Queen Pays Tribute to Diana, People

Addressing her people “as a queen and a grandmother,” Queen Elizabeth II paid public tribute to Princess Diana on Friday and to the British nation’s “extraordinary and moving reaction to her death.”

Diana’s former husband, Prince Charles, and their sons, Princes William and Harry, also paid homage to the world’s favorite princess--and to the enormous salute to her that has been an astonishing blizzard of flowers and tears.

Emerging with their father from their private grief, the two boys captivated mourners outside their mother’s Kensington Palace home with a gawky but brave display of gratitude, all square shoulders and shy smiles.

“We’re so sorry, so sorry,” people said over and over.

“Thank you for coming, thank you for coming,” the three princes said again and again to sympathetic well-wishers. In a three-minute live televised speech from Buckingham Palace, the 71-year-old queen directly associated the royal family with national grief, rebutting critics who have accused the royals of being aloof and remote.

“What I say to you now as your queen and as a grandmother, I say from my heart,” the silver-haired Elizabeth said against a backdrop of mourners and masses of flowers at the palace gates.

“This week at Balmoral, we have all been trying to help William and Harry come to terms with the devastating loss that they and the rest of us have suffered,” the queen said.

“No one who knew Diana will ever forget her. Millions of others who never met her but felt they knew her will remember her,” the bespectacled monarch said. “I, for one, believe that there are lessons to be drawn from her life and from the extraordinary and moving reaction to her death. I share in your determination to cherish her memory.”

The queen spoke two hours before a hearse carried Diana’s coffin home through rain-slicked London streets Friday night from St. James’s Palace, where her body has lain since returning from France following her death in a car crash Sunday.

Tens of thousands of people silently lined streets in the fashionable heart of London as the hearse passed, followed by a car carrying Charles and the two young princes. Thousands fell in behind the short cortege as it neared Kensington Palace, Diana’s coffin draped in the Royal Standard and topped with white lilies, her favorite flowers.

With millions expected for the funeral and along the cortege route afterward, many people camped for the night in Hyde Park and other royal parks, others under slickers in the wet lee of Westminster Abbey.

Two Church of England priests were keeping a nightlong, candlelight vigil over the coffin at Kensington Palace until its departure this morning for the funeral at historic Westminster Abbey.

Family Changes Diana’s Resting Place

Amid still-growing nationwide anguish and the prospect that Diana’s grave would become a Graceland-like magnet for visitors, her family switched the burial site Friday.

Instead of lying in the Spencer family vault in a small village, it was announced, Diana will rest on a tree-shaded island in an ornamental lake at the family’s 300-acre estate north of London.

“I want to pay tribute to Diana myself,” said the queen, her former mother-in-law. “She was an exceptional and gifted human being. In good times and bad she never lost her capacity to smile and laugh, nor to inspire others with her warmth and kindness.

“I admired and respected her--for her energy and commitment to others, and, especially, for her devotion to her two boys,” the queen continued.

The royal family deployed a full court press to defuse public resentment over days of royal silence while the country mourned.

First, Princes Charles, William and Harry arrived at Kensington Palace, where an ocean of flowers lapped at the black iron gates. Police estimated on Friday that more than a million bouquets had been laid at Kensington, Buckingham and St. James’s palaces. Impromptu shrines have sprouted elsewhere around the country as well, and there were commemoration and religious services from north to south.

Diana was remembered at services at mosques, at a Mass in the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral here Friday, attended by her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, and in moving tributes from children at a Jewish primary school in Liverpool.

Discontent with the royal family seemed to dissipate almost as soon as Charles arrived at Diana’s home with William, 15, and Harry, who will turn 13 later this month.

Charles, 2 Sons Walk Among Mourners

Clearly overcome, the three princes walked solemnly along the high tide of bouquets, studying the flowers and the messages accompanying them before the black-and-gold gates.

Prince Harry wiped away tears; William had damp eyes as he stared out across the field of flowers. Charles swallowed a few times, then turned to comfort his sons.

As the princes walked slowly among the mourners, accepting flowers and condolences, a woman called, “We love you, William.” “God bless you, God bless you,” called another.

The tall, slim and nervous William, the potential king with his mother’s smile, seemed to borrow unconsciously his father’s gesture of playing with his cuff links and thrusting his left hand into his pocket as he walked along.

Next, the queen arrived at Buckingham Palace with her husband, Prince Philip, the duke of Edinburgh, to face another crowd and thousands more flowers. Dressed in black, the royal couple, too, stopped to talk to tearful well-wishers and accepted their bouquets of tribute.

“I told the queen, ‘Ma’am, it’s very brave of you to come and see us,’ ” said a Scottish woman, Kay Foulger. “You could see she was bearing up and had had a good weep.”

Joan Walker, a 65-year-old mourner from northern England, told British reporters: “Both the queen and the duke seemed very sad. She seemed as if she couldn’t take it all in. I feel very sorry for her.”

At 2:40 p.m. the huge Royal Standard was run up the palace flagpole to fly at full staff, marking the sovereign’s return to London for the first time since the death of her former daughter-in-law.

Later, the royal couple visited St. James’s Palace, where any hostility vanished with the appearance of the sorrowful queen and her consort.

Detectable Difference in Attitude of Public

Senior British reporters said they detected remarkable difference in the attitude of the public. People normally press forward for a glimpse of the royals, perhaps to shake a hand.

On Friday, though, the atmosphere was completely changed.

“I think the people feel they are the ones the queen has come to visit,” said one British reporter. “There’s a quiet satisfaction that it’s now all right and proper. ‘We’re here, you’re here, that’s all right.’ ”

Shortly before the queen spoke Friday, the spokesman for Mohammed Fayed, father of Diana’s companion, Dodi, met with journalists at Harrods department store in London and aired what he said could be exculpatory video footage of the driver of the car, Henri Paul, in the minutes before he made his fatal drive away from the Ritz Hotel.

During a total of 26 minutes of grainy and jerky tape, compiled from various Ritz Hotel security cameras, Paul could be seen standing in the hotel’s back hallway, chatting with Diana and Dodi Fayed, who also died in the crash.

Later, the short, bespectacled Paul was visible hastening to the Mercedes with Diana, Dodi and their bodyguard. He did not reel or stagger in the video, and at times he stood so close to Diana that if he had alcohol on his breath, she might have been able to smell it.

“He drove off in a normal way,” said spokesman Michael Cole. He added that since the video showed no photographers rushing the car as Diana and Dodi boarded it, it was unlikely that Paul had really taunted paparazzi to try to catch him, as reported.

“We are not seeking to absolve any guilty person” by releasing the video, said Cole, explaining that the elder Fayed had not wanted to go public with the tape yet but was angry about international headlines making “unfounded allegations” about Paul and the Ritz Hotel. Fayed owns both Harrods and the Ritz Hotel.

“The Ritz Hotel has been accused of what amounts to negligence or worse,” Cole said. “It is right and proper that you see the evidence for yourself.”

A Poem for Diana From Dodi Fayed

In a prepared statement that hinted at Fayed’s distressed emotional state, Cole also said that the father had found a gold cigar clipper among his son’s effects, inscribed “With love from Diana.” He said Diana had also given his son a pair of cuff links, which had been the last gift she received from her own father before he died.

Cole said Fayed wished to reveal that his son had written Diana a poem and had it inscribed on a silver plaque, which had been placed under her pillow in Dodi’s Paris apartment. Cole said that on Thursday, Fayed gave the plaque to the Spencer family and asked them to place it in Diana’s coffin. The poem was not revealed.

The spokesman said Fayed plans to endow a new pediatric hospital in England, to be named “the Princess Diana Hospital and Hospice for Sick Children Everywhere.” He said Fayed is making an initial donation of 5 million pounds, or about $8 million, for the hospital.

Meanwhile, in Paris, Princess Diana’s family on Friday filed a civil suit in connection with the investigation into her death, a move that will allow their lawyers access to case files--including testimony from photographers now being investigated for manslaughter--and damages in the event of a trial.

French authorities have placed three more photographers under formal investigation in the case, bringing to 10 the number of official suspects.

And the funeral of Henri Paul, who drove the car in which Diana was riding Sunday, was reportedly postponed from today to an unknown date so more testing can be done to determine whether he was drunk. The French news agency Agence France-Presse reported Friday that Henri’s family has disputed investigators’ assertions that the 41-year-old hotel security official was intoxicated at the time of the accident.

Times staff writer Mary Williams Walsh in London contributed to this report.