The buzz around the upcoming final season of The Crown, which lands on Netflix on November 16, is reaching fever pitch. Season six will cover the period between 1997 and 2005, depicting the run up to, and the fall out of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed's fatal car crash in Paris in 1997.
Season six's first full-length trailer, which dropped late last week, provided a glimpse of how showrunner Peter Morgan and his team may cover the accident: we see Dodi (Khalid Abdalla) and Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) leaving their hotel and pushing through a throng of paparazzi towards their car, minutes before the crash.
Princess Diana was one the most famous women in the world when she died. This has meant that the details surrounding the August 31, 1997 Paris crash have been investigated, raked over and revisited thousands of times over the past three decades by police, prosecutors, journalists, writers and fans. The Crown's upcoming depiction joins this ever-growing mass. It remains to be seen how the show can respectfully cover such a traumatic and shattering event.
Below is the known timeline of Princess Diana's final hours.
August 30 afternoon, Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed arrived in France, having spent nine days together on his wealthy father Mohamed Al-Fayed's yacht travelling around the French and Italian Riviera. They set off from Sardinia's Olbia Airport and landed in Le Bourget Airport in Paris, where they were immediately met with hordes of paparazzi. The couple went to The Ritz, which Dodi's father owned at the time. They planned to stay in Paris for one night before moving on to London.
Later that afternoon, while Diana went to the hairdressers, Dodi went to a jewellers and bought a £11,600 Repossi diamond engagement ring. Facts that have been confirmed include its "Dis-moi Oui" (tell me yes) inscription, the date of the purchase on the receipt (August 30), and the description of the ring on the receipt, which was "bague de fiançaille" (engagement ring).
Al-Fayed would later say that this was not a surprise purchase: he said the couple had been looking at rings in Monte Carlo, that a ring had been sized in Italy and then delivered to Paris. However CCTV from that day shows Dodi in the jewellery shop looking at various diamond rings, suggesting that a ring had not already been chosen.
Al-Fayed also said that his son planned to propose to Diana that night, but in the end the couple left the hotel after midnight. Dodi had not taken the ring out with him that evening – it was reportedly recovered from his apartment on Rue Arsène Houssaye, a 16-minute drive from The Ritz, after his death.
That evening the couple moved between Dodi's apartment and The Ritz. Reports of exact timings differ, but it's clear that Dodi and Diana went from he Ritz to Dodi's apartment to get changed for dinner around 7pm, and that while Diana was there she checked in with her children, who were on holiday with their cousins in Scotland.
Approximately 9.30pm the couple attempted to dine at Chez Benoit, a Michelin-starred bistro a 25-minute drive from The Ritz, but found it impossible, being swarmed by paparazzi, and returned to The Ritz. They first tried to dine in the hotel's restaurant, but eventually retreated to their suite for more peace and privacy around 10pm.
After dinner, the couple formulated a plan to return to Dodi's apartment and elude the paparazzi: one car would be used as a decoy and drive away from the front of the hotel, while Dodi and Diana would slip out the back.
12.19am the couple left the hotel. But their attempt to avoid the press did not work. They were chased by both cars and motorcycles, and as they were travelling at 65 mph through the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in the centre of the French capital, their driver, Henri Paul, lost control of the car.
12.23am Swerving and hitting a passing white Fiat, the Mercedes-Benz W140 in which they were travelling smashed into a huge concrete pillar. The couple's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, the only passenger wearing a seatbelt, made it out of the accident alive, but Diana, Dodi and Henri did not.
The front of the car was completely destroyed, and witnesses would report seeing smoke. Emergency services were called. Paparazzi reportedly swarmed around the destroyed vehicle, some trying to help, some taking pictures.
12.33am Police arrived to the scene.
12.38am The ambulance arrived. Dodi died at the scene but Diana did not: she reportedly mumbled "Oh my God" and "leave me alone" as she sat in the vehicle. Frederic Mailliez, the man who claimed to be the first witness at the scene said that Diana did not look visibly injured, just dazed. But in fact her collar bone was dislocated and her rib and arm were fractured.
According to The Times in 2007: "The dying Diana, Princess of Wales was so agitated as doctors attended her in the wreckage of her car that she tore out a drip they had inserted, her inquest heard today. Shouting incoherently and thrashing her arms, the princess had to be restrained and sedated before it was possible to administer treatment and extract her from the mangled Mercedes, the High Court jury was told."
1.00am After having received medical care for around half an hour while still at the crash site, Diana had a heart attack. She was revived after a successful CPR attempt and then was transferred to an ambulance. It set off for the hospital at 1.40am and the Princess arrived at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, in the 13th arrondissement, just after 2am.
It turned out that Diana's heart had been forced out of place during the accident, and parts of it had been torn. She was still alive when she arrived at hospital, but died at 3am after valiant attempts from staff to save her life.
6.00am In a news conference, it was announced to the public that the Princess has died.
