The bizarre tabloid The Examiner broke the story: “Royal Psychic Reveals: Di Is a Faith Healer.” Britain’s Princess Diana has, it seems, tiptoed incognito into hospitals and “cured hundreds of children.”
Diana, claims psychic Betty Palko, “believes that in a previous life she was a nun who was treated cruelly by superstitious people who mistook her for a witch.” Diana has, apparently, been granted special healing powers to make up for her last rough stint on earth. Someday, the absurd article predicts, Diana “may even be considered a saint.”
This ludicrous image of Diana is not much more fictional than that offered by the mainstream media, which paints her as a piteous (yet strong!) Cinderella whose prince done her wrong.
None of this perception is accidental. Diana is a lifelong expert at manipulating her image. Former schoolmates recall her practicing in front of a mirror the “shy Di” look (head tilted downward, eyes peeping up with seeming timidity). Most young girls practice poses, but, unlike Diana, most eventually become more concerned with their character than with their image.
During her engagement, Diana projected a false image of meekness, pretending to be a country-loving homebody willing to take instruction. Her actions subsequent to her marriage, however, show that she longed for a life of glamour. The media went along with her attempt to construct a fairy tale out of what was essentially a business deal. Though reared in luxury on the 20,000-acre royal estate at Sandringham, she was depicted as an ordinary kindergarten teacher/maid who married a prince. Diana’s continuing success at playing Cinderella, despite spending $1,215 per month on massages, acupuncture, and a personal fitness trainer, attests to her Machiavellian skill at media manipulation.
People mistakenly assume that only smart people can be machiavellian. But you don’t have to be highly intelligent to be a successful manipulator. Total self-absorption is all that’s necessary.
Diana delights in adolescent underhandedness. Under cover of darkness, she smuggled in the BBC interview crew, though the palace couldn’t have prevented her speaking. She scheduled her November Surprise to inflict maximal damage, so it could be announced on Charles’s forty-seventh birthday and aired on the queen’s forty-eighth wedding anniversary.
Diana is sometimes blinded by wilfullness. She chose not to wonder whether a man eager to commit adultery with an emotionally fragile woman might turn out to be a cad, as James Hewitt did. During the interview, while she attacked Charles’s suitability for the throne, she was unaware that a nasty smirk flickered across her face. The Queen of People’s Hearts unwisely exposed her heartlessness when, at a 1995 Christmas party, her snide comments suggesting her children’s nanny had had an abortion caused the girl to burst into tears.
Diana is sometimes praised as a protective mother for dashing to her sons’ sides to warn them whenever news of a fresh scandal about her is about to break. When Mum’s car screeches once again up the drive, these boys must shudder, wondering, “What’s she done now?” But this is the self-indulgent ’90s, when a woman’s urge for an image makeover outweighs any embarrassment she might cause her children, husband, or country.
When asked whether she committed adultery, Diana’s legalistic evasion suggests she feels no shame: “Yes, I was in love with him. Yes, I adored him.” She deftly shifts the emphasis away from the sinful act—adultery onto her purported motive—”love.” Diana thus transforms herself, in eleven words, from unrepentant adulteress into romantic victim.
Media imagemeisters are, of course, aware of Diana’s stratagems. They go along with her absurdly self-contradictory posing because her sordid story sells papers. Her “spin” fits their politically correct agenda (once-hapless victim of the cheatin’ patriarchy empowers herself). And it’s so much easier to write a story when there’s clearly a villain and a heroine.
Tactically, Diana plays the game against the palace well. She contrived to persuade Charles to marry her, encouraged her friends to leak information to tell-all books, avenged herself on her errant husband with embarrassing boyfriends, and, nevertheless, retains greater popularity than he.
But the problem with the Machiavellian approach to life is that one can get caught up in winning immediate victories and forget about the ultimate outcome. I hope she enjoys such petty, Pyrrhic victories, but real happiness eludes those who scheme to acquire it.