The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • Page 81

The Sun Sunday, August 31, 1997 Page 19a Diana wa asawi Life: hetjlrl whose pareilx bivke up when she was 0 became, uol surprisiufjlp, an unhappy immau who lowjed for lore. Death of a Princess rejected as a child, spurned ie i v. w. Pi 7 rv '4 i BETTMANN-UPI Royal kiss: Prince Charles kisses their wedding on July 29, 1981. The ceremony at St.

Paul's Cathedral in London was watched by millions on TV. n(WA 'Oil. rA i it- Kr v' FROM WIRE REPORTS The prince never loved his wife, according to Jonathan Dimbleby's authorized biography, and proposed to her only because his father had bullied him into it. A gold bracelet from Prince Charles to Camilla Parker Bowles that Princess Diana discovered among the presents a few days before the wedding became the fulcrum of anger and jealousy that rent the marriage. On their honeymoon on the royal yacht Britannia, her husband kept in touch with his mistress.

His wife never forgave him, and rejection was at the root of her implacable enmity. As a child, she felt rejected; as a young wife, she was spurned. The seeds of this very contemporary tragedy were sown in their respective childhoods. Her father, the eighth Earl Spencer, had been equerry to both George VI and the queen. Her maternal grandmother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, was a close friend and lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother.

The Honorable Diana Spencer was born on July 1, 1961, at Park House, Sandringham, close to the great Norfolk House that had been a retreat of the royal family since the days of Edward VII. The third daughter of Viscount Althorp, then 37, and Viscountess Althorp, 12 years his junior, was literally the girl next door. Her childhood playmates were Prince Andrew and Prince Edward. But she was only 6 when her mother left her father for the wallpaper heir Peter Shand Kydd. From that age, she was deprived of the full-time mother love she famously believed was so important.

The viscountess sought custody of her two youngest children, Diana and Charles Althorp, but was thwarted by her mother, Ruth, who told the court that they should remain with their father. At 9 years old, Diana was sent to Riddlesworth Hall, a boarding school near Diss in Norfolk. Even at the best of times, school was not an institution in which Diana would shine, at least not academically. With the inevitability of family tradition, she went on to West Heath, the all-girl public school near Sevenoaks, where her mother had gone. She failed all her Level exams, even at the second taking, and left school at 16.

After her brief stay at the Insti-tut Alpin Videmanette, an expensive Swiss finishing school, her father bought her an apartment she shared with friends on the borders of Kensington. Three days a week, she worked for well-heeled friends cleaning floors for 1 pound an hour, serving canapes at cocktail parties and acting as nanny. Then she became an assistant at the Young England Kindergarten in Pimlico. Her sister, Jane, had married Robert Fellowes, at that time an assistant private secretary to the queen, and this brought Diana increased contact with the royal family, and the Prince of Wales in particular. Their closely guarded romance became public knowledge soon after a journalist turned his binoculars on them one late summer day in 1980.

Sitting on a heather-clad bank of the River Dee at Balmoral, watching the prince fish, was the new girl in his life tall, fair-haired and unknown. Anonymity was not long preserved. "Lady Di" was tracked down to her home in Colehearne Court, where battalions of reporters and photographers pitched camp around the clock. The engagement was announced in February 1981. When asked if they were in love, Diana replied, "Of course." But the prince added, inauspiciously, "Whatever love is." If there were doubts about the wisdom of a match between a shy, inexperienced nursery school assistant and a settled bachelor raised in the awesome expectation of becoming king, no one Voiced them at the time.

She was the first Englishwomen to marry an heir to the throne in more than 300 years. Their wedding at St. Paul's Cathedral on the July 29, 1981, was a fairy-tale occasion on which it seemed the hopes of the nation and the future of the monarchy depended. From the start, it was clear that the 12-year age gap was going to be a problem. She was a 20-year-old young for her years when she married; he was a 32-year-old who already seemed middle-aged.

The birth of two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, seemed to cojnplete the happiness the iid Family: Princess Diana, her sons, Prince Harry and Prince William, and Prince Charles watch a veterans' parade in London in August 1995 during commemorations of the 50th anniversary oVJDay. his bride, Lady Diana Spencer, after ASSOCIATED PKKSS wrangling, they agreed. The divorce became final Aug. 28 1996. Although effectively out of a job, she worked hard and secured her place as an international figure and humanitarian.

She declared in a television interview in 1995 that she aspired to be "a queen in people's hearts." She succeeded in winning something akin to adoration among millions of people around the world. She traveled widely for her causes, including research for AIDS, cancer and heart disease, and most prominently seeking a ban on the use of land mines. In an interview published last week, she told the French newspaper Le Monde she would like to move to another country but couldn't because of her sons, who are in line for the British throne. nil I 7 A ii 41 told the Associated Press. "He had a party at one of these places, and it had a full bowling alley," said the guest, who requested anonymity.

"There was a band, and he showed movies in a screening room." Some of his party guests included actors Tony Curtis, Ryan O'Neal, Farrah Fawcett, Brooke Shields and Robert Downey the source said. Despite his rich associates and lavish lifestyle, friends said, Fayed was very quiet, even aloof at times. Fayed was a graduate of the British Army's elite Sandhurst military academy and once served as a junior officer in London for the United Arab Emirates. He married American socialite Suzanne Gregard in 1987, but they were divorced after eight months. Films he has produced or co-produced include the 1981 Oscar-winning "Chariots of Fire," "The World According to Garp," "FX" and "Hook." 3 1 4 I ASSOClAlKUPKiiSH ASSOCIATED PRESS As a Child: Diana Spencer, the future Princess of Wales, is shown in a school photo from 1970, at about the age of 9.

Mationsliip Wealthy film prcxluctr lived lavishly but left a trail of unpaid bills ASSOCIATED PRESS PARIS Emad Mohamed Fayed, known as Dodi, the son of an Egyptian billionaire who partied with the rich and famous, became a celebrity in his own right when he was romantically linked with Princess Diana. The wealthy film producer, who was killed today along with Diana in an automobile accident, became a household word three weeks ago when tabloids published photographs of Fayed, 42, and Diana, 36, basking in the sun on his father's luxury yacht. The photographs were the first evidence of a relationship between Diana and another man since her divorce from Prince Charles in Au REUTERS Causes: Diana holds a child stricken with cancer in February 1996 at the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital in Lahore, Pakistan. brought Fayed celebrity In a hat: The Princess of Wales watches Prince Charles as he speaks in November 1985 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C.

gust 1996 and rocketed Fayed to the status of international celebrity. With Fayed's newfound fame came some embarrassing revelations. His high style of living and entertaining produced a trail of lawsuits over unpaid bills. He bounced checks and failed to pay rent on several luxury homes in Southern California, his spokesman acknowledged before his death. In Beverly Hills, he leased a series of mansions for prices ranging from $20,000 a month to $35,000 a month and was sued repeatedly for leaving landlords in the lurch.

But Fayed's father, billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed, owns London's fabled Harrods department store, the Hotel Ritz in Paris and 1 1 homes around the world. Dodi Al Fayed was also renowned for his real estate. The mansions he occupied were "amazing." a frequent Faved truest world expected of them. But in the early 1990s, newspapers began reporting how much time Charles and Diana spent apart. Speculation about an unhappy marriage grew intense.

Andrew Morton's "Diana, Her True Story" in June 1992 caused a sensation, saying that Charles was conducting a long-term affair with a married woman Camilla Parker Bowles and that Diana had attempted suicide. Finally, on Dec. 9, 1992, Prime Minister John Major announced to Parliament that the couple would separate. They attempted to maintain their roles separately, but a series of retaliatory attacks in the press cast a shadow over their lives and over the monarchy. The queen asked them to divorce, $nd after more months of.