ABSTRACT
In this brief and inevitably tentative concluding chapter, written in November 1998, the author discusses some of the actual and possible consequences of the mourning for Diana. Diana's mourning, if not in itself constituting a cultural revolution, did have consequences. If the world was shocked to hear on 31 August 1997 that Diana was dead, the ensuing months revealed that, for most people, she had not died at all. Though thousands had met her or knew people who had, millions more never had and knew her only as a media image. After Diana's death, a number of personalities and other mourners were seen sporting black ribbons. Post-Diana, the traditional authority of the Monarch must be supplemented both by personal charisma and by the vulnerability of the modern celebrity whose private life is laid open to public gaze, and that is a terrible burden for the ordinary person that the Monarch is, and must be.
