Princess Diana is depicted struggling to control her car after her brakes failed during scenes from The Crown, echoing a real-life experience.

Elizabeth Debicki is shown hurtling through an intersection and narrowly avoiding traffic in Season Five of the Netflix show, which charts the collapse of her marriage to King Charles III in the 1990s.

While the series is fictional, the real princess told friends of a similar incident in 1995, the year before she divorced Charles.

Diana went on to die in a car crash in the Pont de l’Alma underpass in Paris in 1997 and a U.K. police investigation and subsequent inquest both ruled out assassination as a cause of her death. Chauffeur Henri Paul was driving when she died.

Princess Diana, seen at Sandringham on Christmas Day, in 1993, compared to Elizabeth Debicki’s depiction of the royal in Season Five of ‘The Crown.’ Debicki acts out Diana’s brakes failing while she was driving.
Tim Graham Picture Library/Getty Images

How The Crown Depicted Princess Diana’s Brake Failure

In Episode 7, Debicki’s Diana is shown telling Prince William, then a child, and her private Secretary Patrick Jephson she believed her phones were being tapped.

Immediately afterwards, during a drive to visit her brother Charles Spencer, she then finds she cannot stop at a set of red traffic lights and careers through an intersection, narrowly avoiding a crash.

After finally pulling to a stop on the side of the road she hunches over the steering wheel in tears before later telling Spencer: “I think they’ve fiddled with the brakes on my car now as well. They might just need a service.”

Princess Diana’s Real Life Fears Her Brakes had Been Tampered With

Psychic and alternative healer Simone Simmons and Diana’s ex-boyfriend Hasnat Khan both told police after Diana’s death that during her life she had described brake failure while driving.

The Operation Paget police report into the tragedy read: “Simone Simmons stated that one day in 1995 [Paget Note: She cannot be more specific after this length of time] the Princess of Wales telephoned her from her car saying that the brakes had failed and that she thought they had been tampered with.

“The Princess of Wales subsequently wrote a note to Simone Simmons stating that
[British intelligence services] MI5 or MI6 were involved.”

Simmons told the police Diana sent her a note which she recalled read along the lines: “Dear Simone, as you know, the brakes of my car have been tampered with. If something does happen to me it will be MI5 or MI6 who will have done it. Lots of love, Diana.”

Quoted in the report, Simmons told the police: “It turned out to be normal wear and tear. That was the one and only time she expressed any fear for her safety to me.

“Diana could be quite impulsive and jumped to conclusions. She was feeling very down at the time of the brake problems because of her separation and was taking the sleeping tablets.”

The Paget report also describes Diana making comments about her brakes being tampered with to Hasnat Khan, her boyfriend between 1995 and 1997.

It states: “In 1995 he saw her driving a particular motor vehicle. When he next saw her in a car a couple of months later, which Hasnat Khan described as around December 1995, she was in a different car, a BMW.

“Hasnat Khan asked her what had happened to the previous car, as it was such a lovely vehicle. The Princess of Wales told him the brakes had been tampered with, so she had decided to change the car.”

Princess Diana’s Wider Concerns About a Plot to Put Her ‘Aside’

In October, 1995, Princess Diana had a meeting with her private secretary Patrick Jephson and her lawyer Victor Mishcon in which she said she feared an attempt to engineer a car crash.

The Paget report stated: “He [Mishcon] wrote that the Princess of Wales had told him, that ‘reliable sources’ (whom she did not wish to name) had informed her that by April 1996, whether in an accident in her car such as a pre-prepared brake failure or by other means, efforts would be made if not to get rid of her, then at least to see that she was so injured or damaged as to be declared unbalanced.

“The Princess of Wales apparently believed that there was a conspiracy and that both she and Camilla Parker Bowles were to be ‘put aside’.

“Lord Mishcon told the Princess of Wales that if she really believed her life or being
was under threat, security measures including those relating to her car must be
increased.

“He did not believe that what she was saying was credible and sought a private word with Patrick Jephson, who to Lord Mishcon’s surprise, said that he ‘half
believed’ the accuracy of her remarks regarding her safety.”

However, police found no evidence that Diana’s brakes had actually been tampered with and the report concluded: ‘Operation Paget has found no evidence to support the Princess of Wales’ stated concerns. The Princess of Wales continued driving cars after this time’.”

Source link

You May Also Like

“Constitutional sheriffs” refuse to enforce new gun control law — but have no legal justification

A gun control law signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois in…

Hubble Finds Hungry Black Hole Twisting Captured Star Into Donut Shape

FOR RELEASE: 5:15 p.m. (EST) January 12, 2023 RELEASE: STScI-PR2023-001   Newswise…

Warm weather brings a taste of spring to central and western United States

OMAHA, Neb. — A warm front swept springlike weather across a large…

Twitter Rival Mastodon’s Founder Has a Vision for Democratizing Social Media

(To receive weekly emails of conversations with the world’s top CEOs and…