The world today is remembering Princess Diana, the humanitarian known as “the People’s Princess,” on the 20th anniversary of her death.
Diana was just 36 when she died in a car crash while traveling in Paris with Dodi Fayed, with whom Diana was romantically involved and who also died in the crash.
Diana left behind two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, her children with Prince Charles, who were just 15 and 12, respectively, when their mother died.
The princes are expected to mark the anniversary of their mother’s death privately today.
On Wednesday, William, now 35 and a father of two, and Harry, 32, made a special visit to the Kensington Palace memorial sunken garden that has been transformed with their mother’s favorite white blooms to pay tribute to Diana.
The brothers were accompanied by William’s wife, Princess Kate, and a small group of representatives from a few of the charities Diana supported in the final days of her life, including the Great Ormond Street Hospital, the English National Ballet, the Leprosy Mission, Centrepoint, the Royal Marsden Hospital and the National Aids Trust.
William and Harry also made an impromptu visit to speak with well-wishers and view the tributes and cards left at the gates of Kensington Palace, where Princess Diana lived from 1981 until her death.
“The Duke and Prince Harry are grateful for the many flowers, letters, and messages they have received about their mother,” Kensington Palace said Wednesday. “They wanted to say thank you to those who made the journey to Kensington Palace.”
William and Harry opened up this year publicly for the first time about their mother and her sudden death.
“There’s not a day that William and I don’t wish that she was … we don’t wish that she was still around, and we wonder what kind of a mother she would be now,” Harry said in a documentary about Diana that aired in July. “And what kind of a public role she would have, and what a difference she would be making.”
William described himself as “sad” that Diana would never meet his wife, Princess Kate, and their children, 4-year-old Prince George and 2-year-old Princess Charlotte.
“I would like to have had her advice. I would love her to have met Catherine and to have seen the children grow up,” he told GQ magazine in May. “It makes me sad that she won’t, that they will never know her.”
During Diana’s funeral at Westminster Abbey in September 1997, Elton John, a close friend of Diana’s, sang the lyrics, “Your candle’s burned out long before your legend ever will.”
Today, 20 years after her death, Diana’s style, glamour, mischievous smile and humanitarian work still capture the public’s attention.
Diana’s humanitarian efforts around the globe are seen by many as her most enduring legacy. She was the patron of more than 100 charities over her lifetime, according to The Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund.
Diana was a champion for people with HIV/AIDS and leprosy, who were invisible to society during her lifetime, and spread the spotlight shone on her to their causes. She is credited with changing the perception of people with HIV/AIDS, for example, by picking up and hugging a 7-year-old boy with AIDS being treated at a hospital in Harlem.
When, just months before her death, Diana walked through an Angolan minefield wearing a helmet and flak jacket, her presence drew global attention to the injuries caused by landmines. Diana’s home nation of Britain, along with 120 countries, would later sign the Ottawa Treaty that aimed to eliminate landmines targeting humans
Source: Yahoo News
