File photo: Princess Diana
In the years following the interview and her 1996 divorce, Diana leaned heavily into humanitarian work that relied on exactly the kind of direct, personal connection she was describing, including her prominent campaign against landmines and her decision, at a time when public fear and stigma around HIV and AIDS ran high, to be photographed shaking hands, without gloves, with a man dying of the disease in 1987, a gesture credited with helping shift public attitudes. The informal one, by most accounts of how she was regarded by the public at the time of her death in 1997, largely did.
Broadcast to an audience of over 20 million people in the UK alone, the Panorama interview saw Diana speak with unusual candour about the state of her marriage, famously remarking that “there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” a direct reference to Charles’s relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles, and discussing her own struggles with bulimia and self-harm during a period when the royal family offered her little public support. Against that backdrop, the “queen of people’s hearts” line reads less like a consolation prize and more like a genuine redefinition of her role. The formal title never arrived.