What does the new movie Spencer tell us about Princess Diana?

Lilly Spencer, Writer

Princess Diana is one of the most known women in the world. She helped people with many things such as: those with aids, leprosy, cancer, other illnesses, and those who were homeless. While Diana was helping these people with their problems, she was facing her own. A lot of the problems she was faced with stemmed off of the royal family, especially from Queen Elizabeth. Since many don’t know Diana’s whole story, there was a movie made that helps explain what many never saw. 

 Freshman, Kerregan Wilson said, “I think it is about time that someone made a movie to tell Diana’s side of the story.” During her time in the royal family, she was forced to not show her feelings. In the royal family, you just do what the people want. This was another thing that Diana struggled with. She was a very truthful person that wanted to show the people of Great Britain that just like them, she also had her own flaws. 

In the movie, the directors did a very good job of showing the things that Diana struggled with and how she coped with them. One of those things is an eating disorder.  On Christmas Eve, the family has to get weighed before and after they eat. They do this to make sure that they gain three pounds; this came from King Edward VII in the 1900’s. After Diana gets weighed she goes to the bathroom and throws up. Later on, she is caught by Alistair Gregory eating food out of the fridge. Once she saw him standing in the doorway, she immediately hid the food behind her back. She does this not because she wasn’t to be eating the food, but because she feels like she should not be able to eat. 

Another big thing that happened in Diana’s real-life was her mental state. Throw out the whole movie, Diana is seeing and talking to a lady that is from a book that she is reading. The reason that she keeps on seeing this other lady is that she had a fear that her life would end that same way. The lady in the book was Anne Boleyn, who died because her husband HenryVIII had her beheaded because he fell out of love with her and fell in love with someone else. The thing happened to Diana and Prince Charles. Charles fell out of love with Diana after they had their two boys and fell in love with Camilla. 

A scene that has a lot of people talking is when she eats the pearl from the pearl necklace Charles gave her. They put that scene in there to show that Diana felt trapped. She rips the necklace off and then proceeds to eat the pearls along with her other food. Just like her feeling trapped under the royal family’s lifestyle, the pearls were trapped inside Diana’s digestive system. When she eats the pearls; she does it aggressively and quickly. This scene was to show how quickly the royal family was draining her and slowly taking away Diana’s spark. 

Not only did Diana have an eating disorder and her mind played mental tricks on her, but she was dealing with self-harm. Diana didn’t trust most royal staff members, but there were two in particular who she did, Maggie and the chef. Maggie was Diana’s dresser who she is really close with. Shortly after the queen starts to note Diana’s strange behaviors, she sends Maggie back to London and gives Diana different assistants. Diana stopped listening to what she was supposed to be doing and then started self-harm by taking a chunk of her skin and flesh off with wire cutters. 

Hanna Brandon said, “It was good for the scriptwriters to put in there how she did not trust much of the royal staff. It shows that just because they are rich and royal that they are not always good people.” 

The queen saw that Diana could not function right without Magie so she brought her back to the castle. Soon after Maggie was back, the two of them went to the ocean and talked. This led Diana to crash the mens’ hunting trip to go get her two sons, William and Harry. She did this because her son William did not want to shoot a gun, but his father forced him to follow the royal tradition. Diana could have been shot since she came out of the woods that the men were shooting the pheasants in.

After demanding her kids back, or she would not move, Charles allowed the two boys to join their mother. The three of them ran away back to the car that Maggie had parked on the other side of the woods. Diana and her boys went back to the castle to grab their bags and then they were on their way to their new life. They ended the movie so perfectly with Diana and the two boys getting KFC. When the lady asked for a name Diana said “Spencer” her maiden name.