Exactly twenty-five years after her brutal and unimaginable disappearance, the Princess of Hearts continues to fascinate the world over. The sentence taken from the book Protecting Diana: A Bodyguard’s Story (“Protecting Diana: the story of a bodyguard”) written by Lee Sansum, one of the men in charge of her protection, then had the effect of a bomb. Lady Diana would have considered leaving for the United States without her two children, William and Harry, a few weeks before her tragic death at the age of 36, in Paris on August 31, 1997. A contextualization is necessary to understand what could have led the one who had divorced Prince Charles to such a decision.
On vacation in Saint-Tropez with her companion Dodi Al-Fayed on a yacht, Lady Diana was under the surveillance, among others, of Lee Sansum. In his memoirs, he says his protege told him he wanted to leave Britain. The only way for her to escape the press. According to her bodyguard, moving to America was a very strong choice for the Briton. But the author of the book specifies that this project was also intended to protect princes William and Harry, who were also victims of the tabloids.
“There is nothing I can do in the UK. The newspapers attack me, whatever I do. I want to go to the United States and live there to escape all this. At least in America they love me and leave me alone“, would have entrusted Lady Diana to him. Lee Sansum then indicates that he asked her if her boys would come with her, but she replied in the negative, explaining why: she would never have had the right to take them away from the royal family. “I will definitely be able to see them during school holidays“, she would have added to her protector.
It is therefore out of spite that Lady Diana would have thought of leaving Europe without her children, only in order to preserve them from this scourge of which she was the victim. She wanted them to be able to grow without all the media attention that was overwhelming her. A painful decision for the one who loved her offspring to infinity. The love that the princess had for her children is also palpable in the words of the latter, now adults and fathers, in a tribute video broadcast by People Magazine.