Diana: 1961-1997

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It had often been hard to cry for Princess Diana. When the marriage of the century turned cold, there was the wronged Princess, insistent, inescapable. There were the oh-so-shocking revelations of "Diana, Her True Story." There was the ABC interview in November: the barely uncried tears. Wherever the cameras looked, the martyr Diana was there, comforting lepers, selling her gowns, squabbling over that (deservedly) monstrous divorce settlement.

But a curious thing had been happening to Diana lately, or rather the newsprint Diana that the world felt it owned. You started to believe her. Instead of adoring Diana, or pitying Diana, or disdaining Diana, you could be happy for her. She was in love with Dodi, happy, unnatural no longer. She was running from the cameras at full speed. You believed her when she said that "any sane person would have left (England) long ago. But I cannot. I have my sons."

That statement, from an interview published just last week, is now tragic, and piercingly sour. In trying to be a woman, she remained a target. Because of the hungry economics of voyeurism, her sons have no mother. At 36, of fame and fatal injuries, Lady Diana Spencer is dead.