Royals Bow to Public, Extend Funeral Route

Buckingham Palace on Wednesday agreed to make Princess Diana’s funeral more accessible as national mourning was punctuated by sharp criticism of the British royal family as cold, remote and unfeeling.

Amid perhaps the greatest outpouring of public grief in British history, anti-royal anger echoed across newspapers, among commentators and in the unending lines of mourners waiting patiently through wet, autumnal days and nights to pay their respects to “the people’s princess.”

“People in the queue were saying that her boys should be down here now to see how much we loved her. Diana crossed barriers other royals couldn’t. I know royals are not supposed to show emotion. Why not?” said Londoner Peter Rons, who waited four hours to offer condolences.

Five condolence books that were opened Sunday at St. James’ Palace grew to 16 Tuesday and 43 Wednesday. The lines just got longer at the palace where Diana’s body lies, unseen by the public, in the Chapel Royal.

Police say Saturday morning’s funeral may draw up to 6 million people in the largest public display that 2,000-year-old London has ever seen.

On Wednesday, four days after the 36-year-old princess died in a Paris car crash, the royal family issued a three-line communique from a vacation castle in Scotland thanking people for their affection.

The family said it was “deeply touched and enormously grateful,” and “taking strength from the overwhelming support of the public who are sharing their tremendous loss and grief.”

Diana’s 15-year-old son, Prince William, second in line to the British throne, will lead the procession, walking behind his mother’s horse-drawn coffin Saturday morning, British sources said. He will be accompanied by his father, Prince Charles, and by Diana’s brother, the earl of Spencer. Behind them will come 500 mourners from 100 charities to which Diana lent her name.

On Wednesday, in royal counterpoint to an ever-growing ocean of mourners’ flowers on a circuit of grief around London, a bouquet of lilies arrived at a London children’s hospital that was one of Diana’s favorite charities. The card was signed in the name of Charles, William and 12-year-old Prince Harry, their second son.

For many, Wednesday’s gesture from a royal family with which Diana fought repeatedly seemed too little, too late.

“Not one word has come from a royal lip, not one tear has been shed in public from a royal eye. It is as if no one in the royal family has a soul,” said Britain’s largest newspaper, the Sun, in an editorial. “From the outside looking in, the House of Windsor seems a cold, compassion-free zone where duty and protocol push emotions into a dark corner,” the tabloid said.

Charles will fly to London with his sons Friday night, the palace said, so they can visit their mother’s casket. Queen Elizabeth II, her husband, Prince Philip, and the 97-year-old Queen Mother will make an overnight journey on the Royal Train, arriving Saturday morning in time for the funeral.

Bowing to pressure from the people, police and the British government, Buckingham Palace agreed Wednesday to double the route of the funeral cortege on Saturday morning rather than restrict it to a one-mile procession through official London.

Under the new plan, the princess’ body will be taken to her home at flower-flooded Kensington Palace on Friday night. Saturday morning, the horse-drawn coffin, on a gun carriage, will be carried through the expensive London neighborhoods the princess loved, on its way to Westminster Abbey.

After the service, a motorcade carrying Diana’s coffin will return down part of the funeral route and along the border of Hyde Park, where huge crowds are expected to have watched giant television screens showing the abbey services, which are to be attended by an invited congregation of 2,000.

There will be only a relative handful of dignitaries at the services, including First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Most church mourners, by contrast, will have known Diana through her personal life in London and her humanitarian work. Among them will be controversial entrepreneur Mohammed Fayed, whose playboy son--Diana’s companion, Dodi--was also killed in the crash.

Two American victims of land mines said Wednesday that they were invited to the funeral by Diana’s Kensington Palace staff. Ken Rutherford, who lost a leg when he stepped on a mine in Somalia in 1993, and Jerry White, who lost a leg while backpacking in Israel in 1984, are joint founders of the Washington-based Landmine Survivors Network.

Rutherford told reporters that the two met Diana on several occasions and spent time with her in Bosnia-Herzegovina in June.

The government of Prime Minister Tony Blair applied quiet but unabashed pressure on the palace in consultation with the Spencers to make the funeral more open than a stuffy, protocol-controlled affair of state, British sources say.

“It is important there is a longer route, so we can have as many people able to participate in a huge event . . . not just for us here in Britain, but for people throughout the world. We want it to be something of which Princess Diana would have been proud,” Blair told a crowd outside Downing Street.

Police were concerned that the expected huge crowd could have overwhelmed the original one-mile procession route. As part of the plan to ameliorate congestion, authorities on Wednesday published the street plan of Diana’s motorcade from the abbey, north through London and up the M1 freeway to the Spencer family chapel 80 miles northwest of the capital in tiny Great Brington.

Spectators will be welcome along the route, police said, although they are being asked as a kindness to stay away from the 200-inhabitant village where Diana will be laid to rest in the Spencer crypt.

With crowds in London still burgeoning and mourners pouring in from Europe and the United States, London’s police chief said his force is expecting between 2 million and 6 million people on the streets Saturday.

Even Sinn Fein, political arm of the outlawed Irish Republican Army, will miss Britain’s vivacious princess, it appears. While its leaders canvass the United States for support against British rule in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein issued a statement expressing condolences on the death of the princess--whom the IRA plotted to kill in 1983, according to defectors.

As the funeral date approaches, people repeatedly tell reporters and one another that one of Diana’s greatest appeals was that she was an accessible, emotive member of an aloof, always-proper royal family.

“Diana wasn’t like one of them,” said office worker Sharon Booth in a condolence line stretching eight hours long. “I certainly wouldn’t have come here for any other member of the royal family.”

Her comments were echoed by mourners around the country, and by some leading newspapers.

In an editorial titled “If Only the Royals Could Weep With the People,” the Independent said, “We hope the Windsors and their advisors are watching the mood on the streets and learning from it.”

Commentator Suzanne Moore complained that the two young princes were stuffed into suits and black ties within hours of learning of Diana’s death and hustled to a church service with Charles and the queen at which their mother was apparently not mentioned.

“If the future king cannot even put his arm around his young sons, then what and whom is it all for. The horrible truth is that they are further isolating themselves,” Moore said.

The Guardian, voice of the British left, warned in an editorial: “The House of Windsor must sort out for itself the problems of a remote monarchy that Diana so well exposed. . . . The image of Lady Diana may prove stronger in memory than it was in reality, it will stalk the Windsors for many years to come.”

In the popular British view, Diana was wronged by the royal family and it is Charles who must bear the blame for her torment in a loveless marriage that ended in divorce last year.

Charles, the immediate heir to the British throne, went to collect Diana’s body in Paris but has not said a public word since her death, remaining in Scotland with his parents and the children. That has not burnished his public image.

“Stony dignity is a nice quality in cathedrals, but it is less appealing in human beings,” said Scottish commentator Gillian Glover. “Charles must unlearn the lessons of his whole life if he is not to estrange himself from his boys.”

Historian David Starkey at the London School of Economics said Charles has become a convenient target for public anger at the loss of a national idol.

“When Charles went to Paris to collect the coffin, people said ‘hypocrite.’ If he had not gone, they would have said ‘heartless brute,’ ” Starkey said. “Public opinion wants scapegoats. The paparazzi is one and Charles is the other. He is utterly shafted. I cannot see how he can ever recover.”

A rare defense of the conspicuously absent royals came from the establishment Daily Telegraph.

“Dignity and restraint and privacy and silence are just as important in authentic family love as are cuddles and weeping. Weeping can indeed be a good thing, but it should not be forgotten that there are ‘thoughts that lie too deep for tears,’ ” the newspaper said.

Echoed conservative commentator Boris Johnson: “There is every reason why the extraordinary national feeling her death has unleashed should strengthen, not weaken, the royal family. Which seems only fair, since her achievements would not have been possible had she not been royal.”

More on Diana

* PAPARAZZI POLITICIANS: Sacramento lawmakers are quick to try to cash in on anger over intrusive photographers. A3

* PRINCESS REMEMBERED: First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton writes that Diana’s stature grew with her good works. B9