How Wills defied courtiers to keep Diana’s name alive
By Richard Kay
ON THE day of his en g a g e ment, Prince William promised that his mother would always be part of his life by presenting Kate with Diana’s iconic sapphire ring. Given the deep unhappiness associated with that diamond-encrusted sapphire, it was seen at the time as a risky, even fatalistic, gesture and some feared he was saddling his fiancée with an impossibly heavy burden.
Four-and-a-half happy years later, he has made that undertaking about his mother even more permanent by giving their daughter Diana’s name.
Now with one remarkable action, the Prince has gone a long way to ensure the attempts by a ruthless Establishment to airbrush his mother from her place in royal history are not just stalled but halted in their tracks.
Indeed, by giving the baby Princess Charlotte the names of both his mother and grandmother, William has sent a clear signal about the kind of King he intends to be —
It’s a clear signal of the
King he plans to be
conventional on the one hand, but spirited and single-minded on the other.
He has shown, too, that he is not afraid to take on those vested powers who ever since Diana’s death have sought to diminish and disparage her reputation.
At times over the past 18 years since Diana’s death, it has seemed as if William also did not have the stomach to fight those who wanted to turn his mother into the forgotten princess. But the truth is that he has had to walk a tightrope knowing that even within his own family there was implacable opposition to her.
It is for that reason, I am certain, no statue has been erected in her memory despite the overwhelming wish of her many supporters. Many will now wonder if this official thawing in attitudes towards Princess Diana will mean that what they see as a historic wrong is finally righted.
Friends and fans had accepted that no sculpture was commissioned perhaps because since she was such a vital and lifeenhancing figure, no representation could do her justice. Instead, we conceded that a fountain of running water in a London park near her Kensington Palace home would best symbolise such an extraordinary young woman. As the years have passed this tribute has looked increasingly inadequate.
For William, the message now could not be clearer — Diana is a non-negotiable part of his life. Traditionally, royal middle names are rarely significant.
Who knows, for example, that William’s middle names are Arthur Philip Louis? But by giving his daughter the middle names Elizabeth and Diana, he has undoubtedly found a new approach.
Before meeting Kate, his mother and grandmother were the two most important woman in his life.
By choosing Elizabeth, he ensures that this most royal of names continues at the top of the Royal Family for another generation. Prince Charles is doubly thrilled because it continues the thread to his beloved grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. And surely Charlotte is a nod to the Prince of Wales, too — won’t she become Princess Charley?
But already the internet is buzzing with talk about the new ‘Princess Di’ — and regardless of the fact it is only the new Princess’s third name, it seems inevitable that many will be desperate to see if Charlotte shares characteristics with her grandmother.
More than anyone, William knows the risks of selecting the name Diana. He was clear that his baby girl should not have Diana as a first name.
‘It would have been a millstone around her neck,’ says one of the Princess’s long-time friends.
‘ Imagine everything she did, everything she wore and everything she said would be compared with this great figure from the past — now that would be an impossible burden.’
For the Diana obsessives who mark every July 1 — her birthday — and the anniversary of her death on August 31, there will be disappointment that, in their view, the couple did not have the courage to choose Diana rather than Charlotte as the first name.
But William was adamant that would not happen. Ever since losing his mother he has been frustrated by criticism that he has not done enough to celebrate her life.
On the contrary, in his quiet way, he has been doing precisely that for a very long time.
Two weeks before Christmas 1997 (three months after their mother’s death), he and Harry paid their first return visit to Kensington Palace. Their former nanny, Olga Powell, greeted them. Also there was their mother’s butler Paul Burrell.
It was unbelievably poignant as the boys, then aged 15 and 13, walked from room to room — reconnecting with the life they shared there with their mother.
But the visit had another purpose — the Princes were choosing what of t heirs and t heir mother’s possessions they wanted to take with them to their new home with Prince Charles.
They chose books, photographs, paintings and some of their favourites from Diana’s collection of cuddly toys. William picked the giant hippo that he, Harry and Diana once leant on while watching TV.
He also mentioned taking some jewellery, but said it could wait. Yellow Post-it notes marked with a ‘W’ and ‘H’ were dutifully placed on the items Wills and Harry wanted for their home at York House. Later, the brothers chose what they wanted from Diana’s private jewellery collection.
For William, it was the engagement ring that he vowed he would one day give his own bride. For Harry, it was Diana’s Jaeger-LeCoultre wristwatch.
Returning to his childhood home that day was another meaningful step on the road for William in ensuring that the link with his
He insisted on living in Diana’s old home
mother remained unbroken. Similarly, it would have been easy for the Cambridges to have chosen a royal home other than Kensington Palace in which to start their married life.
But for William, choosing his mother’s residence meant he was ‘coming home’.
It was, however, too late to reclaim his mother’s old apartment. Not only had it been stripped of every
single item, everything from the wallpaper to the carpets to lightbulbs and wire coat-hangers had been removed, it had also been broken up. Some of Charles’s charity staff occupied part of it and it had been converted into accommodation f or senior military officers.
William had to make do instead with Princess Margaret’s old home, grander for sure, but a place filled with someone else’s memories. Nevertheless it was another step towards stitching his life with Diana into the new story he was making with Kate.
As for a country home, many thought he would head west to Gloucestershire which he knows so well from his many years at Highgrove and where so many royals live.
But he chose Norfolk, another signal of Diana’s influence, perhaps. For this was where she spent her early years, as neighbours of the Queen at Park House on the Sandringham estate. Her family, the Spencers, had a beach hut at Brancaster on the north Norfolk coast where William and Harry loved to play.
It is close to Anmer Hall where he and Kate will be spending much of the next six weeks getting to know their new baby.
One of Princess Diana’s most treasured photographs of herself as an infant was a black and white snap taken of her in front of that beach hut, on the edge of the links of the Royal North Norfolk Golf club.
‘He is not a naturally demonstrative young man and he has never felt the need to talk publicly about his mother,’ says a friend who has known him since he was born.
‘But, privately, he speaks up for her and he hates to think she has been written out of the script. He doesn’t believe that, of course, and choosing Diana is another way of saying so.’
One gesture which some think he may now address is how his mother lost her royal status after her divorce from Prince Charles.
In return for her £17 million settlement, Diana was no longer entitled to be styled HRH, highly unusual for the mother of a future king.
It could eventually be open to William to restore those three letters and end another divisive chapter in the story of his parents’ marriage.
Most significantly, when he presented Kate with t hat engagement ring which was once on his mother’s finger, he said he didn’t want Diana to ‘miss out on today and the excitement and the fact that we are going to spend the rest of our lives together’.
How f i tting then that by now bestowing Diana’s name on t heir daughter he has ensured that she will have a perpetual part in their child’s life, too.