75
in January 1997, Diana announced that she would be holding a sale of her dresses that June (Snell,
2013, p. 148) for the benefit of the National AIDS Trust (Bradford, 2007, p. 339). Diana attended
preview parties for the sale of her clothes in both London and New York (Snell, 2013, p. 170), but to
avoid the media circus she did not attend the auction itself, which was held on 25 June (Bradford,
2007, p. 353). Nevertheless, the auction of seventy-nine of Diana’s dresses proved to be a huge
success, raising over two million pounds for charity (Snell, 2013, p. 175). In addition, the auction was
a creative way to make money for a charity, as well as a powerful statement that Diana was putting
her royal life behind her (Smith, 2007, p. 324).
According to Snell (2013), in late May 1997, Mohamed Fayed, father of Dodi Fayed, had invited
Diana and the boys on holiday, and Diana had accepted his offer in early June. Because that summer
was the first summer since Diana’s divorce from Prince Charles, she wanted to give her children a
good holiday. She thought that the boys would enjoy themselves in the company of the Fayed
children, and their need for privacy would be assured by the tight security arrangements around the
villa (pp. 177-178). On 11 July, Diana and the boys travelled to the Fayed’s villa, the Castel Sainte
Hélène, located at St Tropez (Bradford, 2007, pp. 360-361). However, the paparazzi arrived there
less than a day after they did (Smith, 2007, p. 336). Nevertheless, as long as Diana and the boys
stayed inside the estate they would be guaranteed their privacy, but as soon as they went down to
the private beach they became targets for the paparazzi, and, as a result, three days after her arrival,
on 14 July, Diana who was tired of the intrusion, took matters into her own hands and gave an
impromptu press conference at sea for the British press (Snell, 2013, p. 178). It was there that Diana
was reacquainted with Mohamed Fayed’s son, Dodi Fayed, whom she had first met ten years before
when he had played alongside Prince Charles in a polo match (Morton, 2010, p. 264). Diana and the
boys returned to London on 20 July (Bradford, 2007, p. 363). That same evening William and Harry
went to Balmoral, and Diana knew it would be a month before she would see them again (Snell,
2013, p. 181). The boys had not enjoyed their holiday with the Fayed’s and they had hated the
publicity they had received during it (Junor, 2012, p. 105).
It was during the boys’ absence that Diana began to see Dodi Fayed. On July 26, Diana flew
to Paris
for a day to see him (Bradford, 2007, p. 364), and later he invited Diana on a six-day cruise to Corsica
77
10 Death and funeral
Diana died at the age of 36 on Sunday 31 August 1997 in Paris. Her death resulted from a high-speed
car accident. The accident in question took place just before midnight on Saturday 30 August and
afterwards Diana was taken to hospital, where she was later declared dead. Of the passengers in
the vehicle, only the bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, survived (Bradford, 2007, p. 372).
The chain of events that led to the fatal accident that took the life of both Diana and Dodi Fayed can
be traced to much earlier in the day, maybe as early as the moment they arrived to Paris. Brown
(2008) describes the earlier events of the day in detail. According to her, Diana and Dodi Fayed
arrived at 3.20 p.m. by plane to Le Bourget Airport located near Paris and found the paparazzi were
already waiting for them. The paparazzi followed them from the airport and because Fayed wanted
to lose the paparazzi he ordered the driver not to take them to the Ritz as was the first plan, but to
take them to the former home of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in the Bois de Boulogne instead,
after which they went to their original destination, the Ritz. From there they made their way to
Fayed’s apartment on Rue Arsène-Houssaye. They did not
stay there, as they easily could have, but
instead started to make their way to dinner at Chez Benoit, chased by the paparazzi who had not
left them alone the whole night. However, they did not go to dine at Chez Benoit, but changed their
plans at the last minute and went back to dine at the Ritz. After dining at the hotel, they once again
decided to leave the hotel and made their way back to the apartment they had vacated earlier, even
though they knew that the paparazzi were waiting for them outside the hotel, ready to follow them
wherever they decided to go (pp. 12-18).
Dodi Fayed’s decision to try and avoid the paparazzi as much as possible by leaving the Ritz and
going to his own apartment at the end of the night can be seen as the decision that came to cost
him and Diana, as well as the driver, Henri Paul, their lives as there was no real need for them to go
back to the apartment as they had a suite at the hotel. According to Bradford (2007), as soon as
their car left the Ritz the paparazzi started to chase it, trying to snap photographs of the pair.
Because of the paparazzi chasing the car, Paul made the decision to forgo the direct route that would