It has been 25 years since the car accident that claimed the life of Diana Spencer, beloved Princess of Wales, ex-wife of Charles, heir to the British throne, and mother of his two sons, William and Harry. The August 31th, 1997, at midnight and 23, the Mercedes on which Lady D was traveling with her new partner, the Egyptian entrepreneur Dodi Al Fayed, crashed into a pylon under the Pont de l'Alma in Paris. Together with the couple, the man who was at the wheel at the time, Henry Paul, also died. The sole survivor was Trevor Rees-Jones, a member of the al-Fayed family's private security team, who underwent a 10-hour surgery.
The causes of Lady D's accident: the official version…
The French police inquiry and a parallel investigation by the English Metropolitan Police came to the same conclusion: the fault of the crash must be attributed to the driver, Henri Paul, who – as shown by blood tests – had got behind the wheel after using alcohol and psychotropic drugs. In low lucidity, therefore, Paul he pressed on the accelerator to lose the paparazzi on Lady D's trail and, in his haste, lost control of the car. From the reconstructions it then emerged that Diana and Dodi were sitting in the back seats and were not wearing their seat belts: if they had, perhaps they would have saved themselves.
…and conspiracy theories
However, the official version has never fully convinced public opinion and many hypotheses have been put forward on the causes of the accident, including some conspiracy theories. The most widespread idea is that Lady D and Dodi Al-Fayed have been killed by British intelligence on behalf of members of the royal family. The motive would be due to an alleged pregnancy of Diana, from which an Arab half-brother of the future king of England would have been born. Over time, then, several suspicious deaths of people more or less connected to the story of Lady D have given credence to these theories, supported with particular vigor by Mohamed Al-Fayed, father of Dodi.
