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12 Conclusion
This Master’s Thesis is a biographical study into the life of Lady Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales,
with a special focus on the victimhood of Diana at the hands of the British Royal Family. The
intention was to explore the way in which Diana may be viewed as a victim of the Royal Family,
while also considering whether she herself played a part in her own victimization and in that way
led to her feeling like a victim of the Royal Family and even her own life. This research into her life
was done by doing a limited biographical study on Diana’s life that has a special focus on a certain
aspect of Diana’s life, in this case Diana as a victim. In other words, the research method was a
biographical study of a person’s life, in this instance the life of Diana. However, the biographical
study of Diana’s life in this thesis is by no means a comprehensive account of Diana’s life, because
only the factors that were of greatest importance to this thesis were written about, since it would
have been impossible to discuss every area of Diana’s life in detail, as it would provide far too much
information considering the scope and focus of this thesis. In addition, victimology in its wider sense
served as the theoretical background of the research. This thesis shows how Diana may have been
a victim in some aspects of her life in relation to the Royal Family, but it also considers the way she
herself played a part in her own victimization and that way led to her feeling like a victim of the
Royal Family. Overall, it was found that Diana may have been a victim of the Royal Family, but also
that she was in no way a passive victim as she herself played an active part in her victimization.
Ever since her childhood, Diana had been affected by a fear of rejection and abandonment, and the
instances that greatly affected her later life and her own perceptions of it were the fact that she
thought that as her parents had been desperate to have an heir to the title and that she should have
been a boy instead of a girl, and her parent’s divorce and her mother leaving her and her siblings
when she was just six years old. Because it had been of utmost importance to Diana’s parents that
they would produce an heir, Diana became convinced that she should have been a boy and that she
was a disappointment to her parents and regarded as a lesser being because of her gender. Later in
life, the fact that Diana saw herself as the girl who was supposed to be a boy assumed enormous
significance in her mind and she viewed it as the first rejection of many, which harmed her self-
esteem. In addition, Diana, in part, blamed herself for the breakdown in her parents’ relationship,
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because, had she been the boy her parents had hoped for, things between them might have been
different. Furthermore, the legal battle that had surrounded the divorce and the custody case had
a profound impact on Diana. The divorce and the fact that her mother left her and her siblings when
Diana was just six years old was an instance that greatly affected Diana’s later life and her own
perceptions of it, because her mother leaving led to Diana feeling like she had been abandoned,
which stayed with her throughout her life. It was this feeling of abandonment that later caused
Diana to often see herself as a victim. It also developed in her a strong desire for love, fear of
abandonment, and an intense dread of divorce. Diana was determined that she herself would not
let that happen to her nor to her children under any circumstances. This determination can be
viewed as an important factor in her future relationships and her marriage. Moreover, her mother
leaving them meant that there was little to no maternal contact between the children and the
mother, which furthered Diana’s feelings of rejection, and when Diana did saw her mother, she was
torn between her parents, which resulted in Diana sustaining long-lasting psychological damage. In
addition, her childhood also left her feeling like she had everything that she could possibly want
except the love and attention that she desperately wanted and searched for during the following
years. The utmost effect of Diana’s turbulent childhood was the sense that she could not depend
on either of her parents, which left her feeling insecure, which resulted in Diana eventually
becoming obsessively determined in her search for a provider of the continuous love and
understanding that she needed but lacked in her childhood. The fact that Diana’s father sent her
away from home to boarding schools further added to her feelings of rejection and added to her
anxiety about abandonment whenever she was away from the people who were close to her.
In addition, during her schooling, Diana developed an inferiority complex because of her academical
failures, and she also felt socially inadequate as the social life at home did not provide her with
adequate social skills that were thought to be important to girls that came from aristocratic
backgrounds. Diana was constantly worried about her average academic abilities and saw herself as
a failure that was not good at anything. Moreover, Diana was uncomfortable with anything that was
unknown to her and she felt unsettled when away from her comfortable group of friends as anything
unusual threatened her emotional balance. As a result, her life was always very limited, both socially
and in terms of what she did, up until her courtship and later on engagement and marriage to Prince
Charles.
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