In the final days of her life, Princess Diana carried a profound and specific sorrow. According to a close friend, the Princess of Wales deeply regretted her decision to participate in a now-infamous 1995 television interview, believing it caused significant harm to her young sons.
The revelation comes from Rosa Monckton, who accompanied Diana on a holiday to Greece just ten days before the fatal car crash in Paris in August 1997. During that trip, Monckton says Diana expressed remorse for sitting down with the BBC’s Panorama program, fearing the lasting impact it would have on Princes William and Harry, who were just 13 and 11 years old at the time.
The interview, watched by an estimated 200 million people globally, featured Diana’s famous statement about her marriage to then-Prince Charles: “There were three of us in this marriage.” It publicly laid bare the couple’s marital strife and his infidelity.
Subsequent investigations have revealed that the journalist who secured the interview, Martin Bashir, used deceptive and unethical tactics. He allegedly presented forged documents and spread false claims to a vulnerable Diana, convincing her to tell her side of the story. These fabrications included suggestions that her life was in danger and that her family was spying on her.
A new book examining the affair suggests the interview set Diana on a tragic and destabilizing course. The author posits that had she been aware of the deceit, her life might have taken a dramatically different path. The personal cost of that broadcast, however, weighed heaviest on Diana as a mother, leaving her with a poignant regret for the exposure it brought upon her children in the waning days of her life.
