Conspiracy Theories and You! – Princess Diana

Elvis. Marylin Monroe. John F Kennedy. The 9/11 Attacks. Pearl Harbor. The Moon Landings. The removal of the gold standard. These items all have one thing in common: They are all the focus of one more conspiracy theories.

Conspiracy theories are interesting. They present fascinating counter-factual viewpoints to established explainations for various events. They tend to be supported by evidence that is, at best, extremely flimsy, if not non-existent. Most can be easily disproved through scientific methods. Yet people continue to buy into them. Sounds not entirely dissimilar to certain other things I’ve written about on this site…

So interested am I in conspiracy theories, and debunking them, that I’m going to write up a series of articles on them. This won’t be regular, but I’ll do it as often as I’m interested and keep doing it until I get tired of it. That in mind, let’s move on to our first subject.

Princess Diana was a major figure through the 1980’s and 1990’s. Her fairytale marriage, her problems with her husband, her subsequent divorce and romantic activities after that were all great fodder for the press. She also helped to raise awareness of issues such as AIDS and landmines. She was, in many ways, larger than life.

Which is why so many people have trouble accepting the offical story of how she died.

On August 31, 1997, Princess Diana, her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, and Henri Paul were all killed when the car Paul (who may have been drinking), was driving crashed into a barrier in the tunnel of the Point de l’Alma in Paris. The car was being chased by paparazzi determined to invade the couple’s privacy. While evading them the car cashed at high-speed into the aforementioned barrier, killing the three mentioned above and seriously injuring Diana’s bodyguard. This seems pretty straightfoward. We car moving at high speed through a tunnel with oddly designed barriers while being chased by a large number of other vehicles and being driven by a driver who had apparently been drinking. In any case other than this, we’d have had enough evidence and the case would’ve been closed completely ages ago. This is not, however, any normal case. Diana was larger-than-life, as mentioned above, and there’s a certain mindset we develop about such people. We don’t want to think anyone that famous, that glamorous, that wonderful, could die like a normal person in a car-crash. It’s a completely alien idea to many people, even if they don’t realize it conciously. And so as a result of that, plus Dodi al-Fayed’s father not wanting to accept reality, we end up with a slew of conspiracy theories.

Most of these theories begin with the assumption the Royal Family wanted Diana dead, for reasons generally unclear. Sometimes it’s so Charles can mary the woman he loved, sometimes it’s because they didn’t want the future King of the United Kingdom to have a mother married to a Muslim man. There were even rumors she was pregnant and had to be killed so there wouldn’t be a Muslim half-sibling to the future King.

None of these make any real sense. Charles was already divorced and had the ability to mary whomever he pleased. The nonsense of people worried about having future king whose mother is married to a Muslim is assinine and offensive on its face, as is the speculation about the king ending up with a Muslim half-sibling, especially as she wasn’t actually pregnant. The implicit racism here is really annoying. There’s Muslim MP’s in the UK, and Muslim nobles. I doubt people would’ve been up-in-arms had the king ended up with a Muslim step-father or half-sibling.

Also there would have to be an easier, more certain way to kill the Princess than in a car wreck. Consider the events required to make this happen, and you’ll see it’s entirely too complex. Admitedly, I’ve never tried to kill a major world figure, but surely there’s got to be a better way to do it than this. Heck, for starters, all you would’ve had to do is find some fanatic, give him/her a vest with explosives and say “Have fun, see you in Paradise!”

Now consider this article, and the comments therein by al-Fayed’s father. Read carefully what he’s saying. A conspiracy of the type he describes would require at least a few dozen people being involved. Surely by now, someone would’ve come forward and admitted something. It’s been ten years, after all. But no, just silence. Of course, all that silence means to the theorist is that they’ve been paid to be quiet, or threatened, or whatever.

This theory also pre-supposes that the Queen, Prince Charles and anyone else involved is so evil they would have Princess Diana killed. Now, reasonable people might disagree with the existence of the Monarchy, but I don’t think most people seriously believe they’re so evil in nature as to do something like this.

Really, the main problems with this conspiracy theory, as with so many, is there is no real motive, the methods required are entirely too involved and complex, it requires a lot of people to be very quiet about it and it presupposes some major world figures are incredibly evil. I understand people not wanting to accept the death of Princess Diana could’ve been caused by a simple car-wreck but, well, there you are.

Next time: Yes, we went to the Moon. Get over it.