Introducing Princess Diana’s Last Boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed

Dec 30, 2021 by apost team

Princess Diana was loved by not only the British public but universally by people all over the world. She used her status and influence to enact good, spending much of her time campaigning for humanitarian causes that improved the lives of others. She sat with people who were ill and helped to break the stigma of the then-new diseases HIV and AIDS. These are just a few of the many reasons why Diana is remembered as the “People’s Princess.”

Diana’s early death on Aug. 31, 1997, was a heartbreaking moment that devastated people all over the world. Since then, she has been remembered through her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. There have also been many tributes and memorials dedicated to her over the years in hopes of carrying on her legacy and spreading her message far and wide. To this day, Diana is still often talked about and even featured in various media outlets, whether for her charitable deeds, impeccable fashion sense, or what she was like as a mother.

During her life, Diana was famously linked to Prince Charles, the man she had been married to for 15 years before their marriage came to an end following his affair. Public scrutiny and backlash ultimately caused Diana to want to leave the royal family in the hopes of pursuing a more private life. However, her relationship with Charles was not her only publicized relationship. Her last boyfriend was Dodi Al-Fayed, who sadly died in the tragic car accident with her. Read on to find out more about their relationship.

Born on July 1, 1961, Diana Spencer grew up close to the royal family. While working as a nursery teacher’s assistant in 1981, she became engaged to Charles, the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II, and it wasn’t long before the pair was officially married. Their wedding took place at St. Paul’s Cathedral later that year, making her the official Princess of Wales. The couple later welcomed two sons, William and Harry.

Despite being a princess, Diana’s life was anything but a fairytale. While the general public and commonwealth first enthusiastically welcomed the princess, they turned against her in later years. During her time as an active member of the royal family, Diana struggled. There were many issues within her marriage to Charles, and the two ended up separating for many years before their divorce was officially finalized. 

Diana went from being the center of attention and a key figure in the public eye to withdrawing herself from that type of lifestyle following her marital separation. She kept up with her responsibilities and made the occasional appearance for royal engagements, but her presence was not as prominent as it once was.

During this difficult time, the media appeared to be on Charles’ side, while Diana received harsh criticism for the way she acted. While she took time to grow on her own, Diana found her voice. According to iNews, Diana had worked on finding the courage to speak up about the problems she was having by using the media to her advantage.

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Diana’s 1995 BBC interview with journalist Martin Bashir left her feeling inadequate after she revealed her mental health issues and struggles within her marriage but received little support. iNews reported that many people believed that the Princess of Wales should have “garnered pity as the doe-eyed victim of the voracious press,” but she instead rebelled, committing “crimes against royalty.”

Throughout multiple periods of their relationship, Diana had expressed that there were three people in her relationship, pointing to her husband’s affair with Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall. Both Diana and Charles had public interviews detailing this struggle, but while Charles was protected by the media, Diana was shamed for speaking so poorly about a royal family member.

Nicholas Soames claimed that Diana “was in the advanced stages of paranoia,” as per iNews. He was a government minister at the time. Feminist Bea Campbell once said that “they represented (Diana’s) mutiny as madness.” During her BBC interview with Bashir, Diana talked about her personal experiences and hardships but was mostly criticized for bringing such issues to light. It seemed like the media was very much so on Charles’ side and supported him for coming forward about his affair; the media had turned on Diana for expressing her own thoughts and feelings regarding the very same topic.

Between 1992 and 1993, the Princess of Wales hired a voice coach, Peter Settlelen, to help her better develop her public speaking voice. She had worked on being a better public figure, while she had also spoken bitterly about Charles and the way he treated her in their relationship. 

In December 1993, Diana made the decision to withdraw from the public but partially returned in the following year for the occasional commitment and appearance. The princess continued to work on herself and enlisted the help of voice coach Stewart Pearce. 

“She knew that her voice was not powerful,” Pearce told People in May 2021. “She knew that her voice was a voice of submission, not a voice of triumph. She wanted to find that.” After working on her confidence and sticking with Pearce, Diana found her voice of courage and triumph, especially while giving public speeches.

Although Diana is no longer with us, her attitude, dedication, and hard work have contributed to helping many people across the world overcome their own obstacles. People reported that the speech Harry gave when he left the royal family was extremely similar to his late mother’s, showcasing just how impactful her actions really were.

During her life, Diana always made her children her first priority and frequently included them in her royal outings. The Independent reported that Diana took William with her on her first overseas tour in 1983 when he was only nine months old. In April 1985, Charles and Diana took both of their sons on a 17-day tour of Italy; Harry was only seven months old at the time.

The Princess of Wales also did many normal activities with her sons, such as going to the movies, visiting amusement parks, and enjoying standard day-to-day activities with each other. Harry explained that her motto was: “You can be as naughty as you want, just don’t get caught.”

No matter how many years pass, it’s evident that the Princess of Wales will never be forgotten. Following Diana’s tragic death, many of her family members paid tribute to honor the late princess. On July 1, 2021, William and Harry came together at Kensington Palace to commemorate and unveil a statue of their mother on what would have been her 60th birthday. 

The Spencer family has also done their part to pay tribute to Diana. Charles Spencer, Diana’s brother, took to Instagram to post a photo of the Spencer family home that flew a flag at half-mast in honor of his sister’s passing. Spencer has continued to be quite thoughtful when it comes to remembering his sister on her birthday and death anniversary. 

According to Hello! Magazine, Diana’s brother said:

“I remember my father always used to talk about the day Diana was born actually, the July, 1, 1961, and it was a sweltering hot day and this wonderful daughter appeared and it’s so funny to be of an age now where your slightly older sister is 60 but yes, it will be an emotional day but, you know, I think it will be a tribute to a much missed and much loved sister, mother, whatever.”

Diana’s final resting place is at Althorp House, a place that Spencer visits often. He said:

“I do, and every landmark day, such as birthday, or Mother’s Day I always take flowers, of course, and I do go to a lot and take the children over. It’s an oasis of calm, actually. It’s a lovely place to go.”

In June 2021, a team of medical professionals spoke out to explain what happened in the early hours of the morning on the day that the Princess of Wales died. The Independent reported that the doctors said they tried “everything possible” to revive her. Dr. MonSef Dahman was a general surgeon at the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris and was told upon arrival that he would be treating Diana.

“It only took that moment for all this unusual activity to become clear to me,” he said. Dahman continued, “For any doctor, any surgeon, it is of very great importance to be faced with such a young woman who is in this condition. But of course even more so if she is a princess.” After taking an X-ray, the doctor found that Diana was suffering from “very serious internal bleeding,” so he tried to remove the excess fluid from her chest cavity and gave her an external heart massage and emergency surgery to “enable her to breathe.”

The Independent reported that Diana had suffered a significant tear in her pericardium, which protects the heart. Professor Alain Pavie, a heart surgeon, arrived to help save Diana and discovered that she had a tear in her upper left pulmonary vein. Although Pavie was able to stitch up the lesion, Diana’s heart had already stopped and would not restart.

Professors Riou and Pavie, and Dahman did all they could for a good hour to help save the princess, including electric shock, but nothing worked. Dahman revealed that not being able to save the Princess of Wales affected him “very much.”

Another person had been in the tragic car accident that took Diana’s life: her then-boyfriend, Fayed. Fayed was known for being an Egyptian film producer, as well as the son of a billionaire named Mohamed Al-Fayed. 

Fayed and Diana had just started dating a few weeks earlier and spent a total of nine days together on a romantic vacation. The couple actually started their last day together with a relaxed breakfast on Italy’s Emerald Coast, located on the island of Sardinia. The pair had been spotted holding hands and laughing at the time.

Later that day, Diana told a friend named Richard Kay that she was going to completely withdraw from public life within the next 12 months, something that she had already slowly been doing. According to the Washington Post, it was believed that the Princess of Wales wanted to focus on her private life with Fayed, and he had planned to propose to her that coming evening. Sadly, Fayed’s hopes to marry the princess never materialized.

As soon as the couple arrived in Paris that afternoon, they were quickly spotted by paparazzi, who seemingly followed Diana and Fayed’s every move. Growing frustrated with the increase in paparazzi as the day went on, Fayed tried to figure out how to get himself and Diana back to his apartment, where he planned to propose. The couple managed to slip out the back door of the Ritz and entered a car that was driven by Henri Paul, a hotel security officer who was drunk, unbeknownst to Diana and Fayed. 

The paparazzi quickly caught on to the plan and chased the car through the Parisian streets. At 12:23 a.m., the car struck a wall before colliding with a pillar. Fayed died instantly. According to USA Today, Diana was initially alert but later went into cardiac arrest and died a few hours later.

In 2005, a bronze statue was unveiled at Harrods, a department store in London, to honor Diana and Fayed eight years after they died. According to CNN, Mohamed was the owner of Harrods and wanted to create something to remember his son and Diana. Mohamed said:

“Many thousands of people have written to me over the last several years thanking me for remembering the lives of Dodi and Diana with the memorial at Harrods. In the absence of any further official memorial for these two innocent victims… I wanted to keep their spirits alive with a further gesture.”

Unfortunately, not everyone was a fan of the lovers. According to a 2010 article from the Guardian, Tony Blair – the former Prime Minister of the UK who gave Diana the moniker as the “People’s Princess” – had told Diana that her relationship with Fayed was a problem. “It had not been all that easy,” he said, explaining that the Princess of Wales did not like him interfering with her relationship. 

Diana’s good deeds and legacy have continued to live on, as well as her previous dating history and complications within her personal life. Although she and Fayed did not get much time together, it’s clear that they loved each other and will continue to be remembered.

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