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‘The Crown’: Behind the Photo of an Embrace That Changed Princess Diana’s Life

In the show, Mohamed al-Fayed sends the photographer Mario Brenna to capture shots of Diana and al-Fayed’s son, Dodi, on vacation. The portrayal is inaccurate, Brenna says.

By Alex Marshall

Reporting from London

It’s summer 1997, and Princess Diana is flirting with Dodi Fayed, a globe-trotting playboy, on the Jonikal, a yacht floating on sparkling Mediterranean waters.

Diana, teasingly, says that she likes men who have lips that are “just the right temperature.”

“Are mine the right temperature?” Dodi replies.

“I don’t know,” Diana says: “Need to check.” Then, the couple kiss, blissfully unaware that just a few meters away, Mario Brenna, a slick Italian photographer, is on a boat, with a long-lens camera trained on the couple.

A few days later, Brenna’s shots of the princess and her new beau are on the front pages of newspapers worldwide.

This is a central scene in the sixth and final season of Netflix’s royal drama “The Crown” — the first batch of episodes premiered on Thursday — and a moment that signaled the start of a tabloid frenzy around the couple that many blame for their deaths on Aug. 31, 1997, in a car crash in Paris as they were chased by photographers.

Yet the depiction is far from accurate, according to Brenna, speaking in what he said was his first interview with an English-language newspaper.

For a start, “The Crown” has Mohamed al-Fayed — Dodi’s father, and a retail and hotel tycoon who died this year — appearing to hire Brenna to take the shots, in an effort to push Diana and Dodi’s relationship into the public eye, and cajole the pair to marry.

In an email, Annie Sulzberger, the head of research for the show — she is also the sister of The Times’s publisher, A.G. Sulzberger — said that “there are a few theories about how Brenna managed to find the Jonikal moored somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea,” but the one the team found most credible was that one of al-Fayed’s employees leaked the boat’s location to Brenna.

But Brenna said the idea that al-Fayed hired him was “absurd and completely invented,” and that no one leaked information about the yacht’s whereabouts to him. Every summer at that time, he was in Sardinia so he could take paparazzi shots of famous people, he said, and coming across Diana and Dodi was simply a “great stroke of luck.”

On Aug. 1, 1997, Brenna said he approached Diana’s yacht on a fast moving inflatable boat after mistaking a blonde woman making a telephone call on its upper deck for an old acquaintance. As he got closer, he was stunned to realize it was the princess.

Bruno Malka, Brenna’s agent at the time who helped sell the images to Paris Match magazine, said in an email that he thought Brenna was familiar with the yacht, “without knowing it was Diana and Dodi” onboard that day. Brenna was successful, Malka added, because he had spent so many years working in the region.

After spotting the couple, Brenna said he spent the next few days stalking the boat, including climbing a cliff to get a better view. From that elevated position, about 400 meters away from Diana, he took several photos of Diana and Dodi in an embrace. The shots were almost blurred, Brenna said, because the heat haze meant he struggled to get the pair in focus.

Still, he knew immediately he’d secured “a historic photo.” He’d also captured an image that “solved my personal and family problems,” he said, at a time when he had recently divorced and so “was not swimming in wealth.”

He unloaded the rolls of film from the camera, then buried them to make sure they didn’t get exposed to the sun as he tried to take more images, and also as he feared a competitor might have seen him at work and try to steal his camera and so obtain the images every other photographer in the Mediterranean had been hoping to get first.

On Aug. 10, the Sunday Mirror, a British tabloid, splashed Brenna’s image on its front page . “The Kiss,” the headline read. Soon, Brenna said, he was selling the pictures worldwide. In the following six-to-eight months, he said, he made about 1.7 million pounds, or $2.1 million, from his photos of the couple.

Brenna’s pictures — and the prices news outlets paid for them — sparked a frenzy. In 2013, Jason Fraser, a British photographer who helped Brenna sell his images, told The Daily Mail that after they were published, over 2,000 photographers arrived in the Mediterranean hoping to get their own snaps of Diana and Dodi. “I felt the whole thing was spinning out of control,” Fraser said. Weeks later, the couple died.

In “The Crown,” Brenna (portrayed by Enzo Cilenti) explains his methods to camera. To capture celebrities misbehaving, the fictional Brenna says, you have to take risks. Paparazzi also have to act like “hunters … killers.”

Brenna said in the email interview that he did not share this opinion of his work (“I do not identify with the term ‘killer,’”) and that he was never contacted by anyone from “The Crown” to learn about his experiences (Netflix did not respond to a request for comment).

After Diana and Dodi’s death, al-Fayed sued Fraser, the British photographer, for taking photos of Diana and Dodi on a boat, saying it was an invasion of privacy. Brenna said he did not face any such action, adding his images were legal as they “were taken outdoors, in a public place.” And he regretted the privacy crackdown that happened since, with governments and stars trying to stop the paparazzi from taking photos: “There is still the right to report,” he said.

Today, Brenna lives near Lake Como, in Italy, where he said he’s photographed celebrities including George Clooney, Miley Cyrus and Beyoncé, even as the dawn of social media had impacted his profession significantly, including its financial rewards.

Brenna said he and his family enjoyed the success of the photos throughout August 1997. But then, Diana died. When he heard the news, Brenna said, he “couldn’t believe it” and cried, not least because he had two children himself and so could understand what her death would mean for Diana’s boys. He made a decision “not to speak or disclose anything about the incident until William and Harry reached adulthood.”

The mere thought that his images “could have contributed to fueling the hunt for Diana and Dodi obviously saddens me,” Brenna said. But he did not think his work added significantly to the furor around the princess.

“If it hadn’t been me,” he added, “someone else would certainly have captured those images.”

Alex Marshall is a European culture reporter, based in London. More about Alex Marshall

The True Story Behind 'The Crown’s Infamous Kiss Photograph

Princess Diana became the most photographed woman in the world after "The Kiss."

Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for Season 6 of The Crown.

The Big Picture

• Princess Diana's life was constantly invaded by the paparazzi, who followed her every movement and turned her personal relationships into a public spectacle.
• Mario Brenna's photograph of Diana and Dodi Fayed sharing an intimate moment on a yacht sparked a frenzy in the press and fueled a relentless pursuit for their pictures.
• The paparazzi's obsession with capturing Diana's image ultimately contributed to her tragic death in a car crash, and "The Kiss" photograph played a significant role in these events.

Since the imminent rise of paparazzi culture during the 1990s, candid photographs of celebrities have always held a negative stigma, especially after the tragic death of Princess Diana ( Elizabeth Debicki ). Part 1 of The Crown 's final season, streaming on Netflix, has a major focus on the summer of 1997, when the recently divorced Princess of Wales became the prized jewel of a media frenzy. Without the personal security of the Royal Family, Diana was not afforded the kind of privacy she was given during her marriage to Prince Charles ( Dominic West ). Her every movement was followed through long-lens cameras ( Diana reportedly yelled at a photographer outside a movie theater in London and shouted, “You make my life hell!" ), and the press made her life into a scrutinized fishbowl — even her personal relationships were not her own.

Episode 2, "Two Photographs," revisits the paparazzi's ruthless pursuit of Princess Diana's picture. The start of the show introduces the audience to a real-life character who was responsible for capturing the infamous Sunday Mirror photograph, Italian paparazzo Mario Brenna . The photograph shows "Di" and Dodi Fayed ( Khalid Abdalla ) sharing an intimate moment aboard a yacht on the Mediterranean Sea. Although the latest season of The Crown is a dramatized account of these events , it's no secret that Brenna's successful photograph is shown to have preluded Diana's deathly car chase less than a month later. But there's so much more to the story behind "The Kiss."

Follows the political rivalries and romance of Queen Elizabeth II's reign and the events that shaped the second half of the 20th century.

What's the Truth Behind Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed's Romance?

On July 11, 1997, Diana and her sons, Prince William ( Rufus Kampas ) and Prince Harry ( Fflyn Edwards ), were kindly invited to join Mohamed Al-Fayed ( Salim Daw ), the business owner of Hôtel Ritz Paris and Harrods department store, at his Saint Tropez villa for a summer vacation. Dodi Fayed unexpectedly joined the party aboard Al-Fayed's yacht t he Jonikal, which becomes an integral character of its own seen in the final season of The Crown . Di, Dodi, and the Princes were said to have enjoyed a splendid time aboard the yacht, and Diana and Dodi grew fond of one another during this period.

According to Netflix's Beneath The Crown: The True Story of Diana and Dodi's Last Summer , both Princess Diana and Dodi were involved with other romantic partners before they met. Diana was reportedly dating heart surgeon Hasnat Khan ( Humayun Saeed ), whom she often referred to as "Mr. Wonderful," and clearly had big plans for their future . In the summer of 1997, Dr. Khan was rumored to have broken up with the Princess because of the consistent media attention surrounding them. On the other hand, Dodi, being a successful film producer , had a reputation as a playboy and was seen dating multiple A-list women over the course of his Hollywood career, including actress Brooke Shields, before meeting model Kelly Fisher, whom he was engaged to at the time he met the Princess of Wales.

After the vacation, Diana returned home to an apartment full of roses and an $11,000 gold Cartier watch as a present from Dodi. Diana's friends believe she developed an interest in dating Dodi to make Dr. Khan jealous . Just 11 days later, the Princess returned alone to the Jonikal and embarked on a week-long trip with Al-Fayed's son. The media went crazy, with rumors spreading of a possible romance. Most of the press coverage was heavily negative, which sparked numerous amounts of controversy around the pair. Photographers rose in numbers as the couple's relationship grew truer every day. Per Beneath The Crown , it surfaced that Mohamed Al-Fayed asked renowned publicist Max Clifford to positively endorse their relationship. Photographers were then tipped off to find Diana and Dodi's location, and on August 10, Mario Brenna found them first.

How Did Mario Brenna's "The Kiss" Change Princess Diana's Life Forever?

Per The Independent , Mario Brenna was an official photographer for the Versace fashion house who lived in Monaco in 1997. Brenna happened to discover the yacht on an inflatable boat off of the Sardinian coast (He claims he spent occasional summers around the Mediterranean Sea to catch celebrities vacationing, as stated in the National Post .) He slowly approached the Jonikal when he thought he had seen a former acquaintance. To his shock, it was actually the "People's Princess" in the arms of Dodi Fayed. Captured from 500 yards away, Brenna hurriedly snapped photos of the couple "kissing" onboard and flew straight to London to show fellow celebrity photographer Jason Fraser the historic images.

Brenna recounts finding the couple that day as a “great stroke of luck." Despite the summer haze, the photograph sparked a chaotic bidding war between major publishing companies. Brenna ultimately sold "The Kiss" to the Sunday Mirror for £250,000 . The Sun and The Daily additionally paid him £100,000 each. Fraser, who helped in negotiating the deals, sold the rights internationally, which brought their earnings to over $2.1 million in global sales.

Following Brenna's phenomenon, "The Kiss" fueled an all-out paparazzi hunt for Princess Diana and Dodi's picture. Everywhere they traveled, the paparazzi hounded the couple, with no respect for their privacy. If Brenna could make a fortune out of one photo, other photographers had a chance to do the same. Diana participated in several humanitarian works following the picture, including becoming an advocate for landmine removals in developing countries. However, her efforts were regularly overlooked by her affair with Dodi. The couple also received racist backlash after "The Kiss," with most comments disapproving of Dodi's ethnicity as depicted in The Crown .

Swarms of press, even helicopters, surrounded the yacht in which Dodi and Diana often stayed. As stated in Beneath The Crown, Dodi had encouraged Diana to dabble in Hollywood acting, with talks to co-star alongside Kevin Costner in a sequel to the box-office hit The Bodyguard . These dreams would never come to fruition. On August 31, 1997, Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed were declared dead following a car crash through a tunnel at Place de l’Alma in Paris, France . There are countless conspiracies revolving around their deaths, but it was undeniable that their car was mercilessly tailed by a pack of paparazzi who wanted to snap the couple's picture. Mario Brenna confesses to The New York Times that he couldn't help but think "The Kiss" triggered the horrifying events that led to the death of Princess Diana: "If it hadn’t been me, someone else would certainly have captured those images."

What Does 'The Crown' Get Right and Wrong About "The Kiss"?

The Crown is no stranger to negative criticism when it comes to dramatizing the lives of the Royal Family. Aside from a few historical flaws, Episode 2, "Two Photographs", surprisingly does an adequate job of re-imagining the events that made Princess Diana one of the most photographed persons of all time. What the show changes is Prince Charles's reaction to seeing the picture in the Sunday Mirror. The episode depicts Charles hiring Scottish photographer Duncan Muir, a fictionalized character, to take pictures of him with William and Harry as a ploy to outshine the publicity from Diana's controversial photo. It is later revealed that the Scotland photoshoot dominated the front pages of The Mirror and The Daily Record, but this didn't happen.

According to Business Insider , on August 12, 1997, the young Princes and their father participated in a photo shoot at the royals' annual vacation at Balmoral. A handful of photographers snapped the photos, not one, and the images were featured only on pages eight, nine, and five of the respective newspapers. The failed Scotland pics were still overshadowed by the public's fascination with "The Kiss," and the press made rather unfavorable remarks with subheadings like: "Young princes look embarrassed by dad's Harry Lauder image."

"Two Photographs" also mixes up some facts regarding how Dodi started courting the "People's Princess." In the show, Mohamed Al-Fayed acts as a matchmaker for the couple, endlessly pressuring Dodi to flirt with the Princess in order to prove he is worthy of inheriting his father's wealth. Dodi seems stressed about making a connection with Diana during her vacation onboard the yacht as he is engaged to Kelly Fisher (a fact that is accurate). When the couple does become more intimate, The Crown implies that Al-Fayed tipped off Mario Brenna as to their whereabouts, but Brenna claimed the misconception that Al-Fayed hired him to take "The Kiss" was "absurd and completely invented."

What the final season does right in Part 1 is the portrayal of Diana and Dodi's romantic affair and the paparazzi's relentless invasion of their private lives. Di and Dodi briefly dated for a little over a month, and their relationship was always under the microscope. As shown in The Crown , the pair did develop fond feelings for one another, and a rumored engagement as well, but the press could only imagine what their true relationship entailed. History has proven that Diana was nothing but a cash grab to the paparazzi who sought her out only in hopes of making a fortune overnight. Once she and Dodi became the eye of the world, the media never respected her space, time, or family when it came to capturing "the shot." The Crown ultimately does not sugarcoat the brutal paparazzi culture that led to Princess Diana's final moments .

Per the National Post, Brenna admitted that The Crown never made an effort to contact him about the true story of how he captured "The Kiss" or his feelings following the doomed aftermath. Furthermore, he told the Times he does not agree with how he or the paparazzi are represented in the final season. "Two Photographs," despite its blemishes, urges fans to acknowledge the prestigious drama as a fictionalized chronicle and acts as a time machine to reflect on the unfortunate events that shocked the world into a bitter period of grief. If "The Kiss" was never captured, would the "People's Princess" still be here today?

The Crown is available to stream exclusively on Netflix in the U.S.

Watch on Netflix

What Really Happened During Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed’s Vacation?

The Crown depicts her jaunts on Mohamed Al-Fayed’s yacht, the Jonikal, where her romance with Dodi kicked off.

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Diana was invited by Mohamed, a friend and businessman, to vacation in Saint-Tropez with her sons in July 1997. The Harrods owner would also goad his own son to join, too. The invitation came at a good time, after a few rough blows for Diana: Prince Charles was throwing a lavish birthday party for Camilla Parker Bowles at Highgrove, the house he and Diana once shared. And she had just broken up with surgeon Hasnat Khan, due to the media frenzy around their relationship. It was the month before William and Harry would be at Balmoral with their father and the rest of the royals, who no longer accepted her. So off she went, straight to the $20 million yacht that Fayed bought just before the trip to impress her—Tina Brown writes in The Diana Chronicles .

Prince Harry has looked back fondly at that trip, mostly because of the quality time they spent with their mom. “Actually, we’d been with Mummy weeks earlier when she first met him [Dodi], in St. Tropez,” he writes in her memoir Spare , per Today . “We were having a grand time, just the three of us, staying at some old gent’s villa.

“There was much laughter, horseplay, the norm whenever Mummy and Willy and I were together, though even more so on that holiday. Everything about that trip to St. Tropez was heaven. The weather was sublime, the food was tasty, Mummy was smiling.”

But the cameras followed her, like they always did. The Crown depicts photographers sailing out toward the Jonikal to snap images of the princess sunbathing and swimming in her one-piece. It also shows her approaching the boats filled with paparazzi to forge a deal: She’ll pose for them for a few shots if they’ll leave her and her kids alone.

Part of this is true. The New York Times reported in 1997 that Diana was quite cooperative with the press, at least during the first trip in July: “Three times, on separate occasions, she went out to the sea front and jumped off a small pier into the water, with photographers around her. Then, after leaving for 10 days with Mr. Fayed on the boat trip during which the photographs of the embracing couple were taken, she returned.”

“It was clear enough to all of us that she wanted to show the British establishment she was free,” Frederic Garcia, who photographed Diana on the trip, told the paper at the time. But her and the Al-Fayeds’ exasperation with the media grew after helicopters flew over the boat, according to the NYT .

Perhaps her openness to being photographed was her response to Camilla’s birthday party. “She just wanted to make the people at Balmoral as angry as possible,” her friend, art collector Lord Palumbo, told Brown. Now it wasn’t just a revenge dress; it was a revenge photo shoot with revenge swimsuits on a revenge vacation.

Brown even writes that the biggest photos from the trip, of the princess kissing a shirtless Dodi on the boat, “were the direct result of tips from Diana herself.” After they were published, she called photographer Jason Fraser, who “was in cahoots” with Mario Brenna, who shot the images, to ask why the pictures were so grainy. But she wasn’t the only one working with the press. Mohamed also had a publicist tip gossip columns on her and Dodi’s whereabouts and frame their getaway as a sensational romance, according to Brown.

Meanwhile, Dodi was juggling this burgeoning love story with another one. He was already engaged when he first joined Diana on the boat at his father’s behest in July. His fiancée was Kelly Fisher , an American actress and model, and their wedding was scheduled for the following month, on August 9, 1997. He had even left Fisher in Paris to board the Jonikal in St. Tropez. She joined later but, just as it’s shown in The Crown , she was relegated to a different Al-Fayed boat, where Dodi would visit her at night, Brown writes. Fisher soon caught on. In August, she sued Dodi for breach of contract, and was represented by high-profile lawyer Gloria Allred. But she withdrew the suit after his death.

In Spare , Harry remembered thinking Dodi was “cheeky” but overall was content with the relationship: “As long as Mummy’s happy, I told Willy, who said, he felt the same.” But Brown reported in her 2007 book that Prince William grew concerned. He told friends it was weird that they were on vacation with what seemed like a “substitute family.” When photos of Diana and Dodi on the boat were published, William complained to her that the boys at school would mock him for it.

After doing significant charity work in Bosnia with land mine victims, Diana reconvened with Dodi on the Jonikal in August. “The fact that she came back for a second visit so soon really shows her loneliness more than it does a passion for Dodi,” Dominick Dunne reported for Vanity Fair in 2008. But the privacy—or whatever amount of it that they had—might have appealed to her. “A splendid yacht. A helicopter. A private plane. Guards to keep the paparazzi at bay. She probably knew that she was being used by a social climber for his and his son’s advancement in London society, but in high society it was a fair deal. Each benefited.”

Dodi and Diana’s romance would be short-lived, but he showered her with gifts during their six-week relationship, including a pearl bracelet and diamond wristwatch, according to Vanity Fair . With him, the princess felt “so taken care of,” her confidant Lady Elsa Bowker told Brown. And on top of that, he was a “sympathetic, unthreatening listener,” wrote Tom Bower, author of Mohamed Al-Fayed’s unauthorized biography.

But their relationship probably wasn’t going to be a lasting one. According to Brown, Diana suspected Dodi might propose to her, but told a friend that the ring would go “firmly on the fourth finger of my right hand,” meaning she would not have accepted. Her sister Sarah McCorquodale later testified, “I just did not think the relationship had much longer to go.”

It’s been believed that the romance was even orchestrated by Mohamed himself. According to Bower, the older Al-Fayed would check in on Dodi and Diana during the trip (which is also portrayed in The Crown this season). McCorquodale also told the court that Diana “thought the boat was being bugged by Mr Al-Fayed Senior.”

On that second trip in August, Diana and Dodi were photographed together in the South of France and Sardinia, before heading to Paris for their tragic final days. There, they would be chased by cameras again for the last time.

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What really happened here?

"The Crown," which has been telling the long story of Queen Elizabeth II's reign since 2016, is a dramatic and fictional interpretation of history. It's full of invention and supposition , the educated guesses of creator Peter Morgan about what happened in the private lives of the British royal family for over half a century. But it leaves viewers dying to know what really happened behind the palace walls.

In fact, watching Part 1 of Netflix's final season (now streaming) might leave you with a bevy of questions. Four new episodes, set in 1997 in the weeks leading up to the death of Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki), zoom in on the private life of the People's Princess after her divorce from Prince Charles (Dominic West). They focus primarily on her relationship with Harrods heir Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla), who died with her in a car crash in Paris in August 1997.

But what part of the story "The Crown" tells actually happened? Did Dodi really propose to Diana on the day of the crash? Did Dodi's father Mohamed (Salim Daw) really push them together and call the paparazzi on them? And did Diana's death really bring the world to a standstill?

'The Crown' fact check: How did Will and Kate meet? Did the queen want to abdicate throne?

To separate fact from fiction, USA TOAY spoke with Hugo Vickers, the historian and biographer who has literally written the book on the royals, as well as Debicki and Abdalla, who explain how they researched the love affair they portrayed.

Did Dodi Fayed really leave his fiancée just before their wedding because of Diana?

When Diana and Dodi began their initial relationship, he was engaged to American model Kelly Fisher (Erin Richards). He broke off their engagement to pursue Diana, and it had major consequences, as the show portrays. "She tried to sue him," Vickers says. It generated "a lot of publicity." But "she dropped the case when he was killed."

Was Charles secretly campaigning for Camilla’s legitimacy while Diana was still alive?

The first episode of the new season shows Charles working hard to get positive press coverage of his long love Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams). He also tries to convince his mother, Queen Elizabeth II (Imelda Staunton), to legitimize Camilla as his partner by attending her birthday party, which Elizabeth refuses to do. Vickers says Charles was "definitely trying to put Camilla on the map" and increase her popularity in the country. However, "the so-called campaign was somewhat put on hold after Diana’s death."

Did Mohamed Al-Fayed really summon the paparazzi to take the infamous photos of Dodi and Diana kissing?

It's hard to know exactly how photographer Mario Brenna learned that Diana and Dodi were vacationing together on the Fayeds' yacht in Monte Carlo when he took the infamous photos of them kissing, embracing and sunbathing. Vickers can only surmise, based on the behavior of Mohamed Al-Fayed at the time, that he might have. "He certainly did similar things. Hard to know the exact details. But he was using Diana, no question of that."

The photos led to a bidding war, and the international sensation the show portrays. It was "massive," says Vickers. A 10-page spread of photos was published in the Sunday Mirror on Aug. 10. Brenna and his partner made more than $2 million from them.

Did Charles scheme with his publicist to do a ‘counter photo’ with the boys?

There were photos of Prince Charles, Prince WIlliam (Rufus Kampa) and Prince Harry (Fflyn Edwards) taken at Balmoral in August 1997, but they didn't happen exactly as the show portrays. "Tim Graham, a well known photographer, took those photos on Aug. 16," Vickers says, and not the small-time Scottish photographer the series invents. The photos also weren't quite as out-of-character for either Charles' family or other royals when they were at Balmoral, as the show portrays. The royals routinely had planned photo shoots at the estate while on vacation, and still do.

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The show implies Dodi had spurious motives courting Diana, egged on by his father. How much do we know about that?

Mohamed Fayed bought the yacht Jonikal especially to entertain Diana, Vickers says. "The motives were rather as shown: ensnaring Diana." It's impossible to know Dodi's personal motives or feelings.

Abdalla and Debicki say they studied hundreds of photographs and hours of surveillance footage of Dodi and Diana on the day of the crash. They watched it all, "second by second, minute by minute," Abdalla says. "You see this incredibly tender hand hold behind their backs and their heads nuzzled against each other and very gentle caressing, for seven minutes. And from that you understand the tenderness of a certain kind of falling in love."

Did Dodi propose to Diana in Paris on the day of the crash?

In the series, Dodi makes Diana stop in Paris (on the trip where they would soon die) to buy an engagement ring he thinks she wants. He then proposes to her, but she says no.

"It is said he bought a ring," Vickers says, but "she was not going to marry him." A 1998 book by Time magazine correspondents Tom Sancton and Scott MacLeod about Diana's death suggests that Dodi planned to propose . At an inquest in 2007, evidence was presented that Dodi went to the Repossi shop on the Place Vendôme in Paris on Aug. 30 and purchased a diamond ring.

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In 'The Crown,' Diana and Dodi’s driver has several drinks in the hours leading up to the crash. Is that true?

"He did," Vickers says. Investigations into the crash found that their driver, Henri Paul (Yoann Blanc), who also died in the crash, had two drinks at the Ritz hotel, where the couple was hanging out just before the crash.

The true story behind Princess Diana's iconic yacht photo

All you need to know about the iconic photo of the late princess of wales that went around the globe.

Princess Diana was always a fashion icon , we can never forget her legendary 'revenge' dress , but one of her best-known looks was snapped when she holidayed on the Jonikal yacht with the al-Fayed family, scenes which were immortalised in the fifth and sixth seasons of The Crown .

The holiday that Diana enjoyed, alongside sons Prince William and Prince Harry , would be her last before she was tragically killed in a car accident in 1997. One of the most memorable photos saw the late Princess of Wales sat on the yacht's diving board looking out over the sea.

Even though the photo of Diana in the teal swimsuit is now one of the most poignant photos of the late royal, how much do you know of the story behind it? Read on to find out all you need to know…

Why was Diana on the yacht?

Princess Diana had become friends with the businessman Mohamed al-Fayed, with the pair reportedly meeting a polo match before becoming friends. Following her divorce from the then Prince Charles and the ending of her relationship with heart surgeon Dr. Hasnat Khan, Mohamed invited Diana to join him and his family on a trip to St Tropez, in southern France.

Ahead of the trip, Diana had been in Milan to attend the funeral of fashion designer and friend Gianna Versace, who had been murdered by Andrew Cunanan. The late royal later travelled to Sarajevo, in Bosnia, to highlight the issue of landmines in the country. During her time in the city, she met with people who had been injured by the mines.

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The trip would end up being Diana's first time meeting Dodi al-Fayed, and the filmmaker's then-girlfriend, Kelly Fisher, was allegedly on the trip.

Who took the photo?

On 10 August, paparazzi photos were published in the Sunday Mirror showing Princess Diana and Dodi sharing a kiss, which intensified media presence around the couple and their holiday. Paparazzi photographers began renting dinghies to try and get new photos of the royal, with some even going for prices up to £1million.

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It's ultimately unknown which photographer grabbed the photo of Diana on the side of the yacht, which was published on 24 August, a week before Diana died. The snap saw the Princess in her teal swimsuit sat at the end of the yacht's diving board, with a life ring floating in the water beneath her.

See below for more images of Diana on the Jonikal…

Diana and Dodi

Diana and Dodi grew close on the trip, and in this photo the pair shared an intimate moment as they relaxed in the sun together.

Diana with the al-Fayed family

The late Princess of Wales had been invited on the trip by Mohamed al-Fayed, and she enjoyed the businessman's company during her time onboard.

Diana in blue

Diana favoured the teal swimsuit during her time in St Tropez.

Diana's paparazzi moment

The royal was aware of the media presence, and she light-heartedly teased photographers in this photo, mimicking a pair of binoculars with her hands.

Diana stretches

The mum-of-two also brought this stunning green and blue one-piece with her on the trip, and in this photo she enjoyed some morning stretches on the yacht's deck.

Diana's family moment

Diana didn't go on the holiday alone, and she also enjoyed time with her sons Prince William and Prince Harry, and a young Harry can be seen here with his mum while she spoke to someone on the phone.

• Princess Diana
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Inside the £13m 208ft ‘love boat’ yacht where Princess Diana & Dodi Fayed had their romantic fling which is on The Crown

• Becky Pemberton
• Published : 12:36, 16 Nov 2023
• Updated : 12:36, 16 Nov 2023

THE famous £13million superyacht where Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed enjoyed their romantic fling is featured on the new season of The Crown.

The glamorous royal and her wealthy boyfriend were famously pictured kissing on the luxury “love boat” Jonikal, which is now called Bash, before their tragic deaths in 1997.

Photos of the couple’s Mediterranean getaway circulated around the world, with The Sunday Mirror paying £250,000 for first rights to the collection.

The fall out of the photos was depicted on the sixth and final season of Netflix’s The Crown, with the Queen , played by Imelda Staunton , seen viewing the multi-page spread back home.

The stunning 208ft yacht can hold up to 18 people across nine staterooms, along with 26 crew members.

It also offers a range of impressive amenities including a jacuzzi, swim platform, sun deck, formal dining room, a bar, and office space.

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The yacht belonged to Dodi’s multi-millionaire father Mohamed Al-Fayed .

The billionaire former Harrods owner amassed his astonishing fortune running several high-profile business ventures and a Premier League football club prior to the announcement of his death in August 2023.

The ship was first launched in 1990, and has had a number of owners over the years.

According to Boat International, it was sold earlier this year, and although the sum hasn’t been disclosed, the asking price was €15,500,000 (£13million).

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Diana’s final month included two cruises on The Jonikal.

The holidays sparked unfounded rumours that Diana was pregnant and about to announce plans to marry Dodi .

Dodi died aged 42 in a Paris car crash with Diana 26 years ago.

The pair first met at a polo match in 1989, but they did not get together until Dodi invited the princess to stay at his father's 30-bedroom villa in St Tropez in July 1997.

Much of Dodi's fortune was spent on impressing a string of beautiful models and actresses.

The playboy was linked to Blue Lagoon actress Brooke Shields, Val Kilmer’s ex-wife Joanne Whalley, Stranger Things star Winona Ryder and Frank Sinatra’s daughter Tina.

Following the 1997 car crash that led to the couple's deaths, Mohamed attempted to sell the yacht on a number of occasions before ultimately parting with it in 2014.

It was most recently purchased by Bassim Haidar in June of 2021, who sold it just over a year later with plans to upgrade to a larger vessel.

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How does The Crown 's Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed storyline compare to their real-life relationship?

By Olivia McCrea-Hedley

The first half of the final series of The Crown is finally here, depicting the six-week romance between Princess Diana (played by Elizabeth Debicki) and Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla) – which was tragically the last six weeks of their lives.

The Crown is, first and foremost, a TV show. So, as with previous seasons, the lines between fact and fiction can often appear blurred. While we know that some of the events of season 6 definitely did take place, we’ll never know just how much truth is behind the private moments and conversations depicted on screen.

But, we’ll do our best to pick out the real from the re-imagined. Here’s how the relationship between Diana and Dodi is pictured in The Crown , and the moments that actually did happen in real life. Everything else, as the show's creators have stated, is down to interpretation.

*Warning: The Crown spoilers ahead.*

And how they matched up to the real thing.

By Charlie Teather

When Diana met Dodi

In The Crown : Back in Season 5 of The Crown , Diana, Princess of Wales, was pictured meeting film producer Dodi Fayed (the son of businessman Mohamed al-Fayed) in 1986, during a polo match in which Fayed played against Prince Charles at Windsor. However, their romance didn’t begin until much later.

Season 6 then tells the story of how the two came to be in a relationship. Set in 1997, one year after Diana’s divorce from Charles, the series shows Fayed’s father inviting Diana and her children, Princes William and Harry, aboard his yacht in St Tropez for the summer.

In reality: Diana did meet Dodi at a polo match at Windsor in 1986. She also accompanied the Fayeds on their yacht in St Tropez with her children – and thus became the centre of a media storm surrounding their relationship.

The set-up – and their first kiss

In The Crown : The show depicts Diana being hounded by paparazzi in St Tropez, with Diana asking them to leave her alone. The photographers took many now-famous photographs of her on the yacht – including a photo of her and Dodi kissing.

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By Denise Primbet

Throughout the season, Mohamed al-Fayed is portrayed as trying to set Diana up with his eldest son, Dodi – ringing up the maid to ask if they had been “intimate” and seemingly organising the photograph of them kissing to be taken.

In reality: Diana and Dodi did kiss on the yacht – the paparazzi photo of them kissing was, at the time, reportedly the most-expensive paparazzi photo ever sold. There have been multiple theories about who tipped off photographer Mario Brenna to take the photographs, from Diana to those close to her, though we'll most likely never know.

Since The Crown aired, Brenna told New York Times that the storyline that Mohamed hired him to take the photographs was “absurd and completely invented.”

The proposal

In The Crown : Episode 3 of the series, titled Dis-Moi Oui (“tell me yes”) reimagines the final hours of Diana and Dodi’s lives. After dinner at The Ritz in Paris – which they have to leave due to overwhelming paparazzi attention – the two head upstairs to one of the hotel suites, where Dodi proposes to Diana with a ring she had seen in a jewellery shop in Monte Carlo.

While Diana does not accept the proposal – “I know the whole world is wondering if we’re going to get married, but that’s not a reason to actually do it” – the two have a drink and speak about how they need to live their lives going forwards. They then decide to head to Dodi’s Parisian apartment – and, sadly, viewers know the tragic turn the story takes. Their car is tailed by paparazzi and their driver is intoxicated, which results in a fatal crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel.

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In reality: We will never know exactly what took place in the hotel room – however according to a 2004 report into Diana's death, the couple were upset by paparazzi’s “intrusive behaviour” at The Ritz, and they did head upstairs from the restaurant to the hotel’s Imperial Suite for dinner instead.

At the inquest into their death in 2007, CCTV footage was shown of Dodi buying an engagement ring in a jewellery store across the square from the Ritz Paris on the afternoon before their dinner. Further CCTV footage showed the assistant to the president of the Ritz Paris, Claude Roulet, taking an item back to the couple’s suite. However, there is no confirmation of what this item was.

A ring bearing the inscription "Dis-moi Oui" (hence the name of the episode) was recovered from Dodi’s Parisian apartment after the couple’s death, along with a receipt dated 30 August 1997, the day before the crash, listing a “bague de fiançaille” (engagement ring).

At the inquest, Dodi’s father claimed that they had met the jeweller behind the ring in Monte Carlo during their yacht holiday, and he believed that his son had planned to propose to Diana that night.

The Crown is currently available to watch on Netflix – series six part two will air on 16 December 2023.

By Lindy Segal

By Elizabeth Logan

‘The Crown’: The Story Behind That Princess Diana Yacht Photo

Perched on the edge of a diving board in a blue swimsuit, the famous paparazzi shot caught the former royal in a moment of reflection

It’s telling that the lead image in the promotion of the final series of The Crown, a show ostensibly about Queen Elizabeth II and her ascendent line of heirs, is not of HRH. Instead, it’s an iconic shot of the person who's really at the centre of the Netflix show's sixth season: the late Princess Diana.

The photo in question has become embedded in popular culture since it was taken on Diana’s last holiday before her death. The ex-royal sits, pensively, on the diving board of a superyacht, looking out to sea in a turquoise swimsuit. But what is the true story behind one of the most famous images of the Princess Of Wales?

The backstory

In July 1997, Diana was on a Mediterranean holiday with her boyfriend at the time, Dodi Al Fayed, son of the then-Harrods’ boss, the late Mohammed Al Fayed. Diana and Dodi – and the Princes William and Harry – all spent time together in Castle St. Therese, Al Fayed’s 30-bedroom villa in St. Tropez in the South of France.

But Diana was called to Milan on 22 July, where she attended the funeral of her friend Gianni Versace, who was murdered by a fan on the steps of his Miami home on 15 July.

The author and friend of Diana, Tina Brown, later wrote: “The murder of the flamboyant fashion star Gianni Versace... while Diana was on Al Fayed's yacht, was a meteor shower in the exploding sky of her final summer.”

With the weight of the death of her friend still on her mind, in early August, Diana travelled alone to Sarajevo to publicise the fight against landmines in the country. Here, she came face to face with some horrific tales of mutilation of the people, and spent time working with rehabilitation groups of survivors.

By early August, after an emotionally turbulent few weeks, Diana was back on holiday with Dodi, this time on his yacht, known as Jonikal.

But on 10 August, pictures of Diana and Dodi kissing in Sardinia were published in the Sunday Mirror , and all hell broke loose; especially when it was claimed Diana could possibly be engaged, or even pregnant. In the trailer for series six, Imelda Staunton’s Queen is shown the front-page splash and told: “Interest in the princess’ private life is unlikely to die down any time soon”, and it’s likely that in real life Diana would have received a stern phone call from the palace.

From this point onwards, it only intensified the swarms of paparazzi clamouring for pictures of the pair on holiday. Video footage from the trip shows dinghies filled with men with long-lens pictures surrounding the yacht, desperate to catch another money-spinning shot of the couple together – with figures going as high as £1 million a photo.

On 24 August, Diana, dressed in just the teal swimsuit, took a walk out to the diving board of the yacht and sat down on it. She would have had a lot to process from the past few weeks.

She would also have known the press were desperate for pictures of her and Dodi together – perhaps she told him to stay below deck to protect him while she gave photographers a shot to appease them.

But according to one paparazzo in the documentary Sex & Power , the romance was just for show: “No-one knows this, so it’s ­actually quite interesting. [The crew member] said, ‘They don’t share the same bedroom, he calls her ma’am, is ­incredibly deferential and respectful. But as soon as she goes outside to wave to the paps, she’s bending over and kissing him and hugging him’... The truth [of their romance] is the opposite.”

Was this then another posed shot designed to reset the narrative, or was it simply a candid picture of the troubled princess in genuine thought? Whatever the case may be, the photo's melancholy pull is still being felt.

The first half of The Crown series 6 streams on Netflix from November 16.

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The Crown: The Sad, Strange Details of Princess Diana’s Last Vacation

By Julie Miller

Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed are lounging on the sundeck of a reportedly £15 million yacht in The Crown ’s season six episode “Two Photographs” when Dodi’s domineering father telephones an onboard employee with an urgent question.

“Are they sleeping together?” Mohamed Al Fayed demands to know. 

It’s an audacious question—but Mohamed really was checking in on the couple hourly during this August 1997 cruise, according to Tom Bower , who wrote an unauthorized biography of the billionaire called Fayed. The late princess was aware that these calls were coming in—so much so that she joked to Dodi, “God is calling,” when she heard a ring, according to Dodi’s spiritual healer, Myriah Daniels, who was onboard. In 2007, during the inquest into the 1997 crash that killed the princess, Dodi, and their driver, Henri Paul, Daniels said that this became one of Diana’s inside jokes with Dodi. “They’d both have a giggle,” she said. 

Diana had vacationed with Mohamed, as well as Prince William and Prince Harry, aboard the Jonikal earlier that summer. As depicted in The Crown ’s season six episode “Persona Non Grata,” that first Jonikal vacation featured Jet Skis and a flirtation between Diana and the flotilla of press nearby. 

“The young princes didn’t like [the trip] much,” Tina Brown writes in The Palace Papers. “The flash and excess of [Mohamed’s] hospitality—the groaning buffets and the palatial bathrooms—embarrassed William in particular.” Dodi, who was asked by his father to join the trip midway, did not help matters by making the “oddly flamboyant gesture of renting a disco for William and Harry to enjoy privately,” according to royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith in Diana in Search of Herself.

Mohamed was a controversial figure who long craved social acceptance by the British elite, and hoped a relationship between his son and the recently-divorced Diana would seal the deal. 

During the summer of 1997, the billionaire ordered Dodi to drop everything—including his model fiancée, Kelly Fisher —and romance the late princess. Speaking about Mohamed, Bedell Smith previously told Vanity Fair, “He was really the puppet master behind Dodi and Diana’s very brief, barely more than a month, romance…. Dodi basically did whatever his father told him to do.”

Diana’s association with Mohamed caused serious backlash in the press. “These days, Diana, you are no longer the Teflon Princess,” warned Andrew Morton , the biographer behind her bridge-burning tell-all, Diana: Her True Story, in The Sun. “You might have the run of a £20 million yacht, but your friends and fans see a woman who is drifting on the sea of life, seriously in danger of becoming shipwrecked.” Referring to Diana’s cat-and-mouse game with the paparazzi during that initial trip, columnist Judith Whelan wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald, “Diana has been erratic before. This time, however, she has done it while hosted by one of the most reviled men in Britain.”

Despite the press outrage over her association with Mohamed, Diana agreed to return to the Jonikal for the intimate trip reimagined in “Two Photographs.” “Alone in August and attracted to [Dodi], [a] sympathetic, unthreatening listener, she accepted the invitation for a second trip alone with Dodi to the Jonikal on 31 July,” wrote Bower in Fayed. “Over the next six days…the two frolicked on the sundecks, inside the sumptuous craft and in the sea.”

Dodi indulged Diana with her favorite meals—“which included carrot juice in the morning, fruit at lunch, and fish in the evening, as well as plenty of Champagne, caviar, and pâté de foie gras,” according to Diana in Search of Herself. The music was Diana’s selection as well: George Michael’s 1996 album, Older, the occasional Frank Sinatra tune, and the soundtrack of The English Patient. “Such a marvelous film,” Diana raved to Dodi’s butler, Rene Delorm, according to Fayed. “And you miss the music when you’re watching.”

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Mohamed’s staff was so attentive to Diana that the Jonikal ’s chief stewardess, Deborah Gribble, could remember the tiniest detail, like that some of Diana’s birth control packets were half-used. Speaking at the inquest, she also confirmed that Dodi and Diana “were clearly having a relationship and were a couple.”

Dodi lavished Diana with gifts during their six-week courtship, including a pearl bracelet, a diamond-studded wristwatch, a silver photo frame, and a gold-and-diamond ring. When the Jonikal docked in Sardinia’s Porto Cervo, according to Brown’s The Diana Chronicles, Diana and Dodi went shopping and returned with cashmere sweaters for the princess—one in every color. 

Mohamed, meanwhile, was busy behind the scenes calling press. News of the relationship between Diana and Dodi broke the first week of August, less than a month before Diana’s death. The Sun ran the news with the headline “Di’s Secret Hol With Harrods Hunk Dodi,” while Mohamed’s publicist touted the relationship as “the romance of the century.”

But by the end of the trip, according to those who knew Diana, she intended their fling to be just that. The late princess suspected that Dodi might propose to her, according to Brown, but she told a friend that an engagement ring would be “going firmly on the fourth finger of my right hand” should it be presented. As recreated in “Two Pictures,” there was “a chaotic evening ashore in Monte Carlo when Dodi suddenly decided to send for the tender and take the princess for a walk.” Rather than going for a romantic stroll, however, Dodi “got her lost after a long pant up a hill trying to evade the paparazzi,” Brown writes. 

It was so embarrassing, she continues, that Trevor Rees-Jones, a bodyguard on Mohamed’s payroll, “began to feel sorry for the princess; he believed she deserved better.”

According to Gribble, Dodi also became impatient with the amount of press attention Diana was receiving.

“The tension was noticeable throughout the trip and increasing as time wore on,” Gribble revealed during the inquest. “By the time we went to Paris, there was real tension. It was incredible. It was all so tense.” 

Days before her fatal accident, Diana called her sister from the Jonikal, confiding that any love spell cast on her earlier had been broken. While she did not get into specifics, Sarah McCorquodale later told the court, “I just did not think the relationship had much longer to go.”

During that final trip on the Jonikal, Diana was photographed sitting alone on a diving board in an aqua swimsuit. The image remains so iconic that, 26 years after it was taken, Netflix recreated the visual in its promotional materials for The Crown ’s sixth season.

Contrary to what the photo showed, though, Diana was never really alone. By the end of the cruise, the princess suspected that Mohamed was doing more than periodically checking in with the Jonikal staff. As McCorquodale revealed during the inquest, “She thought the boat was being bugged by Mr. Al Fayed Senior.”

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Real-life story behind Princess Diana and Dodi's 'The Kiss' photo

Season six of The Crown is here and the newest episodes are packed full of romance, drama, mystery, and tragedy.

Of all the storylines set to appear in the final season of The Crown (the 90s = a very busy time for the royal family), none is likely to capture attention more than that of Princess Diana's final years (and last romance).

While Part 1 and Part 2 of the Netflix show will span quite a few years, the opening episodes focus on what must undoubtedly be the royal family’s toughest: 1997.

The year, of course, saw Princess Diana tragically killed in a car crash. The devastating loss of life - Diana was just 36 when she died - also left the young Princes William and Harry without a mother. The boys then had to publicly mourn their mum, while the rest of the world looked on.

As such, the episodes are also darker than those that have come before, and we, the audience, watch the media frenzy building around Diana’s character, knowing the tragic fate that awaits her and her loved ones.

The late Princess - and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed - both died when the driver of the car they were travelling in lost control, as it was being pursued by the paparazzi. A toxicology report found the driver was drunk but both the chauffeur and the drivers of the pursuing vehicles were found to be responsible by an inquest.

Sadly, it was just one example of the many times photographers chased Diana's every move. Just weeks before her death, photos of the Princess vacationing in France also dominated headlines.

A string of photos of the Princess in France made their way to the press, before being printed all over the world – and the most famous of all these may very well be 'The Kiss', as it has been dubbed. The photo, showing Diana and Dodi in an embrace, and the bidding war it sparked, both feature in The Crown. Here’s everything we know about the real-life events behind The Crown's depiction.

What is the photo of Diana and Dodi kissing?

On 10 August, mere weeks before the fatal car crash on 31 August, pictures were published allegedly showing Princess Diana and Dodi kissing.

Dubbed 'The Kiss', the most well-known photo is a grainy shot of a couple pictured embracing, but neither of their faces is visible - just the woman's blonde hair, as she's photographed from behind while the pair wrap their arms around each other, wearing swimwear.

The photo, which appears to show carefree lovers, reportedly sold for £1 million. The image brought in big bucks as it went on sale when interest in Princess Diana’s private life had reached an all time high.

Dodi's father is shown in the series to take a keen interest in the couple's relationship and it's suggested he goes to great efforts to publicise it, with his character in one episode even making enquiries about paparazzi. However, there is no reason to suggest he had any involvement in 'The Kiss' or its publication in real life.

Were Diana and Dodi in love?

In The Crown, Princess Diana and Dodi certainly appear to enjoy their time spent together, which includes their romantic stay on the Fayed family's yacht.

But that's not to say everything went down as portrayed on screen. Like almost everything in Diana's life, her relationship with Dodi Fayed was the subject of much speculation, as it continues to be to this day, over 20 years after her death.

In the intermediary years, several points have been made for and against their love.

Mohamed Al Fayed, for instance, said his son planned to propose to Diana, but Paul Burrell, Diana's former butler, described theirs as a '30-day relationship'.

Ultimately, we may never know the truth of Diana's feelings, but what is clear is that her love life was just another area of her life many felt entitled to, as often happens to women living in the public eye.

Here Are The Real Photos Of Diana On Vacation That Inspired Those Scenes In The Crown

The Princess of Wales did indeed have a little chat with paparazzi on a boat.

The sixth and final season of The Crown got off to an emotional start by depicting Princess Diana’s final weeks before her death in August 1997. At the time, Princess Diana was newly dating Dodi Fayed, son of Harrod’s owner Mohamed Al-Fayed and famously spent time on Al-Fayed’s yacht in the south of France that summer with 12-year-old Prince Harry and 15-year-old Prince William. She was being constantly followed by the paparazzi, and is seen confronting photographers in The Crown in an effort to get them to leave her sons alone so they could enjoy their holiday. Which, according to photos taken of the princess at the time, appears to be at least somewhat based on a real event.

Season 6, Part 1 of The Crown saw Princess Diana (played by Elizabeth Debicki) vacationing off the coast of Saint-Tropez with her sons, Prince Harry and Prince William (played by Fflyn Edwards and Rufus Kampa, respectively), on Al-Fayed’s yacht. If The Crown is to be believed, Prince William in particular was struggling to have a good time on his holiday because of the constant presence of the paparazzi. And so, Princess Diana decided to throw on a swimsuit and jet over to the photographers to pose for some shots in an effort to get them to leave.

The Crown’s version...

“Enjoying your holiday?” a member of the paparazzi asks Princess Diana in The Crown when she is seen approaching them on a boat, and she replies. “Yes, we’re having a lovely time, apart from one little thing, you lot. Seriously, how long are we going to have the pleasure of your company? The attention is starting to freak out the boys.”

She offered the paparazzi a “surprise” if they would leave her sons alone as they snapped photos of her. And while we don’t know if the real Princess Diana offered them a surprise, she absolutely did confront them that summer.

How it looked in real life...

A year after Princess Diana’s death in a car crash in Paris, journalist and biographer Sally Bedell Smith wrote about the royal’s relationship with the paparazzi for Vanity Fair — in particular, that fateful summer in the south of France. “On a holiday in July 1997 with her boyfriend Dodi Fayed and his family in Saint-Tropez,” Bedell Smith wrote at the time, “she first eluded paparazzi by crawling along a balcony and hiding behind a towel, then surprised a contingent of British tabloid reporters and photographers ... by addressing them from her motorboat in a fetching leopard-print bathing suit. ‘You will have a big surprise coming soon, the next thing I do,’ she teased, and implied that she was thinking of living abroad.”

This wasn’t the only moment that the Netflix series recreated from Princess Diana’s holiday that last summer. Princess Diana was also seen in a super colorful swim suit, hanging out on the beach with her sons. A scene The Crown pulled off perfectly.

In real life, most of the photos from that moment were taken with Princess Diana spending time with her sons on the yacht, even wrapping her son Prince Harry up in a big hug while wearing the iconic swimsuit.

Princess Diana was also photographed sitting on the diving board of Al-Fayed’s yacht, all alone in a bright blue bathing suit. Looking, some might say, quite lonely.

Like the series showed, Princess Diana in 1997 was also seen wearing a bright blue one-piece swimsuit, staring off into space.

While The Crown has certainly done an impeccable job of recreating real-life photos of moments from the lives of royals, it’s important to remember that these are dramatized and fictionalized versions of real events. No matter how spot-on they might look to us.

This article was originally published on November 20, 2023

Diana's photos with Dodi and Charles's Balmoral photoshoot explained

The second episode of The Crown season 6 centres around two famous photographs.

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The Crown's sixth and final season is concluding in two parts, with the first four episodes available to watch now on Netflix, revolving around the final days of Princess Diana before her death in a car crash on 31st August 1997.

The second episode of the season 6 , titled Two Photographs, contrasts two important moments that occurred in the summer of 1997 – the paparazzi shot of Diana and Dodi Fayed kissing on holiday, dubbed The Kiss, which was published in The Sunday Mirror, and a photoshoot of Prince Charles and his sons, Prince William and Harry, enjoying a much quieter holiday at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.

The Netflix show depicts Charles's staged pictures as a direct retaliation against the photo of Diana and Dodi kissing.

But how accurate is this depiction and when were the two pictures taken? Read on for everything you need to know about the photos taken of Diana and Dodi and Charles's Balmoral photoshoot with William and Harry.

When were the pictures of Diana and Dodi taken?

On 10th August 1997, pictures of Diana and Dodi kissing were published in The Sunday Mirror, with one published on the front cover alongside the headline: "The Kiss."

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The photos were taken by Italian photographer Mario Brenna and were reportedly sold for £1 million . They showed Diana lounging on the deck of the yacht with Dodi and kissing him.

Underneath the headline, the front cover of The Sunday Mirror read: "Now Dodi flies off to buy an engagement ring for Diana."

After having first met at a polo tournament, Diana and Dodi had first reconnected in mid-July 1997 in St Tropez, when she was staying at his father's villa.

They were pictured together at the time, swimming in the ocean along with William and Harry.

When was the Balmoral photoshoot of Charles, William and Harry set up?

Also in August 1997, the same month as the photos of Diana and Dodi were published in The Sunday Mirror, photos were taken of Prince Charles at Polvier, by the River Dee in the Balmoral Estate, alongside Princes William and Harry.

Charles was wearing a kilt and sporran and was holding a shepherd's crook walking stick, and the family had two dogs with them - Prince William's Labrador Widgeon and Prince Charles's Jack Russell Tigga.

As in The Crown, the images show William skimming stones in the river as his father and brother watch on. We don't know for certain, as is suggested in the episode, that this image was purposefully captured to contrast those published of Diana.

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The trio also took similar photos on 16th August, with Charles once again dressed in a kilt - but this time in a green jumper.

One of these photos was posted to The Royal Family's official account on Twitter, which has recently been rebranded as X, on Father's Day this year, alongside the caption: "To Dads everywhere, we wish you a very special Father’s Day today."

The Crown season 6 part 1 is streaming on Netflix from Thursday 16th November 2023. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month . Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream .

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Inside the Superyacht Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed Spent Their Final Vacation On

A look at the vessel that saw the beloved royal’s last vacation.

It was hot gossip, this adventure that the princess took abroad after having finalized her divorce from then Prince Charles less than a year before—something that was hinted at at the end of season 5 of The Crown as Queen Elizabeth is pressed to endorse a vacation a-sea with Fayed and her grandchildren, Prince Harry and Prince William. Diana was famously photographed sitting on the passerelle of this boat. Years later, in real life, Harry described the trip in his memoir, Spare , with fond recollection. “Everything about that trip to St. Tropez was heaven,” he wrote.

While the series was filmed on a lookalike super yacht in Mallorca , the real boat was equally lavish. The 208-foot ship was commissioned by Dodi’s father, former Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed, who brought on naval architect Vincenzo Ruggiero to design it in the late 1980s. It was built by Italian shipyard Codecasa and launched in 1990. The steel and aluminum super yacht boasted nine staterooms that altogether accommodate up to 18 people, in addition to a crew of 26. Amenities included a Jacuzzi, swim platform, sun deck, formal dining room, a bar, and office space. Mohamed had named the yacht Jonikal (it has subsequently been called Sokar and is currently called Bash ) .

Shortly after Diana’s and Dodi’s deaths, Mohamed gave the interior a redesign by H2 Yacht Design and a refit that included extending the hull. He attempted to sell the yacht on a number of occasions, ultimately parting with it in 2014 to an anonymous buyer. The new owner carried out further work, including machinery upgrades, a repaint, and fresh teak decks. In 2021, the yacht came into the hands of Bassim Haidar , the founder of Intercomm and GMT, who gave it a further $9.7 million refit after a reported bridge deck fire—and its current name Bash . It’s now back to turn-key condition after an 18-month remodel completed in April 2023 by marine engineering and management company Capax and boat interior company Bobic Yacht Interiors . It features a beauty salon, massage area, high-tech gym, and a spacious main salon.

In May, Robb Report reported that Bash is available for charter in the Mediterranean starting at $278,000 per week, plus expenses. In June, Haidar listed Bash for $16.8 million, according to Boat International .

There was a second motor yacht named Cujo, which Diana and Fayed also took earlier that summer. It was built in Italy in 1972 for John von Neumann, who commissioned the Italian Baglietto shipyard to build the world's fastest motor yacht. She was given two 18-cylinder engines that allowed it to go as fast as 42 knots. Fayed had bought the boat from his cousin, Saudi businessman and arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. In August, the Mediterranean Sea reclaimed Cujo, as the 62-foot artifact of Diana’s life hit an unidentified object off Beaulieu-sur-Mer on July 29 and sprang a leak, Vanity Fair reported. The seven people on board were rescued by teams from Antibes and safely returned to shore.

An imitation of Jonikal will feature in The Crown season 6, a set that was intended to visually illuminate the tension between Diana and the royal family. “Diana’s south of France adventure was bright and lovely pastel colors, and her world even in Kensington Palace is optimistic and warm, compared to the queen’s residence at Balmoral, which is very static, with gloomy light and drab colors,” set decorator Alison Harvey tells ELLE DECOR.

Filming on the yacht off the island of Mallorca (a St. Tropez stand-in) required many moving parts with few do-overs. “We brought in the drapes, the artwork, many furnishings,” Harvey explains. “Everything was set in the early ’90s, so we thought hard about the colors and textures that we brought in.” Harvey’s team had just half a day to dress the yacht, and then it was off to sea. “There was no getting on or off after that,” Harvey says, adding that they were “subsumed by the logistics of what we had to achieve and the time we had to do it.”

However painstaking the process, the yacht scenes will offer an intriguing context—though largely fictitious—for the iconic photographs that exist of those final weeks leading up to Diana’s death.

Rachel Silva, the Assistant Digital Editor at ELLE DECOR, covers design, architecture, trends, and anything to do with haute couture. She has previously written for Time, The Wall Street Journal, and Citywire.

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A Complete Timeline of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed's Relationship

During the summer of 1997, Diana and Dodi had a brief love affair before their untimely deaths.

Every item on this page was chosen by a Town & Country editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

"The funny thing is that everyone focuses on the crash," Abdalla told Town & Country . "And strangely, as a result, what they miss is this fabulous summer that Dodi and Diana had with each other. From an acting perspective, that's the real challenge—and that's also been the real joy to explore. They're falling in love, but you know what happened afterwards. You look at the images of Diana at that time, and she was really happy. It's been a real pleasure as Dodi, as a character who makes Diana happy, having those scenes with a happy Diana."

As the final season of The Crown is now fully streaming ( part two dropped today ), here's the full, complete timeline of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed's brief relationship:

Sometime in the late '80s: Princess Diana meets Mohammed Al Fayed

After Mohammed, an Egyptian businessman, purchased the iconic Harrods department store in 1985, he entered the orbit of the British royal family—including Princess Diana. They met numerous times over the years, and even attended a charity dinner together at Harrods in 1996.

Reportedly, during this time, Diana meets Dodi for the first time, at a 1986 polo match in Windsor.

August 1996: Prince Charles and Diana formally divorce

Then- Prince Charles and Princess Diana separated in 1992 , but would not formally divorce until August 1996. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip supported a divorce in late 1995, and it was finalized less than a year later.

"After considering the present situation, the Queen wrote to both the Prince and Princess earlier this week and gave them her view, supported by the Duke of Edinburgh, that an early divorce is desirable. The Prince of Wales also takes this view and has made this known to the Princess of Wales since the letter," Buckingham Palace said in a statement on December 1995. "The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh will continue to do all they can to help and support the Prince and Princess of Wales, and most particularly their children, in this difficult period."

Charles and Diana split custody of their children.

July 1997: Diana and Dodi's romance begins

In summer 1997, Mohammed invites Princess Diana and her sons, Princes William and Harry, to vacation with his family in the south of France . She accepts the invitation, and the end of season five of The Crown shows Diana packing for this trip .

By this point, Diana was no longer dating Hasnat Khan , a British Pakistani surgeon. (Here, a guide to all of Diana's rumored boyfriends .) Khan said of Dodi, "She wanted to be with someone who was happy to be seen with her in public and she could do that with Dodi." He added, "I think that Diana finally realized that Al Fayed could give her all the things I could not. He had money and could provide the necessary security for her ."

Diana and her sons join the Fayed family on their yacht and at their villa, Castle St. Therese, for a trip from July 11 through 20. Prince Harry would later write in his memoir, Spare , "Everything about that trip to St. Tropez was heaven." He explains, "We'd been with Mummy weeks earlier when she first met him, in St. Tropez"—the him refers to Dodi—"We were having a grand time, just the three of us, staying at some old gent's villa." At the time, Dodi was dating (and possibly engaged to) American model Kelly Fisher , but soon, a romance blossoms between Dodi and Diana.

August 1997: Diana continues seeing Dodi

After Princes William and Harry go to Balmoral in Scotland for summer vacation with Prince Charles, Diana continues to undertake engagements. She flies back to the South of France, where she and Dodi spend time together aboard the Jonikal in early August, where they are snapped by paparazzi photographer Mario Brenna—who sells the pictures to the Sunday Mirror for record-breaking prices . The pictures first ran on August 10, 1997 with the headline "THE KISS" while Diana was traveling to Bosnia to highlight her work around landmines .

Despite the press surrounding them, after going to Greece with Rosa Monckton, Diana returns to Saint Tropez to vacation again with Dodi on August 21, 1997. On August 24, 1997, Diana is photographed famously sitting at the end of the yacht's diving board.

During this trip, too, Diana and Dodi visit Monaco, where they visit the Repossi boutique. The Washington Post later reported, " Alberto Repossi said in a telephone interview today that the couple came into the Monaco branch of his store unexpectedly about 10 days before the Aug. 30 auto accident that killed them. The couple was vacationing on the Riviera at the time. They spent only about four or five minutes in the store, Repossi said, because they already knew which ring they wanted. They had seen it in a Repossi advertisement in the September edition of a fashion magazine, L'Officiel de la Couture et de la Mode de Paris."

August 30 and 31, 1997

On August 30, 1997, Diana and Dodi fly to Paris , where they go to the Ritz Paris, which is owned by Mohammed Al Fayed . That same day, Dodi also goes to the Repossi store in Paris to pick up the ring they reportedly chose in Monaco.

As the Associated Press reports , " the day has been tense. The couple has been having problems with paparazzi ever since their mid-afternoon arrival in Paris. First, they trailed Diana and Dodi from Le Bourget Airport outside Paris, on their way to see Villa Windsor — a mansion that once housed the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and that Dodi’s father has bought and renovated. Their driver managed to shake the photographers." They try to have dinner at Chez Benoit, but paparazzi trail them so they eat at the Ritz Paris, in the Imperial Suite.

After dinner, they decide to go to an apartment Dodi owned off the Champs-Elysees, and 20 minutes after midnight, they leave the hotel. With paparazzi in pursuit, their car crashes in the Pont d'Alma tunnel, in Paris. Dodi died instantly, and early that morning, August 31 at Hospital La Pitié Salpêtrière, Diana was declared dead .

Dodi was buried that evening , in accordance with Muslim tradition, after a funeral at Central London mosque. Princess Diana's funeral took place on September 6, 1997

Emily Burack (she/her) is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma , a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram .

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What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in The Crown Season 6 Part 1

Did diana really have a psychic on call and did william really adore street fighter ii we break down what’s true and what’s invention..

Appearing with perfect timing not long after its principal character has left the world stage, the final series of The Crown brings us to the last years of Elizabeth II’s reign. The first part of Season 6 (Part 2 will be released by Netflix in December) announces its dramatic trajectory right from the start, as a Parisian walking his dog late at night spies a Mercedes limousine racing down a Seine embankment pursued by several motorbikes, then hears a sickening crash.

Dramatizing the early years of Elizabeth II’s life was a more straightforward proposition for the show, dealing with events that most of the audience had not experienced firsthand and so was unlikely to be emotionally invested in. Also, the scriptwriters had a lot less guesswork: Official notes and documents by government officials in the corridors of power at the time have since been made accessible to the public (under British law, most government notes and documents can be put in the public domain 30 years after they are created), and significant figures in the story have published a trove of memoirs and diaries.

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By contrast, a large contingent of the audience has preexisting views, and indeed conspiracy theories, about the events leading up to Princess Diana’s death. Showrunner Peter Morgan has said the show “is a fictional dramatization, imagining what could have happened behind closed doors.” So, while we will never know for sure if Dodi Fayed ever actually proposed to Princess Diana (at least until those memoirs and diaries appear), or why Diana decided to make that fateful stopover in Paris before returning to London, or how the queen reacted to the news of her death, we do have Morgan’s educated guesses, deriving from psychological extrapolation blended with his dramatist’s instinct. As the emotion of the era has finally started to subside and the fog of speculation dissipates, we look at what’s fact and what’s fiction in the first four episodes of The Crown ’s ultimate season.

Was Dodi Engaged to Someone Else When He Started Pursuing Diana?

At the start of the season, Dodi Fayed—occasional film producer and man-about-several-towns, considered to be something of a lady killer despite being under the thumb of his domineering father, Mohamed—is more or less happily engaged to American model Kelly Fisher. But then he is summoned to the family yacht by his father, who has managed to lure Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) and her sons there for a vacation and is keen for Dodi (Khalid Abdalla) to become Diana’s next husband. Dodi and Diana bond over their difficult relationships with their fathers and, with Mohamed pushing in the background, Dodi dumps his fiancée as his romance with Diana blossoms.

In reality, Fisher, who modeled in campaigns for brands such as Victoria’s Secret, Armani, and Calvin Klein, first met Dodi Fayed in Paris in July 1996. They allegedly became engaged in February 1997, with Dodi giving her a large sapphire-and-diamond ring (very similar, ironically, to the engagement ring Prince Charles gave Diana). However, only seven months later—after photographs of Dodi kissing Diana on his father’s yacht the Jonikal appeared on the cover of the British tabloid the Sunday Mirror, then everywhere else—Fisher realized that the relationship was in trouble.

Fisher retreated to the U.S., hired powerhouse lawyer Gloria Allred , and held a press conference in Beverly Hills to announce she was suing Dodi for breach of contract, claiming that Dodi had bought her the ring and had promised to buy them a house in Malibu to live in after their marriage. She also said that Dodi asked her to give up her career so she could spend more time with him and had offered her $500,000 to do so. Ultimately, she said, she received $60,000 plus a check for $200,000, which bounced.

The Fayed family, unsurprisingly, has denied that Dodi ever proposed to Fisher. As The Crown depicts, when Fisher flew to St-Tropez in July to stake her claim during Diana’s first trip to the boat, the Fayeds parked her on another, smaller yacht while she waited for Dodi to visit her in the evenings. In 2008 transcripts of calls between Fisher and Dodi were made public. In them, she accuses him of “two-timing” her, saying, “You even flew me down to St-Tropez to sit on a boat while you seduced Diana all day and fucked me all night.” In another call transcript, she asserted, “We were together the whole time. And you knew it.” Dodi, not quite the gentleman he is presented as in the drama, responded by calling Fisher “hysterical” and insisting they had already split up by the time Diana appeared on the scene.

Was William Really a Fan of Street Fighter II ?

The show depicts Diana taking up an invitation from Harrods tycoon Mohamed al-Fayed to escape both press attention and the big party Prince Charles is throwing for Camilla Parker Bowles’ 50 th birthday by vacationing on his luxury yacht off the South of France. When Diana arrives on board with her two sons, al-Fayed immediately introduces William and Harry to his three younger children, who are frolicking in the yacht’s pool. As word of Diana’s presence gets out, the yacht is surrounded by paparazzi on motorboats, leading William to prefer staying on board playing Street Fighter II with Harry over swimming in the sea, where he might be photographed.

According to former BBC royal correspondent Michael Cole (speaking on a September 2022 Diana-oriented podcast ), William and Harry “didn’t have things at home that other kids did” and, deprived of video games, would come to Harrods, the famous department store then owned by Mohamed al-Fayed, to play them. “They would come to the fourth floor—the toy department, the floor for the children—and they would spend hours there,” Cole said. Of course, as Harrods’ former PR director and spokesman for al-Fayed, Cole is not an entirely disinterested reporter.

At any rate, al-Fayed’s daughter Camilla recalled that not only did William and Harry have video games at home in Kensington Palace, they had a newly refurbished game room, where she and her siblings (who, far from being introduced to the princes in the summer of 1997, had known them for several years) had played computer games with William and Harry earlier in the summer. “That summer we all became a team,” she told the Daily Mail in 2010. “I was 11 at the time and my sister Jasmine was 15. We used to hang out with William and Harry all the time at Kensington Palace.” That William and Harry enjoyed playing video games either at Harrods or with Dodi’s sisters at Kensington Palace has not been verified by anyone who is not connected to the al-Fayeds.

Also, one wonders if Princess Diana, then deep into her anti–land mine campaign, was aware of the Jonikal ’s provenance when she accepted al-Fayed’s invitation. It had previously belonged to the son of Adnan Khashoggi, who had sold it to his uncle Mohamed al-Fayed (whose first wife, Dodi’s mother, was Adnan Khashoggi’s sister). The elder Khashoggi was a leading arms dealer and purveyor of land mines, sales of which presumably helped pay for the yacht.

Could Paparazzi Really Get £250,000 for a Photo of Diana and Dodi Kissing?

In Episode 2, an Italian paparazzo named Mario Brenna tells an interviewer that he got 250,000 pounds from the Sunday Mirror for the first pictures of Diana and Dodi kissing on the yacht deck.

If anything, this seems like an understatement. According to the Guardian, by the time Brenna had sold the photos to not only the Sunday Mirror but the Daily Mail and the Sun, he made 3 million pounds. Even grainy photographs of the pair could command 650,000 pounds, which accounts for the omnipresent packs of prowling paparazzi that constantly pursued the couple.

Did Diana and Dodi Visit a Psychic?

After their July fling on the yacht, Dodi flies Diana up to Derbyshire in the Harrods helicopter to visit a psychic, where they both inquire about their futures.

This actually happened. In 2003 professional psychic Rita Rogers told her local paper the Derbyshire Times that Diana had twice driven up from London for a consultation before she met Dodi. “I’d told her she would meet a man of foreign descent with the initial D on water—and that the man would be connected with the film industry,” Rogers declared. Apparently, Dodi was so struck by this prediction he asked to meet Rogers on Diana’s next visit. Rogers claims she told Dodi to avoid France and not to change his limo driver because she foresaw an accident in a tunnel but says she still can’t understand why she failed to envision that Diana would be involved in the same accident.

Not that Diana was short on warnings about threats to her life. It was well known that before and after her divorce she visited an assortment of psychics, spiritual advisers, and mediums; in fact, in October 1995, her divorce lawyer Lord Mishcon wrote that Diana had told him she had learned from “reliable sources” that by 1996 there would be an attempt on her life, or at least an effort to leave her severely injured or unbalanced. However, according to the official inquiry into Diana’s death, Lord Mischon did not regard these warnings relayed by the princess as remotely credible.

Did Diana and Dodi Stop Over in Paris at Mohamed al-Fayed’s Insistence?

The program shows Diana telling Dodi that, heartily sick of being harassed by the paparazzi as well as wanting to discourage him from taking the relationship too seriously, she intends to return to London Aug. 28, sooner than expected, so she can see her sons when they return from visiting the queen at Balmoral. However, al-Fayed pressures Dodi into insisting that she fly back on the family’s private jet rather than on the British Airways flight she has booked and that they spend the night in Paris.

Al-Fayed further insists that on the way to the Ritz, Dodi’s driver take a lengthy detour out of Paris to Villa Windsor, his fancy house on the city’s outskirts that was formerly the residence of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, so he can intimate to Diana that should she marry Dodi, the couple can live there with his children. Diana, who has no interest in either marrying Dodi or residing in the Villa, is keen to get away as soon as possible so as not to miss a scheduled phone call from her sons at Balmoral.

Indeed, Diana’s lack of interest in visiting the Villa was attested to during the inquest into her death when Reuben Murrell, the villa’s security chief, said she had had no curiosity about the house and stayed for only 28 minutes. As for al-Fayed’s motivations for insisting on the visit, the late, always-informed Dominick Dunne wrote in Vanity Fair : “I have always felt there was a subliminal meaning, part of al-Fayed’s game plan, that Dodi was taking Diana to see the house where they would live and raise their child after they were married.”

But Diana may have stopped over in Paris for her own reasons, not because of Dodi’s entreaties. Colin Tebbutt, at the time Diana’s driver and security aide in Britain, said in 2021 that she delayed her return “because the Tories were having a go at her again over landmines. She was accused of using the campaign to boost her own image, which was nasty and upset her. So she contacted us and said she didn’t want all the hassle that would be waiting for her in the UK. She would return at the weekend instead.”

Did Diana Appear as a Ghost to Console Charles and to Urge the Queen to Loosen Her Stiff Upper Lip?

Only Rita Rogers knows.

Diana's last day: Dodi's yacht, a Ritz suite, a diamond ring and relentless photographers

Diana, divorced from Prince Charles after he cheated on her, was the mother of the future king of England and the most photographed woman in the world

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By Michael S. Rosenwald

The last day of Princess Diana’s life began on the top deck of her lover’s yacht, with croissants and fresh jams.

Diana and her beau, Dodi Al Fayed, sipped their coffee marveling at the breathtaking Emerald Coast in Sardinia. Diana took hers with milk. Fayed took his black. There were kiwis, too.

“They were in a good mood,” his butler remembered later. “They were always laughing, holding hands.”

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Their romance was a whirlwind — passionate, thrilling, scandalous. Fayed, the son of Harrod’s department store owner Mohamed Al-Fayed, was a rich playboy. Diana, divorced from Prince Charles after he cheated on her, was the mother of the future king of England and the most photographed woman in the world.

That Saturday — Aug. 30, 1997 — promised to be a moment of change. The princess knew it. She snuck a call to Richard Kay, a friend who covered the Royals for the Daily Mail, and told him, as he later wrote, “she had decided to radically change her life.”

“She was going to complete her obligations to her charities,” Kay continued, “and then, around November, would completely withdraw from her formal public life.” Diana had not told Kay why, but he had a hunch: “They were, to use an old but priceless cliche, blissfully happy. I cannot say for certain that they would have married, but in my view it was likely.”

In the 20 years since she’s been gone, there have been countless revisions to this love story. Her friends and relatives: They weren’t in love! His friends and relatives: They were in love!

Get a dash of perspective along with the trending news of the day in a very readable format.

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Last week, in the Daily Mail, Kay published an article with this headline: “Was Diana about to dump Dodi?” In it, he quoted Diana’s private secretary saying she’d planned to return home after becoming bored with Fayed.

“It’s very much a personal view,” the secretary said, “but I don’t think she would have seen Dodi again once she got back.”

Whatever the case, Fayed wanted to propose that fateful night. It was summer. As they were on holiday, Britain announced plans to invite the Irish Republican Army for peace talks. Conspiracies theories about the suicide of Vincent Foster, President Bill Clinton’s lawyer, were spreading. Israel and Lebanon were sparring with one another.

Fayed’s primary concern was the six-figure diamond ring waiting in Paris. People close to Fayed said the couple picked it out a week earlier even though they had been dating less than a month.

The danger of their relationship wasn’t its brevity. To royal watchers, to Buckingham Palace, and no doubt to the British tabloids whose photographers were hounding them, the threat was something the couple apparently had not yet considered, even as rumours swirled that Diana was already pregnant.

“For the mother of the future king of England to bear the child of a Muslim Arab, a child who would be the half sibling of the heir to the throne, would be embarrassing in the eyes of the royal family and the ruling Establishment,” former Time magazine reporters Tom Sancton and Scott MacLeod wrote in their book, Death of a Princess .

Fayed’s calendar that day had just one entry — at 6:30 p.m., he was to pick up the ring at a store near his father’s hotel in Paris, The Ritz. They left the boat for Fayed’s plane around 11:30 a.m., taking along the butler and a masseuse for Fayed’s painful back.

As soon as they landed in Paris, Fayed saw the paparazzi out his window.

“Dodi did not want this special occasion ruined by a bunch of a shutter-happy cowboys trying to corral them on motorcycles and shoving lenses in their faces,” the ex-Time reporters wrote. “As soon as the door opened, cameras started clicking.”

The aggressiveness of the photographers — and their sheer numbers — would increase as the day progressed.

Diana and Fayed arrived at The Ritz in the late afternoon. She went to the salon for a hair appointment. He went to the jeweler. The couple then rested in the hotel’s Imperial Suite before going to Fayed’s apartment to get dressed for dinner. She checked in with her children, who were in Scotland with Prince Charles and the queen.

“On that Saturday evening, Diana was as happy as I have ever known her,” her friend Kay wrote in the Daily Mail. “For the first time in years, all was well with her world.”

They left for Fayed’s apartment around 7 p.m., trailed by photographers. More were waiting at the building’s front door when they arrived. Fayed fumed. There was an ugly shoving match.

Once inside, Fayed pulled his butler aside, telling him about his plan to propose that night.

“The ring was on the nightstand in his bedroom,” author Christopher Anderson wrote in “The Day Diana Died.” “Dodi had checked to make sure they had several bottles of Dom Pérignon on ice for the big moment.”

But dinner was a bust.

The first restaurant they tried — Chez Benoit, a cozy, casual bistro not far from the city centre – was quickly overrun by photographers. They split and headed for The Ritz, ducking into the dining room hoping to be left alone.

The princess ordered vegetable tempura. Fayed ordered grilled turbot.

“No sooner had they ordered,” the ex-Time reporters wrote, “they began to feel the indiscreet stares of other diners.”

The couple left and had the food delivered to the Imperial Suite. Fayed’s plan was in shambles. They had to get back to the apartment. But how? The hotel was swarming with photographers.

Fayed devised a plan: The couple’s driver and bodyguards would make a big show out front, appearing to get their caravan of Mercedes sedans ready to leave. Meanwhile, the Princess and Fayed would slip out the back door, in a borrowed car driven by a hotel security officer.

What happened next was the subject of lengthy investigations and conspiracy theories that live on today. The couple did get away. But the driver, it turned out, was drunk.

As the couple sped off, the photographers out front got tipped off about the escape, quickly catching up on their motorcycles. Their driver darted in and out of traffic, wrecking spectacularly inside the Pont de l’Alma tunnel near the Eiffel Tower.

Fayed died instantly. Diana died at the hospital.

Her death startled the world.

An up-and-coming anchor named Brian Williams broke into regular coverage on MSNBC to announce the news to Americans in the early morning hours of Aug. 31.

“I’ve just been handed from the Reuters news service what has been marked ‘bulletin,'” Williams said, speaking slowly. “It says, ‘Princess Diana has died.'”

She was 36.

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Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed's iconic love boat is now at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea

• The yacht on which Princess Diana holidayed with Dodi Fayed is now at the bottom of the sea, per The Times .
• The boat, named Cujo, sank after it collided with an unidentified object off the French Riviera.
• Cujo has changed hands multiple times in recent years and was most recently owned by a wealthy Italian family.

The yacht where Princess Diana spent part of her last summer with Dodi Fayed has sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

The boat, named Cujo, sank on July 29 after colliding with an unidentified object off Beaulieu-sur-Mer on the French Riviera, The Times reported.

The Gendarmerie des Alpes-Maritimes uploaded a statement onto their Facebook page confirming that they responded to a distress call from a boat that was in trouble about 35 kilometers, or 22 miles, off the coast.

By the time the coast guards arrived at the scene, the yacht was already partially submerged.

"The distressed yacht is already starting to sink from the front and the 7 shipwrecked are just next to it in a life raft," the statement said. "The cabins of the yacht are already flooded, only a few suitcases located in the kitchen and on the deck can be retrieved."

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The Gendarmerie des Alpes-Maritimes added that they would remain in the area to monitor pollution because the yacht sank with almost 7,000 liters of diesel in its tanks.

When Insider reached out to the Gendarmerie des Alpes-Maritimes for direct confirmation of the boat's identity, the organization told Insider "to search via Google."

Cujo made international headlines in 1997 when Princess Diana was photographed onboard with its then-owner Fayed, per Robb Report .

That summer, Princess Diana was also photographed onboard another yacht owned by Fayed's father, the Jonikal — which was subsequently renamed Sokar, per The Times.

Mere weeks later, the two of them died in a car crash in Paris while trying to escape the paparazzi.

Following their deaths, Cujo fell into disrepair and was decommissioned in 1999, per Robb Report. After a few years in storage, Fayed's cousin, Moody Al-Fayed, spent over $1 million restoring the boat before he sold it to a British car collector Simon Kidston for €160,000, or $175,400.

Kidston subsequently sold the boat to its current owner in 2021, he told Robb Report.

"A young member of a prominent Italian business family—he's 30 years old—had seen Cujoin Lavagna, fallen in love with her and asked if she was for sale," Kidston told Robb Report.

Watch: The rise and fall of the cruise industry

• Main content

We Love Diana Because She Took on the Royals and Won

By writing a novel about a Diana impersonator, I hoped to examine why we commoners are drawn to her—and, perhaps, to understand her particular appeal for the lonely and damaged.

Chris Bohjalian

Photo Illustraiton by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty

Diana Spencer—aka Princess Diana , Lady Di, Dutch—lived barely a year as a divorced woman. Her divorce from Prince Charles was finalized on Aug. 28, 1996; she’d die in the infamous car crash in Paris a mere 368 days later on Aug. 31, 1997.

She had, in fact, been separated from Charles since December 1992, living in a murky marital purgatory for nearly four years before their divorce—a limbo, given her status as “royal but not royal,” that arguably continued even those last 368 days between divorce and death. She was a thirty-something single mom of two boys figuring out how to date… in a fishbowl. That was (speaking metaphorically) a minefield and took, I’m confident, more courage than her walks into actual minefields.

There are a variety of reasons why many of us remain obsessed with her and her progeny. The movies, the books, the documentaries, the musicals, the plays, and the TV series are an indication of the depth and breadth of our addiction.

OK, only some of us are addicted, and most of that “us” is female. I happen to be that rare male who, apparently, knows more about the royal family than I do about Rome.

Journalists question Diana Spencer as she gets into her car following the announcement of her engagement to Prince Charles in February 1981.

Evening Standard via Getty

I am fascinated by Diana. I’ve had historical figures in some of my earlier books, such as Hour of the Witch and The Lioness , but my new novel, The Princess of Las Vegas , is the first time I’ve attempted to explore why one of them remains in the zeitgeist long after she’s gone.

Long after she’s gone.

Perhaps I should have written, “after she’s gone.” Because it hasn’t been all that long. And we know that. The wounds certainly haven’t healed for the Spencers and Windsors, for her friends and lovers and butlers and handlers and, yes, children. What must it be like for them to see her mythologized? Just when the scab might be healing, along comes another re-imagining of the woman. And what does it say about the rest of us that we can’t get enough of Lady Di?

I can’t speak for the playwrights, novelists, and screenwriters who’ve attempted to resurrect a woman gone barely a quarter of a century, but I know for me it’s too soon.

And so the titular “princess” of my new novel is not the woman herself, but instead a Princess Diana impersonator in a tribute show at a shabby, off-the-strip Las Vegas casino. People who know bits of Diana’s biography will recognize some moments: there she is dancing with John Travolta at the Reagan White House, there she is embracing her two little boys, there she is trying to cope with a debilitating eating disorder. (There’s only one instance we know when Diana wrote to someone about bulimia. In January 1996, she penned a letter to Richard Saunders on Kensington Palace stationery to comfort him, reassuring him that if she could conquer bulimia, he could, too. The letter is part of the collection of Diana memorabilia at the Princess Diana Exhibit in—wait for it—Las Vegas.)

But by writing a novel about an impersonator, rather than the princess herself, I was hoping to examine why we commoners are drawn to her—and, perhaps, to understand her particular appeal for the lonely and damaged, and why we remain fixated on those cobalt eyes and iconic lowered chin. The blond bob.

Now, The Princess of Las Vegas is, like easily a half-dozen of my novels, a character study in the guise of a slow-burn thriller. The setting is Vegas, and so there are mobsters and schemers and dreamers, as well as the wounded and the just plan sad. There are fake Elvises, Sinatras, and Michel Jacksons. And there are, yes, a couple of corpses. But lots of it, for me, was a journey into why we won’t let Diana go, why we insist on revisiting her story.

And the answer is not, it seems to me, the tragedy of her death at 36. Heaven, if it’s real, is packed with dead, young celebrities who no longer loom large in our minds, including the infamous “27 Club” of musicians who died at that age. Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, and Janis Joplin are only four of the most well-known.

Nor is it the idea that all of us supposed when Diana and Charles had their fairy tale wedding in 1981 that this would be a fairy tale marriage. (Oh, possibly it was. But, if so, the saga was spun by Grimm, not Disney.)

Rather, I suspect, we are still riveted by Diana because that 20-year-old girl in a wedding train the length of the river Thames would grow into a woman who did not simply take on a millennial-old monarchy—she’d beat it. She’d beat them, the people behind all that rigidity and tradition, at least some of whom would prove to be soulless hypocrites. She’d win. Her knees might have been buckled by betrayal and heartbreak, but she got off the mat and, in the end, stood tall. She stopped slouching against her statuesque height and denying who she was inside.

Princess Diana in her wedding dress.

Fox Photos via Getty

Which, perhaps, might also explain why so many more women than men follow the royals. The men in all those castles, most of the time, behaved a lot worse than the women. I find it interesting that even Queen Elizabeth, so vilified in the days after Diana’s death, would have her image rehabilitated by the time she died in 2022. (I credit our adoration for Claire Foy in the first two seasons of The Crown .)

Moreover, Diana was so fearless that she would do the most courageous thing imaginable. She would share her vulnerabilities and brokenness with the world. Whether it was her eating disorder or her despair at the idea she had married the wrong man—and that man had married the wrong woman—she would allow us a window into her pain. That, I suppose, is the same part of her that reached out to men stricken with AIDS and children injured by landmines, and would lead millions of people around the world to “identify” with her. We saw her as an underdog for whom we could root, a princess who led (her words) “from the heart, not the head.” She was the woman whom then Prime Minister Tony Blair christened “the people’s princess” while mourning her the day that she died. (Isn’t it fascinating to realize she was never called “the people’s princess” when she was alive?)

And, yes, Diana defeated the monarchy not because she was sweet and humble. Let’s face it, rarely do the meek in point of fact inherit the Earth. She won because she played the game better than the royals themselves, and while the press, in the end, deserves much of the blame for her death, she herself could be a Machiavellian publicist who used them, too. (Who knows? If she’d lived, perhaps she would have taught her daughter-in-law, Kate Middleton, how to Photoshop an image for the social networks so you don’t fuel conspiracy theories that you’re dead, rather than merely recuperating from abdominal surgery in private. I think Diana would have been one hell of an Instagram star.)

Even in the days before that cataclysmic car accident in Paris, Diana was wielding that double-edged sword as if she were fighting for her life in Game of Thrones —which she was. Take, for instance, those iconic images of her on the Jonikal , the yacht owned by the father of her last paramour, Dodi Fayed, in the Mediterranean waters off Corsica. There are the photos of the kiss with Fayed and the poignant snapshot of her alone in a light blue tank suit on the yacht’s diving board, an image beloved because it seems to capture her loneliness on the one hand—a solitary woman with so much sea and sky around her—while conjuring the idea that the poor girl is about to walk the plank on a pirate ship. The fact she’d be gone within days makes it all the more dramatic in hindsight.

Diana in St. Tropez shortly before she and boyfriend Dodi Fayed died in a car crash in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997.

Michel Dufour/Getty

But here’s the thing about those photographs. While Dodi Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al-Fayed, may have thought he was the puppet master pulling the strings of the media, biographer Tina Brown, among others, suggests that Diana herself may have been tipping off the paparazzi. When those images would appear in the tabloids, she called one photographer not to complain that she felt her privacy had been violated, but to grumble that they were fuzzy. Let’s not forget, this was a woman so media savvy by 1994 that while Charles was confessing to the world on British television that he had indeed been unfaithful to Diana, she showed up at a gala in what has come to be called the “revenge dress,” a tight, black, off-the-shoulder sheath that fell to mid-thigh.

Diana’s trajectory may have begun as a victim, but it didn’t end there. She was no milquetoast princess. She was a fighter who knew what she wanted—and that, I believe, is why we still love her today.

Chris Bohjalian is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 24 books, including his new novel, The Princess of Las Vegas , to be published March 19. Find him at Www.ChrisBohjalian.com or Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X (still), Goodreads, Litsy, TikTok (badly).

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