While dealing with a heartbreaking tragedy, Princess Diana began to question her own mortality.
After her divorce from Prince Charles, the global superstar searched for a new role and began to represent her country in exciting and challenging new ways.
The People's Princess turned a new page by getting rid of the trappings of royal life and threw herself into charity and humanitarian work.
While on the outside it looked like Diana was flourishing, she was dealing with inner turmoil amid a secret relationship with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan.
With their relationship on the rocks, Diana took her sons on holiday to the south of France to get away from it all in the summer of 1997.
However, their family holiday would come to an abrupt end when Diana received devastating news that 'haunted' her until she tragically died just months later.
The Queen herself granted Diana permission to take William and Harry away to St Tropez to stay with Harrod's owner Mohamed Al-Fayed.
A close friend of the royal family, Al-Fayed offered security at his holiday home and private yacht, which was assuring for the senior royals as Diana had given up her own royal protection officers after divorcing Charles.
Channel 5 documentary Diana: Her Last Summer, delves into what happened on that secretive final holiday with her sons.
"They were swimming a lot together. They were going on the jet skis. They went off on the yacht somewhere for the day. They had a fun time," explains royal photographer Arthur Edwards.
"It was the life thee rich and famous live and she was getting some of it."
Diana was also growing close to Fayed's son Dodi, who would also be tragically killed in that fateful Paris crash a few months later.
But Diana's family time with William and Harry away in the sun would come to an abrupt end.
On July 15, Diana discovered the devastating news that her close personal friend, Gianni Versace, had been brutally murdered in cold blood.
The Italian fashion designer was shot dead on the steps of his home in Miami Beach, Florida by Andrew Cunanan.
Versace was just 50 years old and at the top of his game when his life was tragically cut short.
Diana was a close personal friend with the designer, having famously posed on the cover of Harper's Bazaar in a stunning Atelier Versace gown.
Five days later, grieving Diana took the agonising decision to take William and Harry back to the UK to spend the next month with their father in Balmoral.
The following day she flew from London to Milan for Versace's emotional memorial service.
Indicating how close they were, Diana was sat in the front row between tearful Elton John and Sting.
Devastated Diana was very shaken by the death of Versace - and began to fear the same terrible fate might befall her.
"It deeply moved her. This was only months before she died herself," explains former butler Paul Burrell in the documentary.
"Here she was sat at Gianni's funeral. She couldn't quite comprehend it.
"Death seemed to haunt her towards the end of her life. She was so consumed by thinking it might happen to her."
The next time that many of Diana's celebrity friends would be together again was at her own funeral just seven weeks later.
On her return to the UK, Diana met up with Khan for the final time for a "screaming match" in Battersea Park where they ended their relationship for good.
Within 24 hours, she flew to Sardinia to Al Fayed's yacht to resume her romance with Dodi, where they were caught in a compromising clinch in photos.
After coming back to London, she then went to Bosnia to highlight the country's plight, briefly returned to London then went on a Greek island cruise with a female friend.
On the day she came back to the UK she had lunch with William in Kensington, the last time they would see each other, before flying back to the south of France with Dodi.
At the end of her third and final trip on Al-Fayed's yacht, Diana agreed to fly to Paris with Dodi on his family's private jet so he could do work for his father.
According to Burrell, she said: "Ring Balmoral. Tell the boys mummy will be with them 24 hours later than expected but to be there."
On August 31, Diana and Dodi would both die in a horrific car crash in Paris.
"The roll of the dice in the last few hours of the Princess' life was just so unfortunate," says Burrell.
"Everything worked against her. Nothing was in her favour. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong man."
Without any protection of her own, Diana was reliant on Dodi's security team to get them back to his apartment from the Ritz hotel while avoiding the mass gathering of paparazzi outside.
Patrick Jephson, equerry and private secretary to Diana from 1988-96, watched CCTV footage of her final moments as she went to leave the hotel.
"I remember being asked to watch a very harrowing tape. One of the last tapes from the security cameras in Paris," says Jephson.
"I thought I know that look. That body language. That hunched protective stance she was in. She was not happy. You could tell from her expression even in those last shots she was unhappy.
"There was something not right. She knew when thing were not running properly, I have a horrid feeling she was already feeling unsafe."
Within minutes they had crashed in a road tunnel, with Dodi and driver Henri Paul pronounced dead at the scene, while bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones survived.
Despite attempts to save her, Diana's injuries were too severe and she was pronounced dead at the hospital
Emotional Burrell says: "She was alone she shouldn't have been there alone. I still curse her to this day for going all that way by herself and not having someone with you."
Prince Charles and Burrell flew to Paris to bring Diana home - with her ex-husband deciding to see her body.
"When he came out he was white. He was literally shaken. I had never seen him like that before," explains Burrell.
"I'd never seen him show so much emotion before. He suddenly realised the enormity of what had happened."
Diana's death caused an unprecedented outpouring of grief around the world, with her funeral watched by an estimated 2.5 billion people
In the UK, many mourners took to the streets to pay their respects and left huge bundles of flowers outside Kensington Palace.
Then Prime Minister Tony Blair said she would always remain 'The People's Princess'.
His former spin doctor Alistair Campbell revealed a conversation they had which would always stay with him
Campbell says: "He said this is going to produce grief on a scale we've never seen. I said: 'Is that right?'.
"I got picked up by a car. It was a woman driver who was crying. This was the moment I thought this might be much bigger than anyone could ever imagine."
Burrell adds: "It's unbelievable to think it was only a year Diana had as a single person to do her own thing on her own two feet and then she was gone."
*Diana: Her Last Summer is available to watch on My5
