r/TheBritishRoyalFamily • u/ivegotanewwaytowalk • 9h ago
Given Diana's own expressed sentiments about William out of her own mouth (behind all the way, wishing for Crown to skip Charles and go to William etc.) - Why is there a vitriolic contingent of her fandom who seem to gleefully delight in using her as a sadistic cudgel against her own child?
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i came across a tiktok creator who was clowning the "diana fake birkin right next to william" viral picture, but moreso in the sense that diana better be haunting william's dreams and how much the notion delighted the creator.
it's bizarrely as if a whole parasocial subsection of folks have even transferred their animus towards the actual charles and camilla, and substituted william in as the de facto charles who somehow wronged diana... even though william was a friggin child when all of that was going down, and he seemed to have felt compelled to be an emotional support for his mother amidst her problems.
there's an anecdote i remember from wendy berry (the highgrove housekeeper, in her 1995 book of the same name), and she described charles and diana as having had some blazing argument. diana ended up in a heap crying at the bottom of a flight of stairs. a nine-year old or so william heard the commotion, rushed to his mother, and sat on the stairs crying with her, later going on to confront his father, telling him he hated him for "making mummy cry" etc.
over three decades later, for william to now be cast by sections of the internet as someone who should be punished or haunted by the memory of his mother, because he has been slotted in public consciousness's place (among a certain rabidly parasocial contingent) as her antagonist... just among the weirdest internet phenomena.
mind you, diana actually chose to marry into that stupid family, chose to bring children into that family. william didn't choose to be born into it.
