Roslyn said:
The impression I got from watching "Diana - Story of a Princess" and other things I've seen and read was that Diana played a game of cat and mouse with the photographers from the start.
Remember when she was with Charles by the stream while he was fishing, she saw the photographers across the bank and walked away then watched them in her mirror she held out from behind a tree. I always thought that was rather unusual behaviour, and it got the photographers' attention and piqued their curiosity. I've never understood why she did that; that behaviour drew attention to her and provided the basis for a story far more interesting than "and she sat watching Charles fishing, laughing and chatting". Why did she have to hide? She was Charles' guest and he was no doubt the one who had decided where to sit and fish. He should have been the one to initiate any hiding if required.
When the photographers were lurking about outside the kindergarten where she worked as an assistant and the house where she worked as a baby-sitter and they stalked her as she was travelling to and from work and taking her charge out to the park, she would sometimes look at the photographers and wave and sometimes talk to them, but at other times she'd put her head down and walk briskly. She seemed to always be conscious of their presence and didn't seem to behave "normally". I think her former employer at the kindergarten said Diana would volunteer to go out to buy the lunches or milk at the shop when she didn't have to, thereby providing the photographers with more opportunities to photograph her looking at them and running. I think her behaviour, probably unwittingly, attracted the photographers closer to her - 'let's see what we can get her to do today' - and of course they kept coming and eventually got far too close and there was that scene where they crowded around her car and impeded her flight and she got upset and I think there was a warning from BP.
I put it down to youth and naivete. She was too young to handle that attention on her own. She didn't have the maturity to put their attention in perspective or the ability to keep them at bay herself, and the photographers took blatant advantage of her. She needed guidance and I don't think anyone provided it for her.
Kate is much older and more worldly and apparently more self-confident and I don't think she is likely to make the same mistakes. And of course Kate has all the photographic evidence of Diana available to her to learn lessons from the past.
Love your thougtful analysis Roslyn, but I beg to differ on a few points. I think that what piqued the press's curiosity regarding Diana in the first place was their realization that this was someone different, someone clever, cunning and intelligent. The indicent with Diana using her mirror to watch those watching her: I have to hand that to her, a 19-year-old at the time. For a young, so-called naive inexperienced person, that's quite the thing to come up with--I for one wouldn't have thought of it! I agree about your thoughts on the cat and mouse game, but all the same I think Diana did amazingly well considering no one was guiding her.
In fact, to go one step further, it has been said multiple times that it was the very fact that Diana managed to have the media, and thus the public, fall in love with her, that put Charles & company on the spot and accellerated Charles's decision to ask her to be his spouse. A marriage made by the media, many commentators have said, and I agree with that. I also agree with those who have speculated that Diana instinctively, intuitively, knew exactly what she was doing, that by courting and playing along with the media in her unique, clever way, she'd win the game ultimately.
I also agree that it came back to haunt her, and ultimately resulted in her way too early demise..
And this very turn of events, from Diana's days as a kindergarten teacher to her being chased to death by the paparazzi, is what the, in my opinion very staid-seeming, Kate has learned her own lessons and drawn her own conclusions from. Hence the more-placid-than-though impression I've so far had of Kate. Which may or may not be accurate, but that's another topic.
Again, I agree with your analysis although I think Diana was more clever and inventive than you give her credit for. And I also am convinced that it was this inventiveness, this display of unique intelligence that so endeared Diana to the paparazzi in those early days. Because they realized that this wasn't merely a beautiful and young 'english rose' who photographed extremely well. No, the media very early on realized they'd discovered a unique star in the making. It's this very quality I think Kate is missing, but she's perhaps deliberately displaying and exaggerating a boring front. She and William have learned what NOT to do from the Diana saga.
The result, in my opinion, is a couple more seemingly boring than the current rulers of Liechtenstein. Which is probably exactly the result they're after to be left alone and live their lives the way they want to, so good for them.
