The moment Princess Diana’s grieving sisters joined King Charles III at the hospital where the royal lost her life in 1997 has gone viral, after footage captured by the press at the time has resurfaced on social media site TikTok.
The clip captured at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris on August 31, 1997 has resurfaced just days after the 27th anniversary of the car crash that ended Diana’s life at the age of 36, leaving behind her two sons, Prince William who was just 15 and Prince Harry who was 12.
Diana was pronounced dead at the hospital after sustaining catastrophic injuries when the car she was traveling in at high speed through Paris with boyfriend Dodi Fayed, a bodyguard and chauffer collided with a pillar in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel.
Fayed and chauffer Henri Paul were pronounced dead at the scene of the accident. Diana was taken from the scene to the hospital and bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones was cut free from the wreck before also being taken to hospital.
Attempts to save Diana’s life were deemed unsuccessful and she was pronounced dead in the early hours of the morning. Rees-Jones was the only person involved in the crash to survive, but with life-altering injuries.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The crash has sparked decades of speculation and conspiracy theories. A 2008 inquest into the events surrounding the crash and several of the key theories ruled that the cause of the princess’ death had been “unlawful killing” attributed to the negligent driving of Paul who was over the legal blood alcohol limit to be in control of a vehicle, as well as the negligent driving of the paparazzi pursuing the car at the time. The ruling also attributed partial responsibility to the fact that none of the car’s occupants were wearing seatbelts.
Uploaded to TikTok by user ladywalesdiana, on September 6, footage showing Diana’s two elder sisters, Lady Jane Fellowes and Lady Sarah McCorquodale, as they joined the then-Prince Charles to watch Diana’s coffin leave the hospital and be placed in a waiting hearse, has been viewed over 400,000 times so far.
Incorrectly captioned “Look at the way Princess Diana’s sisters look at Charles at the funeral,” the clip highlights a moment where both grief-stricken women look towards their former brother-in-law outside the hospital.
They had traveled to Paris with Charles aboard one of the royal family’s private jets just hours after the news of Diana’s accident had been broken to them. In a 2017 interview given to the BBC documentary Diana, 7 Days, McCorquodale described her shock at the events as they unfolded.
“There was a period of about two hours and I was talking obviously to other members of my family and learned that she hadn’t made it, and these two hours the presenters from every news channel were saying ‘injured but expected to make a full recovery’ and I have no idea why but it made me so angry,” she said.
“She was religious in putting on her seatbelt—why didn’t she put it on that night? I’ll never know.”
Of the trip to the hospital in Paris, she explained: “I didn’t have time to feel anything.”
“I think I felt shock but I don’t think I felt anything else. Just love and shock,” she said. “I don’t think I was capable of feeling anything else, I think I put a barrier up and these are the jobs that have got to be done and just get on with them. There was time enough afterwards to point fingers or whatever else you needed to do.”
The TikTok clip has received in excess of 7,000 likes and over 300 comments, many of which expressed sympathy for the sisters.
“They were all in shock,” wrote one user.
“They are both devastated they had just flown to Paris to pick up the body of there baby sister utterly shattered,” posted another.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek‘s royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about King Charles III and Queen Camilla, William and Kate, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We’d love to hear from you.
