Why is Princess Diana so popular with immigrant mothers?

The Crown’s hugely anticipated fourth season was released on Netflix on 15th November, with a new addition to the season’s cast; in the shape of Emma Corrin came a vision of the late Princess Diana. Twitter erupted with a renewed and impassioned love for the People’s Princess as soon as the season aired and as expected, so came the tweets from South Asian women, joking that their mum’s best friend was on TV. These jokes rang true - I watched my own mother settle in to watch this portrayal of Princess Diana with the same intensity that my grandmother afforded to Indian serials. It was irrelevant to my mother that before then, she had never watched even a single minute of The Crown.

 For her, it was all about Diana.

I hadn’t been conceived when Diana passed away, but I grew up with an acute awareness of the remarkable love the older women in my family had for her. My mum and auntie told me in great detail how they travelled into Central London for Diana’s funeral, camping overnight with over a million other mourners so that they could pay their respects.

My grandma still shouts at the television when she catches a glimpse of Camilla Parker Bowles, but on seeing Diana, she sighs and whispers a quiet prayer.

I’ve seen this love extend far beyond my own family, with similar experiences reiterated throughout the South Asian community. I remember when I went to my primary school best friend’s house after school and saw Diana’s painted face smiling back at me on a plate. It had taken pride of place, carefully preserved in a glass cabinet. I accepted, without question, that this was simply a celebrity who was universally loved and adored.

As the years went by I came to understand that the bond between South Asian mothers and Diana was not the same as any celebrity and fan - who adored them mindlessly. Diana was one of their own.

To an outsider looking in it may seem strange that there is a phenomenon of immigrant women adopting a white royal as one of their own. In a conversation with my friend, Aarya, I realised this bond isn’t in fact peculiar.

“It’s not hard to imagine why women who could’ve been in arranged marriages to older, inconsiderate men, and were either made to live with their in-laws or in another country, can relate to or identify with Diana. She was living out that life on a huger, whiter, more glamorous scale.”

Aarya’s comment made it clear to me that in a country where immigrant women were solely visible when subjected to bigotry, Diana made them feel truly seen. And more than seen, she made them feel loved. Her struggles were those they saw reflected in their own lives; how could they not root for her? When my mother is reminded that Diana had her own affair she says “good for her.”

Our mothers and grandmothers may have been expected to stay utterly devoted to flawed men but in Diana they saw someone who could have made a great escape and eventually get her fairy-tale ending.

It is this point that makes Diana’s death especially tragic. She was so close to getting the happiness that our mothers believed she, and all women like them, deserved. To have it snatched away when it seemed just within grasp, was crushing.

According to my mum and auntie, the royal family tried to break Diana because she refused to be like the rest of them. In my mum’s words, she would not “put up and shut up.” Diana didn’t appear stoic or distant, but was a warm person who showed she cared about the people that society did not value. To feel understood by one of the highest points of British society was a sentiment unfamiliar to South Asian women until Diana entered the public eye. Her death couldn’t be the end of the story.

Diana’s fierce motherhood is something I see reflected in the older South Asian women in my family and perhaps this is also how they will keep Diana’s legacy alive in their community. At Diana’s funeral, her brother, Earl Spencer, pledged in his controversial speech that he would act on “protecting her boys from a similar fate.” At times it seems as though the older women in my family have taken this pledge too, fretting over Harry and William’s relationship and saddened by the rift between the two. When Prince George was born, my grandma teared up watching Kate and Willian show him to the world on the steps of St Mary’s Hospital. All she could think about was Diana; how she wasn’t there, but how proud she would have been.

The rest of the conversation I had with my friend Aarya rings in ears. All I can think about is how Diana’s life fit so perfectly into how stereotypical Indian serials play out; there was even an ‘evil mother-in-law’ that was suspicious - when reflecting on Diana’s death. Of course, the bond between South Asian mothers and the late Princess Diana transcends a viewer’s encapsulation by a melodramatic television series, but it is this narrative that further strengthens their connection to the People’s Princess.

She was a troubled woman stuck in a loveless marriage, but she had the strength to rebel against her in-laws and managed to pave a way out, towards her own freedom, even if this freedom was heartbreakingly short-lived.

The Crown's latest season may have brought the bond between South Asian mums and Diana to the forefront of our minds, but for the older women in our lives, this connection does not cease to exist when Diana is no longer the subject of the latest television series. We might have made jokes about this seemingly unlikely bond, but in the era in which she lived, Diana represented so much for women of colour. They rooted for her happiness as if it were their own, because they had felt the weight of her struggles in their own lives. And with the visceral love that I have seen expressed for the late Princess Diana by South Asian women, it is no wonder that I feel as if she were an Auntie I never got the chance to meet.