“I was married to a Prince and he Broke My Heart – So, Now, I’m looking for a Frog to make me Happy” – Diana Princes of Wales – based on the Netflix Series “The Crown”

 

I just finished the latest season of the Crown, which was centred on the British Royal Family in the 1990s. Much of the action was centred around the late Princes Diana and the collapse of her marriage to then Prince of Wales (who is now the King).

What made this particular season intriguing was the fact that it was the time when the public had to accept that the royals were not living in an idyllic world and behaved pretty much like the rest of us. The marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales was particularly noteworthy because both parties decided to air dirty laundry in public and royalty went from being a fairytale made real into a soap opera being played out on the news.

While fairytales are wonderfully idyllic, soap operas have a way of fascinating us in as much they have an element of relatability to them. The marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales was presented as a fairytale of the pretty princess getting married to a prince to live with happily ever after in a palace. However, it turned out to be rather different. They had nothing in common and proceeded to make each other miserable and as far as the public was concerned (and remains so) was the fact that the prince cheated on the pretty princes with a frumpy girl. It took a while for people to accept that fairytale everyone wanted wasn’t a fairytale for the people actually involved.

Much has been made of the fact that the prince ended up getting married to the Frumpy girl who was in fact the love of his life many years before he met the pretty princess. However, at the time, the real interest was in the love life of his ex-wife. While much was made of the fact that she was the one that was “cheated on,” she wasn’t exactly saintly either. There was, for example, a bodyguard, a riding instructor and captain of the national rugby team. However, these were sold as an emotional reaction to the fact that the prince was cheating on her and nothing more was made of it. It was only when she met the film producer who happened the son of a billionaire shop owner that everyone started wondering if she had suddenly found happiness again.

However, after her death, it appears that the “romance” may have been more of a rebound from someone who had actually walked away from a chance to be part of the “fairytale orbit.” What’s more interesting is the fact that the person that she was actually in love with was a normal guy working in a normal job.

Dr. Hasnat Khan, the man who the late Princess described as “Mr. Wonderful,” is a heart surgeon. His only claim to fame is that cricket legend and former Pakistani Prime Minister, Imran Khan, is a distant relative. Other than that, there is nothing particularly headline grabbing about Dr. Khan.

Yet, despite this, all accounts seem to indicate that he was the one that the Princess was most in love with. An ordinary doctor got the most “desirable” woman on the planet to fall in love with him and then, the accounts are such that he ended it because he realized that he was not interested in living in the spotlight that she was addicted to.

 

 Normal Guys do win…..Copyright Entertainment Tonight.

Most of us are told fairytales when we are children. Someone tells us that there is an aspiration to live for. Guys are told that the ideal woman is a pretty princess and girls are told that the ideal man is a handsome prince. Hence, we look certain ideals in life partners. In Singapore, we even talked about the necessity of the 5C’s (cash, credit card, car, condominium and country club membership) as an aspiration in one’s self and in partner.

Everyone has an ideal of what success is. There is a social definition of success like Singapore’s 5Cs. Too many people get caught up in trying to match up with the fairytale life that society sells them. You get people making loads of money in the rat race but have no life beyond working 24/7 and hardly see friends and family. I think of the number of people who happily go into debt to show they have the fairytale symbols of success. The question remains – is their life really a fairytale or is it a soap opera.

When the Prince of Wales married Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, the world saw a fairytale made live. However, the truth was, it was not a fairytale for the people involved and instead, we got a soap opera. The prince found his own fairytale with a frumpy girl and the man who gave the most happiness to the Princess was an ordinary man who avoided the limelight. Much can be learnt from this.