Diana was better qualified than anyone to know that you marry not just a man but his family. Hasnat Khan was a Pathan, a member of a group of peoples in Pakistan and Afghanistan descended from warriors and notable for their fierce attachment to their cultural traditions. His parents had tried twice, in 1987 and 1992, to marry him off to a suitable Muslim bride with equivalent social standing, and by 1996 they were impatient to try again. It is one of the ironies of Diana's life that she was always searching to replace her dysfunctional family with one that didn't want her. This time, as usual, the situation was doomed, but for a novel reason. With the Windsors, she was suitable but not desired. With the Khans, she was desired but not suitable. After Diana had spent 18 months misleading the press, an Express reporter landed an interview with Hasnat's father, Rashid Khan, who offered a bruising assessment of Diana as a bridal prospect for his son. "He is not going to marry her," the elder Khan said. "We are looking for a bride for him. She must belong to a respectable family. She should be rich, belonging to upper middle class. Preferably to our bradery (relations) or tribe which is Pathan. But if we do not find her in our own tribe, we can try outside it. But preferably she should be at least a Pakistani Moslem girl." This was the first time a Spencer had been disdained as "not quite our tribe," and it only challenged Diana to try even harder to nail Hasnat down.
It was a hopeless assignment. In May 1997, Diana biographer Kate Snell tells us, Diana's lover was deeply upset when, without forewarning him, she used the cover of a three-day trip to Pakistan to raise funds for Imran Khan's cancer hospital in order to descend without notice on Hasnat's sprawling family in an upscale suburb of Lahore. They clustered around and took her picture and served her English tea until a simultaneous power and water failure drove them outside to sit in a circle in the garden of their walled compound, making pleasant, if stilted, conversation with the charming stranger from the United Kingdom. It was a surreal scene, especially when one considers that Diana pictured herself moving in with them as their new daughter-in-law. The Khans were all perfectly charmed by Diana, who ended the evening lying on the floor watching cartoons with the youngest kids, but charm was irrelevant. Hasnat's mother had no intention of letting the union happen, and Hasnat had doubts of his own.