Shocking Things We Learned About Princess Diana After Her Death

When Britain woke up on Aug. 31, 1997, to news that their beloved Princess Diana had been killed in a horrific car crash in Paris, an entire nation went into mourning. The stylish, beautiful, and endlessly charitable blonde was by far and away the most popular royal of her day, adored by the public for the way she related to the common man and used her influence to effect change, not only at home, but around the world.

In the wake of her death, numerous Hollywood A-listers — including George Clooney and Tom Cruise — slammed the paparazzi for chasing Diana's car into the city's dark Pont de l'Alma tunnel in pursuit of a picture, with Elizabeth Taylor going so far as to call them murderers. What we learned in the following months, however, was that the press may have actually had little to do with Diana's death. The divorced People's Princess and her billionaire boyfriend, Dodi Al-Fayed, were being driven by Ritz deputy chief of security Henri Paul that night, with Diana's regular driver having left the swish hotel earlier in an attempt to lead the waiting photographers on a wild goose chase. When a few failed to take the bait, Paul decided to loose them in the tunnel. However, he was reportedly driving at a high speed while under the influence of alcohol, per the Daily Mail.

The first of many shocking revelations about Diana to surface after her death, it turned out to be the tip of the iceberg.

Princess Diana's former royal protection officer, Ken Wharfe, became one of her closest confidants during his time by her side — though after he left the role (just weeks before her tragic death in Paris), he decided to go ahead with his own personal memoirs in 2002. 

Diana: Closely Guarded Secret blew the lid on a number of stories that had previously been dismissed as nothing but rumors, the most sensational of all being Princess Diana's alleged affair with British Army officer James Hewitt. Wharfe would reportedly accompany the princess to her secret meetings with Hewitt, who she took as her lover after she discovered that her then-husband, Prince Charles, was seeing his then-mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles, again. "Shattered by her husband's betrayal, the Princess was ready for an affair," Wharfe wrote in his book (via the Daily Mail). "Hewitt, a natural womaniser, gave her the attention and affection she relished, and then the passion she yearned for."

Ken Wharfe's predecessor, Sergeant Barry Mannakee, was let go for reportedly getting too close to the woman he was supposed to be protecting, though Princess Diana insisted that there was nothing going on between them, according to Diana: Closely Guarded Secret (via the Daily Mail). Regardless, the royals sent him packing, and a year later he was dead — killed when a car crashed into a motorcycle he was riding. James Hewitt, perhaps worried about his own well-being, claimed that Mannakee was murdered, though he never had any evidence to back it up. 

One thing that could apparently be backed up was Diana's affair with art dealer Oliver Hoare, an old friend of Prince Charles' who offered a shoulder to cry on, and then a lot more than just a shoulder. In his memoir, Wharfe recalled a night back in 1992 when the Kensington Palace smoke alarms went off at 3:30 in the morning. "I hared towards the Princess's apartment but before I reached the door I discovered the source of the false alarm," Wharfe wrote. "Cowering behind a huge plant in the hallway, clutching a cigar, was Oliver Hoare. Diana, who hated the smell of smoke, must have sent him out of the bedroom. It was not without a twinge of amusement at his expense that I advised him to put it out and go back to bed. He looked almost pathetic as he gathered himself together and left."

Relationship pressure was something that Princess Diana was all too familiar with, having suffered from its side effects long before she even walked down the aisle with the Prince of Wales. Diana developed an eating disorder early on in her relationship with Charles, whose reported flippant comments about her weight started a chain of events that would affect his wife and marriage for years to come.

"Bulimia started the week after we got engaged," Princess Diana said during the recording of the so-called secret tapes (via BBC News). "Charles said, 'You're getting a bit chubby,' and that triggered something off. The first time I made myself sick I was so thrilled. It relieved me of tension." She went on to reveal that she was making herself throw up her food multiple times a day, but it all came to a head when she fainted during an event in Canada. "They [the Royal Family] all blamed the failure of the marriage on the bulimia and it's taken some time to get them to the think about that differently," she said.

As the '90s reached its midway point, it started becoming clear that this royal marriage had faced major trouble in paradise, the extent of which wasn't fully known until Princess Diana's secret tapes were released. Not only was the princess admittedly severely depressed about the state of her failing marriage, at times her relationship with Prince Charles left her feeling suicidal. 

"I hated myself so much, I didn't think I was good enough for Charles. My husband made me feel so inadequate in every possible way," Diana revealed (via BBC News). She added, "I was trying to cut my wrists with razor blades ... I was just so desperate." Queen Elizabeth II even witnessed one of Diana's attempts first hand during her pregnancy with Prince William following an argument with Charles (per the Daily Mail): "I was crying my eyes out. He said I was crying wolf. 'I'm not going to listen,' he said. 'You're always doing this to me. I'm going riding now.' So I threw myself down the stairs. The Queen comes out, absolutely horrified, shaking — she was so frightened ... When he came back, you know, it was just dismissal, total dismissal. He just carried on out of the door."

If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.

It was during a royal vacation to Majorca that Princess Diana first started to confide in Ken Wharfe, who was still relatively new to his role as her protector at the time, and felt a little uncomfortable with her informality. Wharfe discussed his first on-the-job holiday in great details in his memoirs, recalling how the bikini-clad princess began to open up about the past attempts on her life as the pair sat by the pool of Palma's royal palace, per the Daily Mail.

"It was a cry for help, but nobody ever listened," Diana reportedly told Wharfe in confidence, before going on to discuss the reasons behind her and Prince Charles drifting apart in the way that they did. "After Harry was born, my marriage to Charles just died," she reportedly continued, "I tried, I honestly tried, but he just did not want me. We haven't slept in the same bed for two years." Biographer Andrew Morton's book, Diana: Her True Story, echoed these claims, noting how Charles was reportedly "so disappointed" following the birth of his second son, Prince Harry, because he desperately wanted a daughter (via The Sun). "Oh God, it's a boy," Charles allegedly said after the ginger prince was born. However, it's worth noting that he would later claim he was joking.

Let's hope that Queen Elizabeth never plans to read Ken Wharfe's memoirs from cover to cover, because this little snippet about her former daughter-in-law's "mascot" would probably give her a heart attack. According to her former bodyguard, Princess Diana was a big fan of practical jokes, and Wharfe conspired with Diana's sister and acting lady-in-waiting, Sarah McCorquodale, to play one on her. During an alcohol-fueled staff night out in Paris, McCorquodale reportedly decided to purchase a vibrator and, encouraged by Wharfe, slipped the sex toy into her sister's handbag the following morning.

"The Princess discovered it while going through her bag, between meetings with the French president Jacques Chirac and Paul McCartney," Wharfe revealed (via the Daily Mail). "Far from being offended, she thought it very funny, and from that moment Le Gaget became her secret mascot on all royal visits abroad. She attached almost superstitious importance to it and, when we arrived in Nepal the following March, she turned to me and said: 'I hope we've got Le Gaget, Ken. You know everything will go wrong without it.'"

A number of conspiracy theories sprang up following Princess Diana's death, and even now, more than two decades after her fatal Paris car crash, many still suspect foul play. Trevor Rees-Jones, bodyguard to Dodi Al-Fayed and the sole survivor of the crash, has often been at the center of the speculation. Al-Fayed and driver Henri Paul were declared dead at the scene, and Diana would later succumb to her injuries in the hospital. Rees-Jones suffered extensive facial injuries, but he lived. The trouble was, he couldn't remember what happened.

Psychiatrists confirmed that Rees-Jones suffered from amnesia. He was unable to recall anything after getting into the limo that night, which didn't go down well with Dodi's billionaire father, Mohamed Al-Fayed. The Egyptian businessman called Rees-Jones' memoir a "tissue of lies" and claimed that the bodyguard "knew exactly what happened" to Diana and Dodi (via Sky News). Rees-Jones criticized the conspiracy theories for many years, but then, out of the blue, he came forward with some new info.

"I remember having heard somebody moaning and the name Dodi was uttered, but I don't know who said it," Rees-Jones said in 2008 (via Express). "If there was no one else there apart from us, I conclude that it was Princess Diana as it was a female voice." Rees-Jones reiterated that his memories aren't entirely reliable, but he wanted to mention this particular memory because it was "repeatedly" coming back to him.

According to the people who knew her personally, Princess Diana was quite the prankster. 22 years after her shocking and untimely death, the Daily Mail published a series of stories shared by some of Diana's contemporaries and closest confidants. It was always said that the princess had a wicked sense of humor, and these first-hand accounts prove that this was most definitely the case.

"She was always playing practical jokes," personal trainer Jenni Rivett said in 2019, something to which Diana's old friend, Dr. James Colthurst, could also attest. Colthurst told the Daily Mail that he once attached a string of tin cans to Diana's car as a joke, and the princess got him back big time. "That evening she rang up and I said, 'How's your car?' and she said, 'My car's fine, how's yours?'" Colthurst recalled. "I moved to the window and saw my car under the streetlight covered in flour with eggs on top ... That was fairly much Diana's line of fun."

When Princess Diana wasn't planning a prank of some kind, she would still be cracking jokes. "She used to tell quite a few dirty ones," royal photographer Jayne Fincher said. Diana's former personal trainer Carolan Brown backed this up, telling the Daily Mail, "There was no edge or snobbery about her and she really loved a dirty joke and to play pranks on people." It seems Diana loved making people laugh, and people loved her for it.