I put this on hold at the library months ago while I was watching The Crown. I was fascinated by the story that Diana secretly recorded tapes to help with the writing. I always feel this need to know what is fact and fiction. My turn finally came up and after all that waiting I felt compelled to take my turn with the book.

Overall the book was repetitive and not a very enjoyable read. They made the point about how the royal family mistreated and undervalued Diana over and over. At the time it was written, with so much secretive urgency, maybe it was really important to get that point across and get people to believe them. But the facts pretty well speak for themselves.

The sentences that hit hardest for me was the detail that Diana had the same pithy jokes in her kitchen that any 90’s mom would’ve had. She’s this outsized iconic figure, and knowing she had “Why don’t you wine about it?” on her fridge made her real for me. And that if a middle eastern princess had to smuggle out tapes the country would be called out for totalitarianism.

This book, and Diana’s story, captures the force of the British empire and the white male noble patriarchy. She was harmed by it her whole life. If anything she’s unlucky to have been a sensitive person born into the aristrocracy. But she’s also extremely privileged to have born into it at the same time. I think that’s why Diana is so fascinating to the human brain: she seemed to have everything, but she was miserable and couldn’t seem to figure out how to be happy with what she had. But her story shows the fairytale of royalty, privilege, power is equivalent to having nothing that a human needs - genuine connection, love, affection, safety, trust.