is her sister talks to the press. She has this fateful lunch with a journalist where she's just like eating fries, hanging out, chatting. It's like absolutely. It's like absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. And so she ends up telling this journalist like, I don't know if we're ever going to get married. And I don't know. You know, I'm still kind of figuring it out. And, you know, I don't really care if he's the king of England or some janitor off the street. I'm not into him or whatever. And then the royal family reads this. And they're like, did she just compare?

Prince Charles to a janitor. Oh, my God. And they're like livid. How dare she imply he would ever do a day's work in his life? I know. And so they completely cut her off. And so years go by before he sort of reconnected with Diana and then he's like, oh, didn't I meet you once? But this is a sign of like how much the royal family keeps things closed.

Your sister had too much spirit. Yeah. But you look a little more broken in, you know, when he's holding a crop. To me, it's astonishing how young she was when they got together. Yeah. What was she 19? 19, and he's 32. Gross.

As someone who's 32 at this moment, that's weird. Can you imagine hanging out with a 19-year-old right now? I can't imagine marrying one, Mike. I can imagine hanging out with a 19-year-old making them dinner and gently slipping in life advice in a covert way. Can I imagine having a relationship with one? No. Oh, my God. And I'm like, we're just talking about the power differential of life experience and being like kind of more established and not being a member of the royal fucking family.

I know. And there's also this thing. I mean, I always think about the fact that both of them in the weeks leading up to the wedding were crying and trying to back out of it. It's just like Mark and Sophie on Peep Show. Sure. I'm sorry. I don't, yeah, go on. I have not seen the show, so Sarah keeps bringing it up every time I'm like, okay. Oh, you should watch a peep show. It's great.

I really keep forgetting you haven't seen it. I'm sorry. Sarah, it's one of four shows I've seen in my life, like all the way through, Dana. I've seen it and I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, it is, it's a lot of crying. And like at one point, the guy character who's getting married, Mike, he's like, just tries to get hit by a car, but he's like too passive to really start a fight. So the guy won't hit him with his car. He just swears at him. This is Charles. Right.

This is exactly Charles. I'll just give you a couple episodes to watch. Yes. He doesn't really have the guts to truly back out of this. And he knows that this is his sort of country, royal, whatever, duty stuff. And so he kind of sleepwalks into this marriage. And also, Diana sleepwalks into this marriage. And it's just like everyone around them sort of.

of knows that it's a bad idea, but there's this idea of like, you know, it's what's done. Or one of the big things at the time is that if he doesn't marry Diana, it's like, well, there's nobody else. Like, she's the last one because she has to be sort of royal adjacent. You know, she has to be sort of Lord whatever titled. And she also has to be a virgin, which is outrageous. And she has to sort of look the part and sort of have this trophyish kind of personality. And literally part of the argument is like there's no one else.

There's no one left. He's dated everybody else. And everyone else, like, Camilla has, like, had sex and, like, seems to maybe enjoy sex with other human beings. And, like, she's obviously ineligible for this. So he has to marry this person who, like, he doesn't like that much and she doesn't like him. So, like, let's go. How many women has he dated? Like, how big of a pool is this, really?

Like, hundreds? My understanding is that there's two sort of theories of this. One is that he was kind of a playboy for these years. You know, he's 32, right? So that's a lot of years in which he can be dating. people. And so he has a lot of flings and there's sort of women getting payoffs and NDAs to sort of disappear into the night. There's this as a rumor, but then other sources will say that all of this playboy stuff was something that was deliberately constructed by the royal family to make him seem

like an eligible bachelor. I don't know. I think loads and loads of women would date Prince Charles and have flings with him, Mike. Well, Bethleh, we don't know. So like, I know. I guess I think both theories are plausible because like it's hard to know how charismatic someone is unless you meet them when they're like 29 or whatever. Like we can't go back in time and know. But like it's, yeah, I feel like it's a combination of like. I guess a lot of people would date the prince no matter what he looked like. Like there's all, you know, of the whole country. My hypothesis based on just your interpretation and what I feel like is both factors that he is not charismatic.

and not charming, but a playboy because people want to sleep with the future king of England, and he kind of knows it in the back of his mind. I feel like he has this deep-seated insecurity of like, I know people kind of only like me because I'm the heir to the throne. But maybe you do know they're forced to like you, and maybe that's a kind of confidence. I don't know. Mike, I'm sorry, go on. No, that's the thing.

I don't know to what extent these people know how artificial their lives are. Because if you've grown up your entire life in that system, Prince Charles has never had a friend who didn't know acutely that he was going to be the king one day. So all of your relationships ever, every small talk conversation you've ever had in your entire life is with somebody who knows that you have more power than them or will in the future. And so there's nothing to compare it to, right? Like if any of us sort of got into the royal family and all of a sudden people were treating us differently, we would understand that as different. But he's just like, oh, I guess everyone just sucks up to you all the time. and that's what being alive is. Like, it's not that they would have any idea

that this is extremely strange. Well, it's like how the super rich in America, you know, we have the like affluenza defense, which I forget what that is supposed to refer to. But I do think there's kind of, I don't know if it's insanity, but you're like, you are less connected to reality when you grow up extremely wealthy

because, like, the material world has fewer consequences. Your parents, like, whisk away problems and hide them from you probably. You can just buy your way out of seemingly, anything. And I do feel like you might just persist in the idea that the world is a soft play area until it's too late. Yeah. You know what I always think of? I always think of Gwyneth Paltrow did that abysmal movie Shallow howl, which is a wear a fat suit. And one day the director made her walk around in a fat suit, like and sort of live as a fat person. I remember her talking

about this on Oprah. Like it was a social experiment. Yeah. Yes. And the thing that she said on Oprah that I cannot get over is she's like, I would walk into a room and no one looked at me. Oh, God, Gwyneth. That's the experience of, like, not being a super hot blonde lady. Or a celebrity. At this point, she's been famous for years and years. The daughter of Blythe Danner, famous for her entire life. She just has no idea what it's like to walk into a room and no one really notices what you walk in the room,

which is the experience of like 99.9% of humanity every time you walk into a room. But that's never happened to her. So that to me is fascinating that she just doesn't understand what's. the experience of a non-famous, non-hot, non-blonde person would be. I guess she was blonde still, but aside from everything else is different, though. Okay, so here's, I also think, like, a question that, like, as a child, I didn't, couldn't quite wrap my head around. Princess Diana is beautiful and seems cool and fashionable and charismatic. Why doesn't Charles like her?

You know, like, why he really seems to resent her and just like doesn't like her on like a fundamental person level. And yet everyone else fell in love with her. What do you ascribe that disjoint to? I mean, I think so much of it is just they're just fundamentally mismatched as people. The age thing is part of it. And because of the age, I don't think he ever sort of understands the extent to which age plays into this. But he always sees her as frivolous. Yeah.

She's not a sort of an intellectual. She's had years of education. Not like him. Well, that's a thing. I mean, so much of his sort of self-conception is of himself as sort of like a thought leader. He's always been somebody who wanted to be more outspoken than his mother was he takes policy stances on issues very early. And he's always thought of himself as like doing very innovative philanthropy. And he wants to talk about, you know, big global issues like overpopulation, even though like that leads to some really gross areas eventually.

But you see that Dana and I both made the same face when he said that. Just like, oh. Just early stage kombucha face, yeah. Yeah. I mean, he really thinks of himself. Again, because he doesn't understand how privilege he is, he doesn't understand all the factors that play into why people treat him the way that they do. He thinks that he's this, like, intellectual.

And so there's this really interesting moment on one of their first royal visits when they're in Wales. And they go and they do this sort of shaking hands. thing and they do the line and she's on one side and he's on the other thing. And then he goes and he gives like an hour long speech about like the social issues facing Britain and he works on the speech for days and he thinks that it's going to be like a real sort of coming out moment. I'm going to promote all these interesting ideas. And it's nowhere in the papers. Nobody gives a shit. And all of the coverage the next day is what is Diana wearing? What did Diana say to people in Wales? Diana made like a three or four minute long speech. What did she say? And his sort of ideas, what he

considers these really innovative ideas are just completely ignored in favor of her quote unquote frivolous nonsense like what she's wearing which is her fault obviously of course she works at all the newspapers and writes all these pieces and she gets the pictures of spider man i mean i also i'm like when i hear hour long speech i'm like of course charles doesn't realize that nobody wants an hour long speech on anything and that the beauty of a three to four minute speech that probably is what he considers frivolous is that people can follow it. I mean, the Gettysburg Address is like two minutes, right? Famously.

And what was Lincoln wearing? We talk about that a lot, too, and he was a pretty good guy. You know, it's also kind of interesting because, Michael, you brought up, like, what actually is the power of the royal family. And to be honest, like, in Charles' defense, whether or not he's a smart person, he's not like a politics professor at Oxford. He has no special expertise in this. their real power is doing what Diana was really good at, which was bringing attention to things.

Yes. And like connecting with people and, you know, even the thing he always considered it very frivolous, the way that she would, you know, go to homeless shelters and talk to homeless people and sort of connect with them. That makes them seem like a cartoon villain. Yes. Well, this is the thing is because it's not sort of linked up to policy. It's not linked up to sort of broader social change.

If you really want to solve homelessness, you don't need to visit homeless shelters. You need to sort of change the policy and change the funding and get, private sector investment, blah, blah, blah. And what she understood is that, like, that's not really her job. Like, what she does when she goes to a homeless shelter is she is actually bringing attention to the issue of homelessness. And he never actually understood it that you can actually do policy in this, like, backdoor way by just deciding which issues to bring attention to.

I mean, the tragedy is they could have made, in theory, a really good team doing that. If he wasn't threatened by her and could, harness and work with her power. Dana, I'm curious about the parallels you see to Marie Antoinette, because this is something that I always think about when we're talking about Diana, which is like, here's someone who, you know, grew up in this world, but not in exactly this world, and who grew up, you know, riding horses, I guess Charles wrote a lot of horses growing up, but who wasn't expected to be important, basically.

And then married someone who was almost defined by social awkwardness and just could never fit in somehow because she was too good at what no one wanted to admit her job was. Yeah, I find the parallels really eerie, especially because, like, from all the records, Marie Antoinette was really good about poverty and, like, poor people on the ground level. She, quote unquote, I use the word adopted because that's the words that they used at the time, like, adopted orphans, which meant like paid for their funding, but specific people. Like, she didn't enact big policy changes about, like, the poverty structure in France. But, like, literally, if she was in her carriage on the side of the road and she saw a child on the side of the road, she stopped her carriage and it was like, I'm going to pay for your funding for the rest of your life.

Which sort of is like the Diana approach, which is like, do this on the on the micro level, not the macro level. Have a soft heart be in the world. And the husband is like, no, we can fix everything. And it's like, can you, though? Yeah. But that's just, I mean, I don't blame Marie Antoinette for doing anything wrong because it's sort of like what you described. Like, that was just all she was born and knew and cared about.

Like, you can't, the last thing a fish can describe is water. Right. And it's the unfortunate timing of like people being racist to Austrians and people painting the monarchy at that time where it's like, I think if people fundamentally, if the temperature of England was hate. the monarchy at the time, people would not have been short of finding reasons to hate Diana. Yeah. There's also the thing, I mean, they were in this weird place where sort of different people understood Charles and Diana's marriage as different levels of arranged. So if they could have just agreed on the fact, look, we're not a love match. We're never going to be in love. But we could actually make a pretty powerful and impactful royal couple together. And so let's just do our duties and Diana will be on the front end, shaken hands. And Charles will be on the back end, like, bilking. rich people for money to fund policy initiatives. Fine. They could have easily done that, but that would

require both of them to be honest about what the marriage was, that it wasn't a love marriage. And it seems like he has too much of an ego to ever want to be the behind the scenes person. Exactly. And so he wanted, one of the really foundational things, and is very easy to forget, is that before Diana came along, Charles kind of was the Diana, that there's this famous trip to Australia before he starts dating her where he goes and he shakes hands and he does these events and thousands of people come out. He was seen as sort of the young, authentic, likable one, which on the scale of sort of everyone else in the royal family,

he absolutely was. He was very charismatic compared to, you know, Prince Philip, for God's sake. But then, of course, once Diana's around, it's like you've upgraded, like, from a Honda to, like, a sort of... A Ferrari. Yeah, exactly. And so he all of a sudden... And it's like, kids, do you want to take the Honda out again?

And they're like, well... Yeah. She just, she broke the curve. Right. And so he had the sort of glimpse of himself as the sort of the likable one, the normal one, the face of the new royal family. And then he's just completely buried under all of the coverage of Diana. And so he, again, if he was able to be honest about this, like, what are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? This all could have worked out. But neither one of them were able to admit what was really going on. And, you know, she still had this myth in her. head that it was a love match, right? Like she, she thought it was a fairy tale romance and she kept trying to get back to that. And he always thought of it as a little bit more wrapped up in duty than she did. And so just the different expectations of her and him and his miserable family were really what made it just completely unworkable.

Hmm. Do you, do you think the public at the time viewed it more like a fairy tale? It seems like the merchandising at the time was sort of following that narrative. Like plates and stuff? Well, Mike, I'm actually curious, like, do you know how much money this union generated just in terms of, you know, memorabilia and tourism and stuff? Ooh, there's probably like a PhD written about that. Yeah. Did you come across figures when you were researching? No, because it's so hard to do the direct versus indirect, right?

Because one of the arguments against getting rid of the royal family is always that it would affect tourism. So some percentage of tourism is generated by, like, visiting the Buckinghamham. palace and like going to see all the royal sites, et cetera. And so people would have... And bothering the guards, right? Everyone wants to bother a guard. I know. And so some percentage of sort of visits to Britain would have been arranged around their wedding and it would have spiked slightly in the months afterwards. Like there's all these sort of very difficult to measure effects of this, but it would be in the sort of probably in the billions eventually. I mean, the amount of stuff that you could buy with their faces on it.

I mean, people have been sending us, like, my mom and her cupboard has, you know, this, like, doll house that was like an official royal family thing or, like, towels and plates. Paper dolls. Like, the amount of just merch was nuts. Yeah. Yeah. And also, I feel as if they were considered important for the morale of the country, right? Yeah. Like, what, like, who will we look up to?

Who is a positive figure? like we're having a bad time economically. Like, we need this, you guys. Like, I feel like that's kind of the... Just from what we've talked about in the series, I feel like that was a feeling that was present. I'm also now wondering, because we just recorded an episode on John DeLorean

who had to negotiate with Margaret Thatcher at one point in his career because he was manufacturing in Belfast. I was like, did he ever, you know, maybe meet the... Charles and Diana? Seems possible. Not that I saw it. I bet Peter Morgan's going to figure it out if they did.

I feel like that would show up in a DeLorean deep dive more than a Charles and Diana deep dive because they met everybody. But yeah, and I mean, it's funny. I was just watching Muriel's wedding, which has a scene where the main character who's obsessed with getting married and with weddings is working in a video store. And she is watching and specifically watching and then rewinding and rewinding and rewinding and rewerews. watching Princess Diana approaching in her carriage and getting out and the dress being unveiled, this gigantic dress. And I remember Mikey describing like, it's just her little Diana and her little dad in her little carriage with her giant dress. We're like 27 feet of train. Yeah, like packed in there like when you order command hooks from Amazon and they're like, we thought you needed

75,000 peanuts to keep these command hooks nice and safe. And, you know, and I do feel like just having that resonant image of a bride, like, I just, I understood her to be iconic before I understood anything else about her. So I guess, I don't know, my sense is that, like, no matter what you're more nuanced attitude toward the whole situation, like, I think the general consensus was like, these people are not going anywhere. Like, it is, even if I don't like them, it is unimaginable that they wouldn't be doing what they're doing. It's actually very interesting to think about the ways in which, even as she critiqued the royal family and in a lot of ways revealed the flaws of the royal family, Princess

Diana, I think, was also very important for promoting the idea of the royal family. You know, for more than a decade there, after their wedding, she was extremely popular and there was a sense of, like, this is part of our national character, that we have this dollhouse with these pageant-ish characters that are going around the world and meeting with high-level people and they're promoting landmine stuff at the UN. I mean, this does actually affect public morale. And a lot of it, like there's sort of possibly not true stories of, you know, Australia thinking of trying to leave the Commonwealth. And then there's a visit by Charles and Diana. And they're like, maybe the royal family isn't so bad. She's very likable. And so these kinds of things do

actually matter for sort of how do we think about this institution. And So it's interesting in that, you know, she was so critical of the royal family and the royal family treated her terribly. But as a symbol of the royal family, we finally had a likable symbol that like people were like, like, maybe we can wait a couple more decades before we get rid of this thing. Yeah, that was a really, I think, fun episode of the Crown if you watched the most recent season with the, God, I'm going to get this wrong. And I apologize in advance, whether the prime minister or the president of Australia. Prime minister. Prime minister, thank you, was.

you know, garnering public support for leaving the Commonwealth. But people like Diana so much. He's like, well, I can't have this conversation now. Yeah. I mean, I think that they were playing that up a little bit on the ground. And like that episode is like factually, like there's massive factual errors in that episode. But like it is saying something about it's easier to sort of swallow the royal family when the main face of it is genuinely likable and seems like somebody who's, you know, down to earth.

And like she is visiting homeless shelters and doing stuff on AIDS, et cetera. She also looks like a princess. I feel like that poofy dress, that like shoulder dress and the literal princess skirt and the getting out of a carriage even. Oh, yeah. That like articulated in my conception the archetype of what a princess is for a long time. Oh yeah. She nailed it. I think it's really important that people need beautiful things to look at and people want to see pageants and we want to see, you know, beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes.

and we will just, you know, we will go to great lengths to have that in our lives. And I think that if we recognize that that's a human need, we would obtain it in ways that are less weird. If you are a founder or a freelancer or the friend who always says, hey, you know what, what if I started that? This is for you. I'm telling you I had nothing to my name. I didn't know a single person in New York.

And somehow I'm dressed by Oscar de Lorenta walking down that red carpet. This month, we sit down with entrepreneurs and creators. who actually did it, who turned the scary leave into a business, a paycheck, and a life they are proud of. Direct center of our happiness or our regrets is whether or not we're taking action on the things that matter to us. They're not selfish. They're so important. They actually lead to our greatest contributions because when we're living fulfilled, we actually show up better everywhere. We lead better. We're better friends. We're better relationships and collaborators and all those things because we have passion about the things we're doing. If you're trying to build something of your own this year, join us in these conversations that will make you braver and smarter with your money. Listen to Dos Amigos as part of the Michael Tutta podcast network available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? In 1998, my life was forever changed when I took on the role of Charlotte York on a new show called Sex and the City. Now I get to sit down with some of my favorite people and really, all of the incredible moments this show brought us on and off the screen. Like when Sarah Jessica Parker shared that she forgot we filmed the pilot episode. You forgot about it? I completely forgot about it. And when the show was picked up, I panicked.

And Cynthia Nixon reveals if she's a Miranda. We both feel confident about our brains. But that's kind of where it ends. Plus, Sex and the City superfan, Megan V. Stelion, doesn't hold back on her opinion of the show. Carrie will literally go set New York on fire and then come back and type about it at the end of the day.

Like half of it wasn't her fault. Listen to are you a Charlotte on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So now moving a little bit further in the story, I'm interested in when the marriage dissolved, which seemed sort of inevitable

based on their personalities, as you mentioned, Michael. How did the public react? Who was the one that people blamed? at the time? I mean, this was, it depends. I mean, there were parts of the British establishment that blamed her. That, you know, the minute she did the infamous panorama interview, she spoke to this journalist

Andrew Morton for a sort of unauthorized biography about her. And she pretended that he didn't interview her for years when he actually did. So all the information was true. The establishment was like, oh, my God, it's so cringy, right? She's talking about eating disorders. She's talking about suicide attempts. You know, this is not done by high-level royal people. How dare she?

But then most of the public was like, hey, she's a person. Like, this is actually really relatable. And she's in like a shitty marriage with like this kind of trash dude. And that sounds like my life too. And so the sort of the people who quote unquote matter really blamed her for it and were just mortified at the fact that she was putting all this stuff into the public realm. But the subjects, like people in Britain really liked her after this and like hated Charles for years after this. I read somewhere, and I think this is correct, that for a little while before Prince Charles married Camilla in the recent last few decades, he hired like a very famous expensive publicist to try to revamp both of their public images. And so the way that he reintroduced Camilla to the public was a very, very controlled systemic way.

Interesting. Yeah. Like they made a few appearances not as an official couple that, you know, like it was incredibly controlled how they reintroduced Camilla to not be the other woman at a point where they're like, hopefully people kind of forgot about Diana a little bit. Yeah. And then I just feel like the crown came out and they had to set their Instagrams to private. Yeah. People were like, hey, wait a minute. I knew I remembered you from somewhere.

They were really trying to sneak back in there. So just one brief aside, what do you make of Camilla, both of you? Oh, I like Camilla. The pictures of her when she's younger, she looks like this like hot, sporty, you know, posh lady. And I'm like, well, and then she married someone else, so it just like wasn't quite to be. But then, of course, she and Prince Charles, like, I mean, how so. soon did they start having an affair into the Diana relationship, Mike? It depends if you ask, but it's either like four years or like two years.

Okay. So like between two and four years. So like not, you know, this is a young marriage that is already sustaining, you know, some heavy winter weather, I guess. I don't know in the form of Camilla. But it's just clear that they were a love match with each other. And I remember we talked about, you know, the Squiggy Gate tape where Charles is on the phone with Camilla. And I am a staunch defender of Charles against, you know, this idea that it is somehow embarrassing to say that you wish you could turn into a tiny man who lives in the vagina of the woman you love.

Like, I think that's beautiful. I will posit that there are intimate texts and emails and phone calls between every couple that would be humiliating if they've made the love. like a day. And if there aren't humiliating texts or like little or phone conversations or just nicknames or sexual concepts between you, then like, maybe you're, maybe you could be communicating more. I don't know. Yeah.

I also think, I mean, we did a dramatic table read of the infamous tampon tapes. That was a, that was disturbing for some people. Yes, extremely, including my boyfriend. And what really comes out from those, of course, everybody focuses on the tamper. Pampon jokes, whatever. But it's like a 45-minute-long transcript. And it's a portrait of like a very functional relationship. And it's really the only functional romantic relationship that he ever had in his life. And, you know, Camilla's like, hey, what's your speech about tomorrow? Tell me a little bit about it. You know, the last speech you gave was really good. Can't wait to see the transcript

of this one. Just basic, like, supporting your husband in his endeavors and asking him about his ideas. And that's what it is to love someone, to be genuinely interested in their stupid speech that I'm sure is very long. But it's like you have to care about someone a lot to want to read the transcript of their speech on like the Welsh economy. Yes. And like Princess Diana was not someone who was really interested in that aspect of his life. And they were, you know, even as he sort of tried to spoon feed her and force feed her these pseudo intellectual ideas, she saw there as a vessel for like really nasty behavior from him. And so she never really engaged with him on that level. She never gave him praise about like, hey, you did a really good job at your speech the other day. I read it.

Like, that was not an aspect of their relationship. And so in those tapes, like the tampon thing is kind of an inside joke, like a cute inside joke. And that's a hallmark of functioning relationships when you're generating inside jokes with each other and you sort of riff on the same concept with each other. And it's not clear that he was ever getting that from Diane. It was always this very formal thing. He could never really be himself around her. She could never be herself. It just never match. And so those tapes are like really a portrait of a couple clicking with each other. And it's kind of nice. I mean, once again, I'm reminded of Marie Antoinette or just sort of French royal family protocol generally because one of my favorite things about Versailles and Louis bucked this trend. But it was like

a salaried position to be a royal mistress. And like there was money, you know, budgeted for that. And it was like, okay, new fiscal year for the royal mistress. And everyone agreed that like someone had to do that. And I just feel like this is one of those relationships where like everyone at the outset was like, okay, here are the ground rules. We're going to discreetly have affairs. I don't want to see this. You don't want to see that. And then, you know, just like if it like their marriage is a career, you know, I feel like you can't. If your, if your marriage to someone is your vocation, then I, it just seems like it's really hard for that to be also your primary romantic relationship. Like, You have to be really strong going in, I think.

And, you know, that's another really interesting parallel between Diana, not a parallel, a point of comparison between Marie Antoinette and Diana, because historically the purpose, not the purpose, but an incidental purpose of a royal mistress was to deflect fire away from the queen. I didn't realize that. That's so great. It's sort of a Madonna whore complex, which is troubling, but was really effective. where people could see the queen as maternal and, you know, perfect and flawless. Holy and quiet.

And then they could fulfill their needs of, like, gossip and, like, petty little, like, incidental talk about the royal mistress. And as you mentioned, Louis XVI bucked the trend. He didn't have a royal mistress. So all of that, like, petty gossip energy just funneled only to Marie Antoinette, where in another case, it would have been, you know, distributed probably. between two or three other women. Because as a society, we just culturally love talking about and gossiping about and diminishing women. You just have to have at least one. What we've learned is that you have to have at least one woman in the public sector to just be like a spittoon for public enmity.

And then you can protect, you know, and then another woman can quietly, you know, not be loathed. But you do have to have at least one for people to hate out there somewhere, like a rodeo clown. There's also an interesting thing with Camilla because it's one of the only times that we have this weird sort of switching of who is the wife and who is the mistress. Because if you look at them aesthetically, Camilla should have been his wife and Diana should have been his mistress. It's one of those American hustle things where he's like he's married to who and he's having an affair with which one? Yes. So it's this weird. It just it's sort of rejiggered the way that the tabloids sort of dealt with this that Diana ended up being the vessel for a lot.

of the gossip. And Camilla was just sort of like this empty presence. There wasn't much to project on her. But I think the benefit of Camilla, though, is people could hate her and then make Diana seem more saintly by comparison. Yes, exactly. And also, I mean, Camilla didn't like Diana. Camilla treated her terribly.

Like, I don't want to sort of be the, the, you're wrong about Camilla necessarily. I think all three of these people acted terribly to each other and did not like each other in ways that manifested in extremely immature behavior. In horrible marriages. Yeah. Yeah. One of the academic articles that I read that I didn't get to bring up on the show was called, I believe, the croning of Camilla.

And it talked about how in the press, whenever they would talk about Camilla, they would always unfavorably compare her to Diana, you know, like her beak-like nose and her wrinkled eyes. And it was something that every time they brought her up, they had to mention. that she was like less attractive than Diana, right? And so it did make her seem somewhat tragic to me that, you know, she's with this guy and this like pretty functional relationship. And yet whenever she shows up in the media, they have to say like, oh, she's ugly.

And anyway, he seems really like her and they're in this crazy. Like, blah, blah, right? It's just, it's just interesting that like that was something that they had to do. And I feel like there's something weird about just constantly being compared to somebody like Diana that I think would be really hard. Especially, and this is now a transition. especially when you die at your peak and never have to age in public or, you know, you can only always be remembered favorably. Yeah.

Diana's very tragic death then catapulted her from global celebrity to icon. What even is higher than icon? Yeah, symbol goddess. I don't know. Yeah. Why do you think there are so many conspiracy theories? around her death. Because the royal family killed her using MI6 on the tunnel.

Were we not clear on our show? Did the royal family kill her? I thought that was clear. Do they kill beloved private citizens? I think my theory on this, like all conspiracy theories, is it's just such an unsatisfying end. Yeah. To this sort of larger than life figure. And then how does she die?

She dies in a drunk driving accident. It's like the most pedestrian, quotidian way that somebody can die. And she wasn't wearing her seatbelt. It's like an ad that should play for high school students. I know. And it's just like there's just something so kind of unresonant about the way that she died. It seems wrong, right? If you were making a movie about it, she would like kill herself or, you know, she would

disappear off the face of the earth due to the pain or something that sort of seems like it fits with the rest of her life. because the rest of her life was so sort of mythical. And then she dies in this way that like tens of thousands of people die every year. And it's like, oh, okay. And it's like the most common way you can. And when we talked about in the episode, like, where the idea was like, isn't it weird that she died in a car accident, you know, with this timing, et cetera, or something. And it's like, it's not weird because people die in car accidents constantly in this country, like constantly.

And inevitably, it's going to happen to some famous people. Yeah, exactly. It's like statistically the least weird way to die. And constantly in all the other countries too, by the way, in the world. Sorry. Yeah. Michael, you... I was going to bring up a point that you made on your podcast, which is so brilliant that I find myself echoing it almost constantly, that we think that significant events have to have significant causes.

Hmm. Hmm. I think you brought that up. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The idea that like, because her death had such a massive... effect on everyone, it seems like the cause also should be massive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you look at the actual factors behind it. And there's basically three main factors that the driver of the car was

drunk. He was speeding. He was going 110 miles an hour when he went into the tunnel. And Diana and Doty were not wearing their seatbelts. And if any one of those things was different, there's a chance that they wouldn't have crashed or they would have lived. But you take all three of those factors and put them together and it's just like a very normal kind of crash. And then isn't it like the the tunnel itself like it just had this little like dip and this little curve in it? Yeah, that were just like a trap basically. Yeah, it was this perfect thing where the tunnel slopes downward and curves at the same time. And so the driver was going so fast that the car almost jumped off of the road. And by the time the driver was able to sort of see that he was

going out of control and turn the wheel, they had sort of settled back down onto the road and he overcorrected. Yeah. And then he just rams into this pole. Which is how these catastrophic plane crashes sometimes happened too. We had this, you know, it was the dream liners or whatever, right? The, what was it? We had a series of high profile plane crashes in the past few years.

And basically, I think what was happening was that pilots were overcorrecting because the software was malfunctioning and telling them that they were. were in a nosedive. Yeah. And they were overcorrecting for that and just, you know, yeah, overcorrection errors. Like it just, it's so. And it's, I mean, don't you think that it's like really upsetting to realize that someone is not just mortal, but like that mortal? Yeah.

They're just sort of in the blink of an eye. Yeah. And like a few bad decisions happen. And this guy was like, I always thought he was like a little drunk, like he'd had some wine or something. But he'd had like several scotches or something. Yeah, he was three times the legal limit. He was like super drunk. And he hadn't eaten all day.

And he was taking medication that amplified the effect of the alcohol. I mean, he was very impaired. Yeah. And you get into the details of this in your podcast. Was anyone more interested in like the specifics? I think that's a wonderful source. You also go into the fact that like he wasn't an actual driver for this type of car. He was like the head of security.

He wasn't the driver. And the main thing to me is most of the conspiracy theories are a around this tunnel that, you know, they flashed a light in the tunnel that blinded him and then he swerved the wheel or there was a motorcyclist in the tunnel, whatever. And the main thing to know is that there was no reason to expect that they would be in that tunnel. If you look at the hotel where they were leaving and the apartment that they were going to, there is a straight line from one place to another. And it's not the tunnel that they went in. But the traffic was so bad on the Shamsalise that they had to take a different route. But Paris is like a winding mess.

of hundreds of streets, right? So even if you knew that they weren't going to take the Chomsalise, there's 40, 50 different routes they could have taken to Doty's apartment. So even if you were sort of the royal family and you were trying to murder Princess Diana, there's no way you would know that they would have taken that route. There's no way you could ever have planned for this. And there's just, there's also people have talked about how it's just really bad to try to kill somebody in a car because you can't expect what the driver is going to do.

there's no reason to think that flashing a light in somebody's eyes would result in a fatal car accident. It would just be like, oh, it's annoying. And then it's, okay, can you go into the basic conspiracy theories? Because, like, there's the light flashing and then there's like, General, the Royal Family did it. General, the paparazzi did it. And then I'm sure a small slice of like the Clintons did it. Yeah. Hillary Clinton, murdered, Mrs. Diana, as we all know.

I piggybacking on that, I just have one sort of additional question is, why would the royal family want to kill her at this point? The main reason that, I mean, it's actually a very sad story that one of the main purveyors of the conspiracies is Doty Fayette's father, who has like a very sort of justified beef with the royal family and with the British establishment. His claim has always been that they're super Islamophobic, which like they are. Yes. As a general principle, like, yes, these are not people who are like super. into diversity in the country. And so he has felt sort of shut out of the British establishment, which he was.

And so he has built up this. Even though he owns Herods, right? Yeah, even though, I mean. If he were white, like he probably would be like a big badger baiting, you know, big wig in the country. It's wrapped up in like wealth stuff and like old stuff that there were deals that he didn't get. And there was like they never approved his visa, which like genuinely is bullshit that

They just kind of left it at the back of the pile for decades. So he has legitimate grievances, but he builds up this idea that they didn't want her marrying a Muslim and that she may have been pregnant with Doty Al-Fayyad's baby. And so there was going to be this like royal baby who was the sort of half brother of the future king of England who was going to be a Muslim and they couldn't handle that and they freaked out. But at the time, there was no actual evidence that Diana was going to marry Doty. there was no evidence whatsoever that she was pregnant. The only evidence that she was pregnant was somebody took a photo of her in a bathing suit and she like has a tummy. Oh no. And it's like she is a middle-aged woman. Like she has like a little bit of a tummy in this photo and they're like, she's pregnant. And it's like, that's it. That's your evidence that she's pregnant. It's like one paparazzi photo. Read every single

issue of Star magazine. Every celebrity is pregnant at every given moment. I also like how you could speculate that that's evidence of someone, like, growing more comfortable with their body. Yes. And successfully, you know, being on the road to recovery from an eating disorder. Exactly. And so they're like, she's pregnant. Yeah. So the sort of the, that's like the err theory of this.

The royal family wanted her out of the picture. But it just doesn't make any sense. And it especially doesn't make sense, given that they killed her on that day. Because Doty Fayed had started telling people that he was going to ask her to marry him. but the first person he told was that morning. So if the royal family was really afraid that she was going to marry Doty Al-Fayed, they somehow would have put together this mastermind plan in like six hours? Yeah, those fuckers move slow.

They can't even plan a fox hunt in less than a month, I'm sure. And they're bad at public relate. They're bad at things. They're very bad at things. Yes. So, you know, there's a million. I mean, I read two books about it. Like you can go into all of the specific,

There's like a guy who was driving a Fiat that night who like might have been a paparazzi. But it's like they don't add up to anything. Because it's just like, well, what's the actual theory that somehow they knew that he was going to take this route? They faked the blood alcohol content of the driver. They convinced Diana not to wear a seatbelt. Like if you try to put it in chronological order what the theory actually requires, like you just can't make it plausible. It's like a lot of the OJ truth or theories you're like individually these elements could have happened maybe. but it's very, it's like impossible for me to believe in a world where all of them happen in sequence

and where people actually manage to plan it behind the scenes. Yeah, exactly. In like six hours, right? They're swapping out vials of blood. There's all kinds of telepathic communication happening in these scenarios. People like just sort of unspeakingly, uncommunicatingly all carry out plans with maximum efficiency and discretion in a way that never happens anywhere else. And you also have to imagine that if they have the power, if the royal family had the power to orchestrate this massive and immediate conspiracy coup, they would also have the power just to like have made Charles more likable. If they have the infrastructure to orchestrate this elaborate fake death, use that manpower.

They should have just used that manpower to like make people like Charles a little bit more, to make him see less of like a little bit of a wet blanket. Right. They could have blocked the panorama interview. Yeah. Like, they could have stopped the publication of this tell-all biography. Like, there's many smaller steps they could have taken to neutralize the threat of murder. To make her... To make her look like less likable also.

Yes. That, I mean, her death is a human tragedy, obviously. But on a larger scale, it made people love Diana more than they ever had. That's a thing. Yeah, exactly, which they surely would have foreseen if they can arise. arranged like a seven-hour murder conspiracy in two languages. They probably could have foreseen that this would make her more popular eventually, yeah. So, you know, with Diana having been dead for, oh, God, over two decades, where do you think

her legacy sort of stands now, just in your professional private opinions? I mean, I feel like the Crown has left people with a chance to feel like they have a firsthand experience of kind of the compressed storyline of her marriage and life and divorce and death. And it seems as if, you know, that's giving people a new access point with which to love her. Like I think that like Marie Antoinette or any number of figures who have endured, especially after an untimely passing, I think there is, she was able to, interact with the press or with the forms of media that recorded her life in a way that I think gave people at the time and continues to give them a feeling like they have some real connection with

who she was. Like I think what made her great at what she did was that, you know, despite all the performance, despite the great pain of her life a lot of the time, I feel like she did, I hate to use this word because it's just been, it's so gross now in the age of influencer culture. but like she kind of maybe was one of the people who helped invent authenticity as we know it today. Yeah. Sarah, do you think, I'm trying to come up with the most articulate way to ask this. People tend to fundamentally hate women in power for a variety of reasons. Do you think that part of the reason Diana was so beloved was because she was vulnerable and tragic?

Do you think there was a victim aspect to why she was able to remain so beloved? And I don't know the answer to that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would say yes. And I feel like my first memory of thinking critically about Diana was listening to the version of Candle in the Wind that was rewritten in tribute to her. And then realizing soon after that that was a rewritten version of a song originally about Marilyn Monroe. And I was like, that's kind of odd. I just think that's odd to have some other girl's song.

rewritten for you. I don't know why I am bothered by that. I just am. I know it's hard to write a new song, but it just feel, but it does feel like it expresses this thing of like, I mean, it's like Mike and I just record it on Miss America, and I keep thinking of that because a lot of the themes are the same.

Like she must be a virgin. She must be, you know, this age and this, you know, all these other qualifiers. And we were talking about how it feels like, It feels to me, like when you are anointed and crowned Miss America, like you were the human carrier of the spirit of Miss America, and then you show up the next year and give the crown away, and then your little husk crumbles and blows away in the wind

and falls into the beech on Atlantic City and is washed away by the surf. And then you become a mermaid. That's very poetic. Yeah, I think that's what happens. And that's why you never see them again. But just this, it feels like that song being kind of rewritten and reused fits with this idea that we have a society that just consumes women and that we somehow apologize for it by selectively mourning some of them. And that Marilyn was one who was consumed by the fame machine and Princess Diana became, you know, another. And it was just she was consumed by more, you know, the royal family and British tabloids.

than by the Hollywood treadmill or whatever it was. And her presence is one that I think carries us potentially into really meaningful experiences of thoughtfulness and empathy. But she's also very accessible because she is kind of poured into the mold that we are most conditioned to find sympathetic and lovable, partly because, you know, there's nothing less intimidating than a woman who's already dead. Like, there's a reason why so many of our beloved young women in society are murder victims. You know, they're not very uppity, are they?

And it's also, like, the media then loves this idea of like, oh, we all killed her. Yes. Oh, my God. The mea culpa, the self-flagellation of the mea culpa, I think, is an instinct that everyone kind of likes to indulge in. Let's not blame the very specific tabloids and very specific editors who were, like, buying photos of her that were taking. and at night and clearly invasive. Like, no, no, no, let's not blame the people who actually made decisions. Let's blame everyone who ever bought a magazine.

It was you, Mabel. Like, no. Mabel Jenkins. Let's blame literally everybody instead of, like, the eight people who actually made her life terrible. No, it was all of us. It was society. I think my big thing with Diana is, you know, you can talk about the authenticity in this sort of clinical way.

But, you know, one of the things we mentioned on the show was that diagnosis, of bulimia, I believe quadrupled in Britain in the early 1990s once she started talking about this because people were finally getting diagnosed, people were finally talking about it. And I think to me, as somebody who lived in Europe for 11 years, I lived in Britain, there's a huge problem with sort of official aristocratic European society that does not talk about stuff. And this was one of the things that Diana really struggled with that she would go to these dinner parties and you're not allowed to talk about anything real. You're not allowed to reveal anything of yourself.

you just make this excruciating superficial small talk for hours and hours and it never ends. And I think one of the things that she really did was break that habit and point out that this isn't serving anybody. Like who is it helping for us not to talk about what we're struggling with? Why would we do this to ourselves? Why do we raise our kids this way? Right. And so I just think that it's a model that the solution to the things that Diana struggled with in her life is not to push them under the rug. it's to bring them out into light and talk about how you're not a broken person for struggling with an eating disorder.

You're not a broken person for like still dealing with the trauma of your weird cold upbringing and your terrible sandwiches. Like you're allowed to talk about this stuff. And so I just think if there's a model, it's really like bringing things into the light and talking about yourself as a whole person. But you are beautiful and you wear these outfits and everything. Like you can talk about the sparkly stuff, but you can also talk about the dark stuff. And that doesn't take away. And one thing doesn't take away from the other. That's beautifully said.

And I also want to go on the record finally and say, like, I reject the dichotomy that people who are interested in, like, fashion and clothes are automatically frivolous. Oh, yeah. Like, I think her fashion is interesting and worth, as worth talking about as Prince Charles's non-expertise on Welsh economic policy. Great men are interested in sports. Yeah. There is nothing more frivolous than like knowing sports statistics. Like you're not going to talk shit on somebody who knows the names of a couple designers. If you can tell me what like Cal Ripkin hit in 1984 or whatever, sorry, it's all frivolous.

You don't get to talk shit on other people's frivolous stuff. Also, I got to say, I don't know how men look in England. Maybe they look great. Who knows? In America, men look awful. And so many of them could just learn how to dress better just a little bit, just five to 10 percent better. Because, like, quality men's wear is a beautiful thing. Like, men can dress gorgeously.

Like, watch Robert De Niro and Casino, if you want my point to be probably proved to you. Not the movie I thought you were going to bring up in an example. Yeah, not the best dressed men I might think. Listen, Robert DeNiro has more costume changes in that movie than Sharon Stone. And I think he's probably accessible on the scale of masculinity. But he wears, like, beautiful, loud suits. But the point is that, like, men could look so much better and have so much of the passive power that comes from looking good.

But they're just terrified of it. And it's hilarious to me because you could just, you know, it's right there in front of you, but you're afraid of taking it. And I argue if you're rich, it's pretty easy to be hot. Oh, yeah. You just hire a couple people. You're like, tell me, give me a skincare routine, dress me, give me a capsule wardrobe. Thank you.

Yeah. So on that note, before we go, I do want to ask each of you what your favorite iconic Diana fashion moment is. Ooh. Do you have a favorite Diana look that comes to mind? I know what Sarah's going to say. Do you? I think you do. Yeah.

Okay. So my favorite look is that picture you showed me, Mike, where she's wearing mom jeans. And a T-shirt. Yeah, I knew you now. The Des Moines Wine Mom, yeah. When was that photo? I think I said Duluth. But either way, when was that photo taken? That was right after the divorce.

So I believe 94. Yeah, and of course these weren't mom jeans at the time. These were very fashionable jeans of the kind that, you know, Meg Ryan was wearing in 1994. But she's wearing like high cut, you know, just like. But it is. It's like a very like Meg Ryan. kind of a look. It's like, these are my jeans. I am a mom. And then like a, you know, and I'm sure these were all made by designers. And then a t-shirt with stars on it. And she just looks like she could

be the former princess of Wales or she could be like the prettiest mom in Duluth, Minnesota, like picking up her kids from gymnastics. If I want to Google, if I want to Google this picture, what do you think I, what's the best, most effective search? Mom Janes. I think honestly, Princess Diana Mom Jains. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Diana Mom Jeans, star t-shirt. And she's like walking downstairs. It's a white t-shirt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. She looks like she could be at the Mall of America. Yes. I love it. We mean that in the best possible way. Oh, yeah. I, I, look, I wish I was in Minnesota right now. Yeah, I am a huge fan of Duluth Wine Moms. And she looks better than any of us could trying to be a Duluth Wine Mom. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And just,

That she's like that, I mean, I know that mom jeans has acquired a pejorative connotation. I think that's unfair. And I feel as if, like, this is a picture of her being a mom, which is an opportunity she was really deprived of for a lot of her marriage. That is a good segue. I'm superseding you, Michael, and doing mine now. A look that I love because it feels very 2020 or like 2021. Also, sort of a mom gene, like a light-washed gene boot. brown boots, a crewneck sweatshirt, a blazer, and a hat.

Oh, I know the photo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a balloon on her shirt. I think she's also with William. The British Lung Foundation. Oh, yeah, there we go. British Lung Foundation. She just looks very sporty and chic, but casual in a way that I wish I could emulate,

and it feels very modern. I think even like I was going to say Hilaria, not Hilari Baldwin. Who's Justin Bieber's wife? Haley Beaver, yeah. I think Haley Bieber re-reated some of these looks for like a fashion script. Oh, that's great. And it looks really good. She killed a white sweatshirt.

She's wearing a white sweatshirt under a blazer with a baseball cap on. Like this is like Billy Crystal at a baseball game almost. But yeah, and it's like, you know, yeah, she like, she knew how to put items together, didn't she? She was also really good in the look of like a crewneck sweatshirt with bike shirt. shorts. She looked really good doing that. I think this is such a cliche, but mine would be the infamous revenge dress. Oh, and please describe the context of the revenge dress. So those might be unfamiliar. This is why I think it's so important because I don't know that much about fashion. I can't say much about the actual dress itself. But it's such a metaphor for the way that women can

use fashion as power. So the entire thing was Prince Charles was on this sort of PR kick. He was doing a documentary for the BBC that was supposed to humanize him and make him seem cool and down to earth and authentic. And I have seen it and it does not be any of those things. But he was convinced that it would. And so Diana had gotten this invitation to go to the serpentine gallery and she had turned it down whatever I'm busy that night. She finds out this BBC documentary is airing. And she's like, on second thought I am going to go. And she shows up in this cracker jack knockout black dress with like shoulders out and this big necklace. And she's, She just looks like a billion bucks.

And she did this deliberately to knock Prince Charles off the front pages. She wanted to take the nation's attention away from him and put it on her. And it worked. All of the front pages the next day are like, knock out Diana. And Prince Charles is on like page 17, just like his dumb Welsh speech. Prince Charles said some words. Yeah. And it's like, I can still do this.

And I just think it's like it's such a moment of her understanding. herself as a symbol in ways that she didn't at the beginning of the marriage, in ways that she didn't at the beginning of her career. She's like, this is the way that I can communicate with the public. This is the way that I can get my message across. Sometimes it's literally just me showing up to something in a dress. That is enough. And so to me, it's just such a confidence moment. Her totally understanding and using the power that people ascribe to her gave to her. Yes. And it's so rare to see a woman do that. And sort of, you know, women throughout her life, she was criticized for being frivolous, like, oh, she's always shopping and she's doing all this

fashion stuff. And it's like, that's literally her job. It's absurd to criticize her for understanding her job. How dare she not achieve peace in the Falklands? Yes, exactly. And she's going to these events where she has to change into different formal clothes three or four times a day. So that requires a lot of shopping. Like, you just have to have a lot of dresses for that. Also, that's the thing that people were writing about her and talking about her a lot. In interviews, no one was asking her her take on the Falklands because she's not an expert on the Falklands. She's like just this random woman basically. Yeah.

Like shows up at things. It's fine. Yeah. And so this was a rare moment of a woman in public life actually using that kind of scrutiny to send a message. And it's just like a nice little power moment. I love that. I think that is a perfect place to end.

Sarah, Michael, thank you so much for joining me. Where can people find you on the internet if they're inclined to hear more of your wisdom and perspective. Our podcast is on all of your major podcast apps. It's called You're Wrong About. And you can find Sarah also on YR Dads, which is also on your telephone. And you can find Mike also on maintenance phase. You know?

Yeah. And so you've talked about Dr. Oz recently. I've talked about the Dark Night recently. We have a few other interests sometimes. Yes. Perfect. And I think both dads and the public obsession with weight and body. bodies also feeds into the Diana issue. So this is all a topical bubble. She had a dad and she was on diets,

you know. Well, thank you so much for joining me. Have a, have a good one. How do people sign off of these things? I'm usually talking alone to myself in a closet. Fair thee well, Dana. I know. Bless you. God bless Princess Diana. Yeah. God bless us everyone. Everyone. Perfect. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio. and Grimmin Mild from Aaron Manky. The show is written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Manky, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams,

and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Noblebloodtales.com. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions, you can have like a strong stance, and then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app.

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.