Can Anyone Replace Diana?

By ELIZABETH GLEICK/LONDON

Though the death itself may be indelible, it takes a full year even to begin to understand what has been lost and what gained--a year to pass through the seasons of grief: Christmas, Mother's Day, Father's Day, birthdays and beach days and school days in between. Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash 12 months ago, but to her family and the international community of those who mourn her, it has been a transformative lifetime. One year on, an older, grayer Prince Charles, approaching his 50th birthday, has quietly taken to wearing his wedding band once again--a sign of sorrow and affection glinting from beneath the signet ring on his left little finger. At the same time, the prince appears happier and more relaxed than ever before--as if he and Britain have at last reached an accommodation, a liberation from past demons.

Recently, while visiting a community center in a Welsh town that is wilting under high unemployment, Charles was inspecting some art pinned to the wall when he was asked by teacher Andrew Herbert to draw something. The accomplished amateur painter obliged immediately, dashing off a witty sketch of Jason Rossington, 14, complete with mop of peroxided hair. Explaining later how he summoned the nerve to thrust felt-tip pen and paper in front of the heir to the throne, Herbert said it took no nerve at all: "You feel relaxed with him, as though you've known him for a long time." Just last week a poll showed Prince Charles to be more popular than he was before the death of Diana.

Nevertheless, one year later, it is clear that the "people's princess" can never be replaced--not for her sons William and Harry, not for the millions of people who benefited from her charity or basked in her flirtatious charm, and not for those others who saw in Diana's frailties and unhappiness a reflection of their own. No royal front runner has emerged to supplant the Princess of Wales in the hearts of the people or on the front pages of the tabloids. But the death of the princess appears to have done the unexpected: it has not only reinvigorated the monarchy itself but has also burnished the picture of an intimate family unit--Charles, William and Harry, with increasingly regular appearances by Charles' longtime lover, Camilla Parker Bowles--that appears to be affectionate, complex, fun-loving and modern, the very territory the princess had staked out for herself. Says Harold Brooks-Baker, the publishing director of Burke's Peerage, a guide to all that is officially noble in Britain: "It's extraordinary that the person who in life did the most to destroy the House of Windsor in death has done the most to preserve it."

This summer Charles and his sons have spent two weeks sailing around the Greek islands on a friend's yacht. And on Aug. 31 they will be together, quiet and hidden from view. It was left to William, 16, and Harry, 13, to decide how they wanted to commemorate the day of their mother's death. After much consultation, they rejected an official day of mourning for their mother or a nationwide moment of silence, though flags will fly at half-staff on government and royal buildings. The immediate family will spend the day together at Balmoral and, along with Prime Minister Tony Blair, will attend a private memorial service at nearby Crathie Church. It has not gone unnoticed that the Spencers will be spending the day elsewhere--at the family estate of Althorp, where the princess is buried. Despite the searing words of Charles, Earl Spencer in his eulogy last summer, promising that their "blood family" would allow them to "sing openly," William and Harry have seen their uncle only occasionally. Spencer has spent much of the year embroiled in his ugly divorce and in creating a memorial to his sister at Althorp. Soon after the funeral, Diana's sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale invited the boys to spend a few weeks with her this summer in Cornwall; they turned her down. The sisters have attended sporting events at the boys' schools, but relations between the two families, though cordial, appear cool. Says Andrew Morton, author of Diana: Her True Story: "The mutual dislike goes too deep. The Windsors were deeply offended at the [Westminster] Abbey speech. That kind of public humiliation will be hard to forget."

Most of the "singing" Wills and Harry have done during the past, devastating year has been with their father and the other Windsors. Despite Diana's notoriously sour relations with her former in-laws, William has regular chats with his grandmother, the Queen, and, according to Majesty magazine editor Ingrid Seward, particularly adores his grandfather, Prince Philip, with whom he insisted on walking during the funeral procession last year.

Charles, who once told his biographer, Jonathan Dimbleby, that he simply dislikes public displays of affection--"I'm not very good at being a performing monkey," the prince explained--is allowing people to see that he is in fact an involved father. In November, Charles took Harry to southern Africa, where the young prince got to hang out with both the Spice Girls and Nelson Mandela. And in June, Charles and Harry traveled via a fan-packed train to France to watch a World Cup soccer match.

When the boys are not at boarding school--Harry went to Ludgrove but passed Eton's tough entrance exam and will join his brother there in September--they have rooms at St. James's Palace, where Charles lives. William has reportedly decorated his with mementos from his mother's apartment at Kensington Palace, including a carpet and a kilim wall hanging. They spend time with their fun-loving former nanny, Tiggy Legge-Bourke, who recently received a royal reprimand for allowing Harry and William to go rappelling off a 160-ft.-high dam face in Wales without a helmet or the proper safety ropes.

The boys are reportedly quite headstrong, and William in particular is attempting to find his own way. According to Seward, "William could probably browbeat Charles into doing whatever William wanted." Wherever the 6-ft., 1-in. William goes these days, there are echoes of his mother. Blushing, doe-eyed, coy before the cameras, the prince has been mobbed by teenage girls ever since the teen magazine Smash Hits deemed him a pinup in 1995--and Wills mania is only getting worse. On his visit to Vancouver with his father in March, hyperventilating hordes followed him about, each girl convinced she was his true Cinderella. "He's rich, he's gorgeous and he's a prince," explained Jessica Toews, 14, who followed William up the ski slopes. "What more do you need?"

William apparently needs a bit of privacy. A good student, he is, like his mother, a great swimmer (the initials on his warmup suit read WOW, for William of Wales), and in his own extremely cautious way he is beginning to cultivate a relationship with the press. In June he agreed to answer written questions submitted by the Press Association, which released the answers along with information from palace archives. Now it can be told: the young prince likes techno music, fast food and computer games. He likes shopping for his own "modern" clothes but also likes his Eton uniform: swallowtail jacket, striped trousers and starched shirt. Although his mother once mentioned that she wanted him to go to Harvard (his father went to Cambridge), he declined to say what university he wants to attend. When he got hit on the head by a golf club at age eight, he didn't cry. And though he has been rumored to have had a couple of girlfriends already, he confessed that he wishes those teenage fans would leave him alone.

In the absence of his mother, however, all camera lenses will inevitably turn toward the photogenic William. In July the tabloid Sun could not resist revealing William and Harry's plot to throw a surprise party for their father's 50th birthday, complete with a skit written by Emma Thompson and Stephen Fry along with the young princes. (The party, the first of many events leading up to Charles' Nov. 14 birthday, nevertheless came off July 31, attended by some 100 guests, including Camilla.)

With the princes mostly off limits, the press has grown fidgety on the subject of Charles' consort. Despite widespread sentiment at this time last year that the public would never accept, at Charles' side, the woman Diana once dubbed the "Rottweiler," Camilla and Charles appear to be engaged in a gradual coming-out process--which is not causing much distress to anyone. Not only has Camilla officially met William and Harry; the couple are also "all but living together" at St. James's Palace, according to a piece in the Daily Mail by Diana's good friend Richard Kay. The pair also dined out publicly together recently for Camilla's 51st birthday. They are, said a friend of theirs, "as much in love as they can be. It's ever so sweet. She is his best friend, he is hers. She is so good at calming him down, and he just adores being with her."

People in the prince's camp say the plan is to let the relationship simply evolve, though it remains unlikely that the two will ever marry. Still, the outdoorsy, raucous, Marlboro-smoking Camilla is down-to-earth and popular among the palace staff and in her social circle. "Everyone adores her," says Brooks-Baker. "Diana, in comparison, was extremely unkind to a large number of people--and she was always pulling rank, like Princess Margaret does."

The move to bring Camilla out of the shadows, begun even before Diana's death, is just one stone of the foundation the Windsors have begun laying to modernize the monarchy. For it is highly unlikely that the Queen or Charles would ever abdicate--nor is it clear that the British people have any desire to do away with the crown. The words of former TIME London bureau chief Henry Luce III in 1969 still ring true today: "[M]ost of the serious criticism [that] is made of [the monarchy] in Britain is of its behaviour, not of its condition. The crown speaks--and offends. Or it does not speak--and is remote. The crown sticks to channels and protocol--and seems stuffy. Or it reaches out to the people--and makes enemies."

The greatest offense on the part of the Windsors in the aftermath of Diana's death was to be slow to catch the wave of popular sentiment. But they are trying hard to make amends. Last fall the palace's Way Ahead committee, a group consisting of members of the royal family and senior palace aides, decided to subject the monarchy to a bit of market research, commissioning British polling firm MORI to conduct focus groups. As the Queen said in a speech at her golden-wedding-anniversary banquet in November, the nation's will is hard "to read, obscured as it can be by deference, rhetoric or the conflicting currents of public opinion. But read it we must."

According to the Sunday Telegraph of London, however, when she learned of the MORI results in February, the Queen was dismayed. Although the research confirmed that people believe the monarchy to be "integral" to British society, it was also highly critical. The royals were called not understanding "at all" about the needs of the people, and were rapped for their "conspicuous consumption" and "remoteness and rigidity of their upbringing and current life-style." As if the family were a laundry detergent, it was deemed "poor value for money."

Both Charles and the Queen have instigated shakeups in their staffs and their activities. The Queen is bringing in a new director of communications at Buckingham Palace, and Charles appointed a new deputy private secretary, Mark Bolland, who has extensive media contacts and is a friend of Blair spin doctor Peter Mandelson. The Queen has taken to making George Bush-like visits to such places as supermarkets, McDonald's, even a pub; bucking some 800 centuries of tradition, she has also agreed to do away with primogeniture (in which the eldest son receives the title in favor of an older daughter)--not that the move affects her son or grandson. In April she hosted a star-studded, 650-guest party at Windsor Castle attended by Joan Collins and Trainspotting star Ewan McGregor--the sort of celebrity fest that has become a staple of 10 Downing Street in the Blair era. Photographers may now take pictures of Her Majesty at work several times a week. There is even an impressive palace website, complete with family trees, royal engagement calendars (the popular Princess Anne may have been the busiest royal last year, clocking in at 445 events) and a Q&A section ("Is the Queen the wealthiest woman in the world?" "No. The Queen's wealth has often been greatly exaggerated"). Says Sarah Bradford, author of a respected biography of Elizabeth: "Mind you, the Queen is very aware of the publicity part of her job."

Some of these changes, but not all, can be attributed to the influence of Tony Blair. He continues to meet with the Queen weekly, but the idea that New Labour is "advising the palace on how to modernize themselves would be well wide of the mark," a Blair spokesman says. "Any decision about the future of the monarchy is a matter for the monarchy, not for the government."

Members of Charles' press office at St. James's Palace insist that much of this modernization began before Diana's death. Such popular decisions as trimming the Civil List (funds allotted by Parliament for royal family expenses) and having the Queen and Prince Charles pay taxes were initiated in 1992. But there is no question that in many ways Diana's absence has made life much easier for the royals. Charles can no longer be compared unfavorably to her and, says Seward, "they get their picture in the paper, and whatever Charles does causes interest."

Yet Diana lives on in the Bleak House squabbling and litigation over her legacy, both real and theoretical. Ever since its inception last year, the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund has been almost as controversial as the princess herself. Established to deal with the contributions pouring in from those who wished the princess's charitable works to continue, it has so far taken in a staggering $115 million, nearly a third of that from Elton John's Candle in the Wind. About $23 million has been allocated to Diana's preferred charities, but everything the fund does--such as lending Diana's name to margarine containers and lottery scratch cards (which could generate more than $3 million a year)--seems to offend someone. The trustees' cause was not helped by the initial massive legal fees claimed by the fund's lawyers. People are finding it impossible to agree on what Diana might have chosen. As Vivenne Parry, a former trustee, told the Guardian, "I knew her for a very long time, and she was mercurial. You didn't know what she was going to do from one day to the next. So I have no idea of 'what she would have wanted,' and nor does anyone else."

Perhaps what the princess would have wanted most, after all, is the very thing that is happening. After a revolution that last summer threatened to topple Buckingham Palace itself, the monarchy may end up remaining long enough, and strong enough, for Diana's son to ascend the throne. The great tragedy is that she will not be there to see it.

--Reported by Helen Gibson/London

With reporting by Helen Gibson/London