Thread by @KevDGrussing

Starting #ThePrincessHBO, which gives Diana’s story the “June 17th, 1994” treatment of using nothing but archival footage to tell its story.
This is gonna be a wild one…

Charles and Di really did look like they truly loved each other in those early interviews.
The “fairy tale couple” vibe comes thru.
They really did play us all, very well indeed…
#ThePrincessHBO

We know now that Diana saw/heard the massive crowds while getting ready and truly felt the pressures.
But she also hoped that Charles would see it and shake Camilla off.
Alas…
#ThePrincess

What must have been going thru Diana’s mind as at this point she quickly figured out at least somewhat that the love was a lie…
#ThePrincessHBO

Showing Charles/Di idolatry next to the real scenes from British streets, including a British Nat’l Front March!
Showing you how Di was used by the Monarchy as a PR pawn in a time of Tory-instigated upheaval…
#ThePrincessHBO

Ironically prescient…
#ThePrincessHBO

Outside of Charles/William loyalists and unwavering hardcore Royalists like Diana’s own brother would tell Diana should one have a TARDIS and decide to go back to 1980…
#ThePrincessHBO

“The crowd saw that like most brides, Lady Diana has lost weight as the day approaches…”
Yes, like most brides…whose figured out her husband might not necessarily her…
😔😔😔
#ThePrincessHBO

“Who in this audience thinks the press should lay off the poor girl (Diana)?”
Ya’ll still buying those tabloids though…
#ThePrincessHBO

“Do you think it’s going to easier now on?”
“Oh, I think it’s going to be much easier. I think now that she’s palpably one of the royal family, um, all this telephone lens business will stop.”
Narrator: It did not stop nor did it get easier. Far far FAR from it.
#ThePrincessHBO

Cut to Charles at the polo grounds, & Diana by this point is very much aware now Charles has no real actual love for her at all.
In hindsight, this should’ve tipped ppl off but “Fairy Tale” and such…
God, seeing Diana like this is heartbreaking…
#ThePrincessHBO

Charles to Diana: “Do you find after he last six months, you’re beginning to get used to it?”
Diana: “Just.”
Said with a look that screams “Bloody f**king not!”…
#ThePrincessHBO

This pre-marriage interview delivers all sorts of red flags that showed that there were things a miss.
Fake smiles, uncomfortable, playing up appearances.
But b/c “Fairy tale”, nobody bothered to look…
#ThePrincessHBO

Imagine telling a Revolutionary or Loyalist that over 2 centuries later that America would be fully engrossed in an English nationalistic event.
The Revs would be horrified, the Loyalists would be laughing their asses off…
#ThePrincessHBO

We know now that Diana saw/heard the massive crowds while getting ready and truly felt the pressures.
But she also hoped that Charles would see it and shake Camilla off.
Alas…
#ThePrincessHBO

“This is the stuff of which fairy tales are made…”
Really?
Because Diana clearly is more reflective of the mood and Charles is barely looking at her…
Of course, we didn’t know the truth, because we all were hypnotized…
#ThePrincessHBO

“The escort, led by Lt. Col Andrew Parker-Bowles…as Charles and Lady Diana stayed with him and his wife Camilla in Wilshire on two occasions. So they’re among friends as they ride along the mall…”
Yes. Friends. Good friends.
Nothing more than that…
😖😖😖
#ThePrincessHBO

These images after Charles and Diana got back to Buckingham Palace.
My god, we all got hoodwinked.
There really was no love here.
And we all could've seen it but we refused to.
#ThePrincessHBO

All for the business.
All for the cameras.
It was a really good production, we all were hoodwinked and mesmerized…
#ThePrincessHBO

And then we cut to Diana having William.
Boy, imagine if Diana gave birth to a girl instead.
How that would’ve blown up the spot…
#ThePrincessHBO

“And Princess Anne’s reaction from Mexico?
‘I dunno, you tell me?’
‘What’s your reaction to her having a boy?’
‘I didn’t know she had one…’”
Man, helluva family, huh?
#ThePrincessHBO

They play “horror movie” style music while showing this.
Almost as if Diana’s horror is about to intensify now that Diana served her sole purpose in birthing Charles’ heir…
#ThePrincessHBO

The fateful trip to Oz, where whatever love there was disappeared…
#ThePrincessHBO

“Diana is very big news everywhere…”
And this guy HAAAAATES it.
#ThePrincessHBO

“I’ve come to the conclusion, that really it would’ve been far easier to have had two wives to have covered both sides of the street and I could’ve walked down the middle directing the operation.”
Diana’s face when Charles makes this “joke”.
Heartbreaking.
#ThePrincessHBO

🎵After the love is gone
What used to be right is wrong
Can love that’s lost be found?🎵
Nope…
#ThePrincessHBO

“How do you think (Charles) feels about his wife today?”
“One must remember that Charles and Diana married for the singular purpose of having a child to secure the succession of the child’s family…it was a marriage of convenience…”
Man, they openly admitted it.
#ThePrincessHBO

Charles: “Look at the people in there…trapped…”
😔
#ThePrincessHBO

Reporter notes that Charles/Di don’t see eye to eye.
Charles: “I think you’ll find most husbands and wives have arguments.
Diana (trying to keep appearances): “But we don’t!”
Diana tried so hard, at the cost of her mental health, to make this work …
#ThePrincessHBO

Charles: “I go on longer…”
Diana: “Yeah, but I’m faster…”
As in Diana is fast on the uptake as to how full of s**t Charles was and still very much is…
#ThePrincessHBO

“What do you say when you read in the papers that you’re a ‘determined, domineering woman’?”
“I don’t always read that, although people are very willing to tell me that…”
That should’ve been caught in hindsight.
#ThePrincessHBO

God, all these interviews with Charles and Di really do give off a ton of signs thru body language and certain statements that there ain’t no love in the House of Windsor…
#ThePrincessHBO

Reminder that for their 2nd child, Charles wanted a girl and was horrified with Harry’s birth,
“Oh my god, it’s a boy!”
And then Harry got the red hair genetic to Diana’s family.
“Oh my god, he’s got red hair!”
Can you imagine?
#ThePrincessHBO

While those who still buy the fantasy celebrate, in reality…the love is gone.
#ThePrincessHBO

Literally less than an hour after coming home with Harry, there Charles is at the polo grounds.
Infuriating stuff, the kind of stuff that does happen in a mentally abusive relationship which this clearly was by this point…
#ThePrincessHBO

And here, at 34 minute mark, is the first appearance of the woman who destroyed the fairy tale more effectively than any antagonist of any fairy tale.
The woman Charles broke Diana’s heart for.
It just…really makes no goddamn sense when you put any thought in it.
#ThePrincessHBO

🎵 Ain't no love in the heart of the city
Ain't no love in the heart of town
Ain't no love and it's sure nuff a pity
Ain't no love cause you ain't around🎵
#ThePrincessHBO

Now we cut to images of Diana with the people, where she felt more natural and comfortable than with her own husband.
Because that love from the people is what got her through the horror…
#ThePrincessHBO

And they show Diana opening the AIDS ward and being a decent human being to AIDS victims at a time the disease was still viewed in a grossly homophobic lens.
This really shows her as the great human being she really was…
#ThePrincessHBO

Then when she came to America?
She visited AIDS wards and a Harlem hospital of her own purpose.
#ThePrincessHBO

“Will you dance with the Princess?”
“If she’d like me to!”
And yep, she did.
She got ALL out of this American visit…
#ThePrincessHBO

“The 12 year age gap, really has begun to tell…”
Yeah, cause that’s the main problem.
Truly.
Well okay, it kinda was, but it wasn’t the main issue here…
#ThePrincessHBO

“They just don’t meet physically, mentally or emotionally…”
Right, because Charles is in love with the other woman and not Diana...
#ThePrincessHBO

Diana, alone, in front of the Taj Mahal.
The image that finally destroyed the fantasy and the charade once and for all…
#ThePrincessHBO

“When you put a modern person in a modern institution, they will be destroyed. But when that institution starts destroying people, it’s time to recognize that there is something fundamentally wrong with that institution and not with the people it destroys!”
#ThePrincessHBO

Diana knew what the images of her alone at the Taj meant.
A breaking of the charade, a lifting of the veil, a final destruction of the fantasy she could barely keep up anymore.
Or, as she put it…
#ThePrincessHBO

The Andrew Morton book, which her personal tapes built though they couldn’t reveal that, ensures that the truth won’t be silenced even if William, Charles and Diana’s own brother tried to.
#ThePrincessHBO

They dropped that tapes of Diana cheating trying to make her look like the bad one and then the smoking gun of Charles’ love calls with Camilla dropped.
Oops!
#ThePrincessHBO

It’s hard when the brutal truth behind the Fantasy is revealed before your eyes…
#ThePrincessHBO

Next attempt was to have them separate but not divorce.
Let’s be clear, Elizabeth did nothing to stop everything from happening.
Her sons are both disgraces… #ThePrincessHBO

Palace thru John Major asking for advances into Diana’s privacy would stop.
Fat chance, and Diana knows it…
#ThePrincessHBO

Run Diana Run!
And she ran at a good clip too…
#ThePrincessHBO

The paparazzi was relentless toward her, and nobody put a stop to it.
The cycle was vicious…
#ThePrincessHBO

“She’s close to being a monster!”
#ThePrincessHBO

Or “Prince Charles destroys Diana”
#ThePrincessHBO

“The best thing that can happen is for the queen to live a very long time…”
Well, yes and no…
#ThePrincessHBO

Diana responded to Charles’ interview twicely.
Firstly with this dress…
#ThePrincessHBO

And then with this interview.
And how Martin Bashir secured the interview does not matter at all, it was Diana basically echoing what she told Andrew Morton a few years before with a lot more detail and “in her own words”.
#ThePrincessHBO

Did Martin Bashir and his folks do some sleazy things to get Diana?
Sure, but Tabloids were doing sleazy things w/Charles for his side of the story.
Diana spoke her truth, William, Charles & Diana’s own brother are trying to silence her.
Too bad you can’t…
#ThePrincessHBO

#ThePrincessHBO is another example of how, despite the best efforts of The Firm, Charles, William and Di’s brother that Diana won’t be silenced.
They can try, they will fail…

Charles will not be widely accepted as King, and William won’t be neither when his time comes.
And they have no one to blame but themselves…
#ThePrincessHBO

Going thru her post-divorce humanitarian work in Africa.
Which was a helluva lot more genuine than all that “Live Aid”/“Band Aid”/“We Are The World” garbage…
#ThePrincessHBO

.@HillaryClinton.
Diana.
The power of this image…
#ThePrincessHBO

The whole thing with Dodi has fateful written all over it.
You gotta wonder how that would’ve ended up if…well…that night hadn’t happened.
#ThePrincessHBO

And it all ends with the night she died…
#ThePrincessHBO

Paparazzi chasing, a drunken driver, it was all a toxic combination…
#ThePrincessHBO

Tony Blair’s devolution in the 2000s is such a damn crying shame.
It really really is.
#ThePrincessHBO

Yeah, Elizabeth was back chilling at home in Scotland initially after Diana’s death and had to be pushed to go back to London.
#ThePrincessHBO

Wow, I didn’t think I’d hear Bob Sheppard’s voice in here…
#ThePrincessHBO