Icon, Goddess, Folk Hero, or What?
Luke Bretherton
October 1, 1997
On television, I watched a somber, saddened crowd await Diana's funeral procession. I was in Ronda, in southern Spain, where the jostling throng outside my window was expecting King Juan and the Infanta. They were on their way to another ritual celebration of death: a bullfight. I was caught between a sherry-sluiced fiesta and tear-streaked mourning. I flew back to London the next day having been, until the day before Diana's funeral, ignorant of her death. On my return I felt like a stranger in my own country. The contrast between Ronda and London led me to focus on the crowd's response to Diana's death. As one caught between funeral and fiesta, how was I to understand the reaction of the crowd? Seeking understanding, I went to Diana's home, Kensington Palace, on the Monday following her funeral. The palace is situated in my favorite park, yet on this Monday I hardly recognized it. The park I knew so well had been transformed. A deluge of blossoms and bouquets was strewn everywhere—under trees, tied to branches, along park walls, woven in roadside railings, and flowing up to the palace itself. The flowers, most still in cellophane wrappers, shone in the sun like a sparkling, kaleidoscopic lake. And virtually every bouquet had a message attached. The epithets gushed forth; "goddess," "messiah," "model human," "saint," "angel," "queen," "daughter of the gods." Some contained poems and songs. Still others opted against words, leaving votive offerings ranging from the religious—candles, crosses, icons, and incense sticks—to the sentimental: pictures of Diana, favorite records, and teddy bears. In a bizarre twist, many of the pictures had been cut from the very newspapers these same people condemned for hounding ...
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