Diana’s Specter Looms Over Royal Wedding

First day in Paris for Wojtek and Ilona, two young Poles in love. One of the world’s most romantic cities awaits them -- the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Champs-Elysees all beckon. But first stop on their must-see list is the grimy underpass where Princess Diana met her death.

Nearly eight years after her fatal car crash, Diana’s specter, enduring popularity and unproven suspicions she was murdered loom over the weekend wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.

The prince, by all accounts, is finally marrying the woman he has loved for decades. For Diana admirers, that’s the rub.

Disrespectful. Disgusting. The final betrayal. For Di-hard fans, hackles rise against Charles tying the knot with the old flame whom the princess blamed for the breakup of her marriage to the Prince of Wales, heir to the British throne.

Parker Bowles will, through the wedding, get a royal title, but Diana remains the people’s princess for those who still flock -- some of out affection, many out of curiosity -- to the Diana crash site beside the River Seine.

A note left there with a single white rose this week summed it up. “In memory of the true Princess of Wales,” it said, along with an “x” as a kiss.

“This is an important place,” said Wojtek Nowak, the Pole who with his girlfriend Ilona Ciuk peered from the busy intersection above into the dim tunnel that will likely always be remembered for Diana.

In Paris, he said, “there are always a few places you want to visit. But this was on the top of our list.”

Lovers can identify with the cruel irony of Diana meeting death just as she seemed, finally, to be finding love.

It was the night of Aug. 31, 1997, and Diana’s new beau, Dodi Fayed, was beside her on the back seat of the speeding black Mercedes 280 driven by a drunk chauffeur, Henri Paul.

They had dined in the Imperial Suite of the Ritz Hotel, owned by Dodi’s billionaire Egyptian-born father, Mohammed Al Fayed.

As they waited for their limousine after the meal, Dodi slipped his arm protectively around Diana’s waist. They sat together in the back seat as Paris sped past the windows and when Paul lost control of the car that slammed into the 13th concrete pillar, running east-to-west, of the tunnel under the Place de l’Alma, within sight of the Eiffel Tower.

Dodi and Paul were killed immediately. Diana, taken to Paris’ La Pitie Salpetriere Hospital, was declared dead about 3 1/2 hours later. Bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones was the only survivor -- and the only one wearing a seatbelt.

Polish TV cut into regular programming with live reports from Paris, Nowak and his girlfriend recalled.

Janine Gallagher, from Lancashire in northern England, still smarts over what she regarded as the slowness of Diana’s former mother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II, to react to the princess’ death.

“It changed the way we viewed the royals, because of the way the Queen treated her. It’s unforgivable,” said Gallagher, another pilgrim to the gilded flame sculpture above the tunnel that has become something of a shrine to Diana. This week, around its base and on chains that surround it were a dozen bunches of rotting flowers, an olive branch, ribbons, hairbands, and an empty perfume bottle.

“Nobody can take her place. In my opinion, that wedding should not be going ahead. It’s disrespectful to Diana,” Gallagher added. “The royals are supposed to set an example but they are worse than Joe Public.”

A French investigation blamed Paul, saying he was inebriated, under the effects of drugs incompatible with alcohol, and driving too fast.

But graffiti, some fresh, that covers the balustrade above the tunnel echoes conspiracy theories that Diana’s death was deliberate -- perhaps because her relationship with Dodi somehow disturbed the British establishment.

“May God Punish the Ones that Murdered You,” says one scrawl signed “F.DL.C.B Miami March 2005.”

“Diana, nobody forgets you (especially not the Arabs), thank you,” “We Cubans Love You, Jose,” and “Diana, you deserve a better homage than graffiti on a bridge,” read others.

Fans remember Diana’s charitable works, her campaign against land mines, her many kindnesses captured by photographers who followed her around. A faded photocopied picture taped to the base of the flame sculpture shows her cradling a baby, a British Red Cross sticker over her heart.

And while Diana was a fashion icon, Parker Bowles was recently savaged by British media for wearing an unflattering pair of denim jeans in public.

“The fashion world winced in pain,” commented the Edinburgh Evening News.

Diana nicknamed Parker Bowles “the Rottweiler.” Unfair, surely, but the bad image persists.

“She has no chance of beating Diana, ever, ever,” said Nowak, the Pole.