Utusemi
September 13, 1997

England's Rose

Sue and I saw Princess Diana's funeral in CNN continuously from the beginning to the end for several hours. I found that Princess Diana was the British royal family by herself.

The first comment I made after surprising at the news of the accident was, "Well, the British royal family must be at ease now." From the viewpoint of the royal family, she must have been unpardonable. Although Prince Charles' love affair was in the beginning, she had also her love affair impatiently, divorced and fell in love with a strange dandy. More unpardonable is the fact that she is more popular than the Crown Prince or any member of the royal family. She went out of the royal family and remained popular. This fact leads to denial of the royal family. She must have been a big nuisance. Expectedly, the Queen commented "Shock by the tragedy" and "Thanks for good will of the people" but never mentioned the name of Princess Diana, and didn't show any signs of return from summering in Scotland. It was not the accident by herself. Princess Diana divorced the Crown Prince and encountered the accident together with another man. The royal family can never feel it acceptable. The royal family must have thought "The Spencer family should perform the funeral. We will at least attend." I saw through this way at the moment of the news.

But what has occurred from that point on was totally out of my anticipation. The heap of bouquets people brought drove the royal family into a corner. It was heard that the Prime Minister persuaded the Crown Prince to assert that the funeral for the mother of two young princes should be performed impressively by the royal family. The Queen excused that some time was necessary for young princes to recover from the shock before returning to London and praised Princess Diana. When the coffin passed in front of the Buckingham Palace, the Queen made a light bow. After the Queen went to Westminster Abbey, the pole on top of the Palace hung Union Jack at half-mast. People applauded at the half-mast flag. These two occurrences, I heard, were unprecedented. The royal family flattered to the people.

Elton John sang "Goodbye England's rose" in "Candle in the wind". It was moving even after I heard that the song was a hit originally sung in the funeral for Marilyn Monroe. I had difficulty to fully understand the address by Earl Spencer, which was sometimes fast and a little bit choked with tears, but I was surprised to notice that he might have indirectly criticized the royal family. To my further surprise, applause to his address arose in the funeral. According to a reporter, applause arose first from the crowd outside the Abbey who heard the address through the broadcast, and propagated into the Abbey. I obtained the full texts of the song and the address from

Surprisingly, the Abbey had a home page.

Television showed citizens on the streets in tears and interviewed many of them. I tried to understand the secrets of Princess Diana's popularity, but failed to identify any logic. They just said she was a wonderful lady, demotic and devoted to welfare.

People long for heroes and heroines. Kings, queens and princesses play, in a sense, the same role as Hingis or Nomo, and contribute to unity of the nation. They have advantage in getting popularity than sovereigns who take turns by elections. In Europe where royal family members get married among others, Princess Diana was the first English lady married to a British Crown Prince in these 500 years. She had in this sense a little similarity with Empress Michiko and Crown Princess Masako in Japan who came from non-nobility families. It was natural that a English beauty as the Crown Princess was popular among British common people.

Pricess Diana was a daughter of an earl family but has experience of working as a kindergartener and sense of understanding the common people. Nobody appreciates that a common person behaves in intimate terms with the common people, but people are touched that the Crown Princess keeps the same sight level as that of the common people. Devotion to the welfare with that popularity makes a good advertisement tower. This structure is probably the only raison-d'etre of royal families which are already the remains of the past centuries. It was Princess Diana that had personified this raison-d'etre more successfully than anyone else. She was in this sense more royal member than anyone else. It was most eloquently attested by the heap of bouquets and unusual applause on seeing the funeral carriage off.

The British royal family was unfortunately positioned as the anti-theme of Princess Diana and must have been very angry. But I highly appreciate the British royal family who patiently compromised to the feeling of the common people. The British royal family may indeed be very conservative as compared with the common sense of the people, but I think it is far more flexible than any other royal families of the world. This flexibility must have come probably from the history, in which many kings had been killed by the people.

Princess Diana once said, "I can not become the Queen, but I want to be the queen in people's hearts." So was she indeed !!

End