Windsor of Discontent

For sheer tumult and intrigue, Princess Diana’s relationship with her husband can’t compare with her relationship with the press. The latter has certainly been more faithful than the former; but after untold millions of photos, miles of film and acres of newsprint, the most chronicled woman in the world has decided it is time to jilt the cameras that love her so.

Diana used a luncheon speech at the Headway National Head Injuries Association in London to denounce the press corps and declare her freedom. “When I started my public life 12 years ago,” she said, “I understood that the media might be interested in what I did . . . but I was not aware of how overwhelming that attention would become, nor the extent to which it would affect both my public duties and my personal life.” Then came the bombshell. At the end of the year, once she had completed her scheduled events, she noted, “I will be reducing the extent of the public life I have led so far.”

She talked of finding some way to continue her charitable work in private, while allowing more time with her sons William, 11, and Harry, 9. In light of the rumors of a break with the palace, Diana explicitly claimed to have the Queen’s blessing. But she made no mention of her husband at all. “She pointedly excluded the Prince of Wales,” observed Brian Hoey, author of several books on the royals. “What she’s saying is that she has finished with him.” By the time she sat down, she was blinking back tears.

This Thursday marks the first anniversary of the Waleses’ official separation — a year that has taken its toll on the entire family. Diana threw herself into her many charities, but she kept some distance from Buckingham Palace. It was hard to know who was dissing whom. The Princess was conspicuously absent from Trooping the Color in June and the Queen Mum’s birthday in August.

Even as Charles seemed to regain his footing, with successful foreign trips, there came reports that the princess was falling apart. Diana grew suddenly allergic to the cameras that follow her everywhere. “You make my life hell,” she yelled at a photographer who ambushed her outside a London movie theater. She spent more and more nights alone at Kensington Palace, watching TV. There were reports that she was once again suffering from bulimia. Last month she left a royal charity gala in tears: “a migraine” was the official explanation.

She seemed determined to laugh off the alarms a few days later, when she appeared at a London benefit. She told the crowd, “You’re very lucky to have your patron here today. I was supposed to have my head down the loo for most of the day. ((But)) if it is all right with you, I thought I would postpone my nervous breakdown.”

In a curious way, Diana has grown more dependent on the reporters and photographers whom she lambasted last week. No matter what her standing at the palace, she remains the ubiquitous cover girl. She has cannily used writers and reporters to her advantage, particularly Andrew Morton, whose intimately sympathetic account of her collapsing marriage triggered the break a year ago.

The latest expose came on Nov. 7, when the Sunday Mirror published a series of photos, ostensibly taken through a hidden camera, of the svelte princess working out at London’s LA Fitness Club. Though Diana lividly decried this invasion of her privacy, there were those who thought they saw a plant. The pictures were supposedly snapped sometime last summer; yet they mysteriously appeared on the front pages the very week that Charles was making a high- profile trip through Arab states. Diana appears utterly poised, even posed. Could she actually stoop to stealing the limelight that has always been hers for the asking?

Likewise last week’s surprise speech was leaked in advance, guaranteeing maximum coverage. “It was quite cold and calculated,” says Hoey, who saw the declaration of independence as just the latest bit of media manipulation. “If she really wanted to reduce her public commitments, she could have done so without the big announcement.”

Under present law Charles and Diana would have to remain separated for another year before they could divorce — but the government could probably massage the laws if it chose. Gossip meister Nigel Dempster reported last month that Prince Charles had promised to marry his paramour, Camilla Parker- Bowles — which would depend not only on the Prince’s being free but also on Camilla’s divorcing her Catholic husband. At the same time, Dempster also suggested that Diana was still hoping for a reconciliation with the man who, in one secretly recorded exchange, expressed his wish to be reincarnated as his lover’s tampon.

If the Waleses run true to form, they will linger in limbo a while longer, the safest refuge from any new entanglements. In the longer run, it seems far less likely that Diana will kiss and make up with her husband than that she will soon be back in the arms of the press corps that can’t live without her.