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entitled to be called “Her Royal Highness” (Brown, 2008, p. 410). Furthermore, on 28 February,
Prince Charles and Diana had a private meeting at St James’s Palace (Bradford, 2007, p. 305). It was
an emotional forty-five-minute meeting during which Diana agreed to a divorce, but only if her
conditions were met (Brown, 2008, p. 411). After the meeting, Diana released a press statement
regarding the meeting (Bradford, 2007, p. 305). The press statement said that Diana had agreed to
her husband’s request for divorce, but that she would continue to be involved in all decisions
relating to the children, would remain at Kensington Palace with offices in St James’s Palace, and
would continue to be known as Diana, Princess of Wales, indicating that she had agreed to surrender
the HRH title (Brown, 2008, pp. 411-412). However, the Queen’s officials were outraged by this
breach of confidentiality and issued a statement of their own, pointing out that the things Diana had
told were decisions, were in fact merely requests, and that details about the divorce remained
undecided as of then (Bradford, 2007, p. 305). In addition, Diana used a trusted source to leak the
accusation that the Queen and Prince Charles had pressured her into giving up the title HRH (Smith,
2007, p. 301), which the Palace later insisted was Diana’s idea (Bradford, 2007, p. 304).
Despite all that, negotiations between Prince Charles’s and Diana’s lawyers proceeded slowly: there
was a general agreement about joint custody of William and Harry, as well as Diana’s continued
residence at Kensington Palace, but they had not yet agreed on the money settlement, location of
Diana’s office, her future role, or her title (Smith, 2007, p. 302). In April, Prince Charles’s lawyers
were presented with Diana’s final terms, and in May Diana met with the Queen to tell her that unless
her terms were met, she would withdraw her consent to divorce, but instead of agreeing to Diana’s
ultimatum, the Queen told Prince Charles’s lawyers and advised them to take all the time they
needed (Brown, 2008, p. 414). According to Smith (2007), on July 4, Prince Charles presented Diana
with his settlement offer: Diana would receive a lump sum of £15 million plus more than £400,000
a year to underwrite her office. Her title would be “Diana, Princess of Wales”, and a statement
issued by the Palace emphasized that she would be regarded as a member of the Royal Family, and
as a semi-royal, she would be invited to state and national occasions, and, in those circumstances,
she would be treated as if she still had the title HRH. Diana would continue to live in Kensington
Palace, where her office would also be located. Diana could decide her public role herself, although
any working trips overseas would require consultation with the Foreign Office and the Queen’s
permission, which was a standard practice for members of the Royal Family. Diana would also keep
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several important royal benefits: she would have access to royal flights and to the state apartments
in St James’s Palace for entertaining, and she would also have the use of all the royal jewellery, that
were to be eventually passed on to her sons’ wives. In addition, as a part of the settlement, both
Diana and Prince Charles would sign a confidentiality agreement prohibiting them from discussing
the terms of the divorce or any details of their life together. Diana formally agreed to the terms just
four days later (p. 304). Diana wanted to do a joint TV announcement on their formal agreement to
divorce, but Prince Charles refused (Brown, 2008, p. 415). On 15 July, Diana and Prince Charles filed
the decree nisi, a document declaring that their marriage would be dissolved six weeks later, on 28
August, when the decree nisi became decree absolute (Bradford, 2007, p. 306). Now that the
marriage was formally over, both Prince Charles and Diana were profoundly sad (Brown, 2008, p.
415). On 30 August 1996, an entry appeared in the London Gazette, a traditional place for royal
pronouncements, stating: “The Queen has been pleased by Letters Patent under the Great Seal of
the Realm dated 21 August 1996 to declare that a former wife… of a son of a Sovereign of these
Realms, of a son of a son of a Sovereign and of the eldest living son of the eldest son of the Prince
of Wales shall not be entitled to hold and enjoy the style, title or attribute of Royal Highness
(Bradford, 2007, pp. 306-307).”
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9 After the divorce
Since September 1995, Diana had been in a relationship with Hasnat Khan who was a Pakistani heart
surgeon (Smith, 2007, p. 298). Diana had met Khan while on a visit to his workplace, the Royal
Brompton Hospital in west London, on 1 September 1995, and their relationship continued on and
off, until on 30 July 1997, Diana and Khan met at Kensington Palace and ended the relationship
(Snell, 2013, pp. 91, 184). However, Khan tried to call Diana on the night she died but could not get
through to her (Brown, 2008, p. 498), and he was invited to her funeral (Bradford, 2007, p. 385).
Nevertheless, despite her relationship with Khan, Diana was still lonely, and the weekends when the
boys were with their father were the hardest for her (Bradford, 2007, p. 353). She tried to keep the
boys close and called them nearly every day while they were away at boarding school and took them
on vacations whenever she could, but the boys had become to prefer their father’s country pursuits
to their mother’s urban life (Smith, 2007, pp. 313-314). In addition, Prince William had become close
to both the Queen and Prince Philip, which pleased Diana, but also made her jealous (Brown, 2008,
p. 435).
Diana’s relationship with Hasnat Khan as well as her divorce, helped Diana distance herself from her
previous thoughts of Prince Charles and Camilla, and as a result she no longer felt resentful of
Camilla, even sympathizing with the bad publicity her relationship with Prince Charles generated
(Bradford, 2007, p. 324). In addition, the relations between Diana and Prince Charles became less
strained during the months that followed their divorce, and Prince Charles visited Diana from time
to time at Kensington Palace, while Diana occasionally called him to solicit his advice (Smith, 2007,
p. 326). Diana had learned how to love Prince Charles as a friend and as an adult, and there was an
undoubted softening between them and a new warmth: they had discovered a mutual friendship,
which if she had lived, would doubtless have matured further (Snell, 2013, pp. 4, 211-212).
A little after her divorce from Prince Charles became official, Diana decided to auction her old
wardrobe for charity per Prince William’s suggestion (Bradford, 2007, p. 339) and cleaned her
closets of her old clothes which she no longer had any need for (Brown, 2008, p. 421). As a result,
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