The royals - Kitty Kelley [268]
Publicly perceived as dishonorable, the Earl Spencer was no longer able to defend his sister credibly, so eighteen-year-old Prince William stepped forward and spoke out publicly for the first time. Standing under the oak trees on his father’s Highgrove estate, “Wills,” as Diana had called her blue-eyed son, faced flashing cameras from a hand-picked press corps to express himself about the publication of Patrick Jephson’s book. Disguising his animosity toward the media, whom he blamed for his mother’s death, William said, “Of course, Harry and I are both quite upset about it, that our mother’s trust has been betrayed and that even now she is still being exploited. But, um, I don’t really want to say any more than that.”
Not even the winsome Prince could stanch the barrage of tell-alls blasting out of Britain from Diana’s former lovers, confidantes, retainers, healers, and psychics. Secret video tapes of her talking about her anguished marriage to Prince Charles were made public. In one tape Diana claims she heard the Queen and Prince Philip discussing whether or not she was mentally ill. On another, she said she heard Philip ask, “How is that mad cow?” She said, “That hurt so much. They never understood or supported me.”
Two years after the book by her former private secretary came another entitled Diana: Closely Guarded Secret by her former bodyguard Ken Wharfe, who also repeated the Princess’s need to travel with “a little vibrator.” The Queen, according to London newspapers, was “deeply concerned,” “very perturbed,” and “shocked that a royal protection officer should betray a confidence in this way.”
Her Majesty was in for a bumpy ride. Every day her subjects were being hammered with regular press reports of malfeasance and mismanagement within the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund run by Diana’s sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale. The fund, which collected over $150 million in Diana’s memory, was dedicated to honoring her with contributions to her favorite charities, plus establishing a monument in the heart of London. But racked by lawsuits, fights, firings, bureaucratic entanglements, and accusations of squandered money, the fund neglected to contribute to Diana’s charities and instead became embroiled in a costly lawsuit against the Franklin Mint for reproducing Diana bride dolls and memorial plates. After six years of litigation, the Franklin Mint won and then countersued the memorial fund for “malicious mischief.” The case was finally settled when the U.K. fund agreed to donate $25 million to several U.S. charities, including $1 million to research obesity in American children—a bizarre tribute to the Princess who suffered from bulimia.
Shortly before the Queen was to celebrate her golden jubilee—fifty years on the throne—in 2002, her sister, Princess Margaret, died, after suffering from the effects of lung cancer, strokes, phlebitis, and paralysis. She finally succumbed on February 9, 2002, to congestive heart failure, with her former husband and two children by her bedside. There was no state pomp to bury Margaret, whose quiet funeral was fifty years to the day after the funeral of her beloved father, King George VI, in the same St. George’s Chapel in Windsor. It was assumed that she would want to be buried alongside him, but she had insisted on cremation in Slough, an industrial town a few miles from Windsor Castle. In accordance with her wishes, no friends or family were to be present, only members of her staff and palace officials. She asked that her remains be set to rest in St. George’s Chapel near her father’s. The Times of London called her decision the “final defiance of convention in a life of mold-breaking.”
A few bouquets were laid outside her residence at Kensington Palace,