Separation, then divorce
land mines
Eventually, out of the blue, then-Prime Minister John Major announced that Diana and Charles would separate. The British monarchy had not faced such a crisis since the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936.
But the princess was not to be deterred from maintaining her high public profile. Once the couple's divorce was confirmed, and she was freed from the shackles of royal protocol, she began to be seen in public with other men.
She focused her official life on several charities, ranging from the Royal Ballet in London to the Red Cross campaign against land mine use. In recent months, she traveled to Angola and to Bosnia to see the effects of land mines firsthand as a guest of the International Red Cross, a stand that courted political controversy.
She managed to combine her charitable work with a high-profile social calendar.
But her liaison with Dodi Fayed, the son of Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed, seemed to be the most serious social engagement she'd had since the breakup of her marriage.
"She genuinely was saintly," said Andrew Roberts of the London Sunday Times. "She hadn't got a vicious bone in her body. And if we had privacy law here, if we had a press law in this country like they had in France, she could be alive today."