ABSTRACT
Time, which effaces common griefs, often adds strength to powerful emotions, and renders them more fixed and painful. Thus The Times described the public mood a week after the untimely, tragic, and probably avoidable death of a young and much-loved princess, an English rose with a reputation for high spirits and charitable good works, who had seemed to present best future hope of an unpopular royal family. Little apart from the style betrays the fact that the year was not 1997 but 1817, and subject not Diana, Princess of Wales, but Princess Charlotte of Wales, only child of the Prince Regent. Feelings were intensified by sudden swing to despair after the eager anticipation of celebrating a royal birth, and by understandable fears regarding the succession to throne, as Charlotte had been George Ill's only legitimate grandchild. Beatrix Campbell in her exploration of the significance of Princess Diana's life and death has offered an extensive comparison with case of Queen Caroline.
