Kristen Stewart, who plays Diana, is depicted in a tense stand off with royal officials who watch her every move, in the critically acclaimed Pablo Larraín biopic.
The real life princess famously referred to royal aides as the “men in grey suits” who constrained her and protected husband, Prince Charles.
However, she had greater reason to mistrust them than that as royal staff were at times required to play an active role in covering up Charles’ affair with Camilla.
Andrew Morton’s seminal 1992 biography Diana: Her True Story, written with the princess’ help, described how cooks were required to prepare meals they knew he would not be eating.
Valets had to mark listings in the Radio Times to make it look like the prince had spent the night at home watching television.
Royal protection officers who accompanied Charles on his visits to Camilla were expected to keep his infidelity a secret.
The princess, though, also talked about the tensions over how much more media attention she got than her husband.
Quoted in the book, Diana said: “The enemy was my husband’s department, because I always got more publicity.”
Morton wrote: “Not only did she consider herself to be a prisoner trapped inside a bitterly unfulfilled marriage, she also felt shackled to a wholly unrealistic public image of her royal life to an unsympathetic royal system which was ruled, in her phrase, by the ‘men in grey suits.’
“She felt disempowered both as a woman and as a human being.”
After the book was published, Diana and Charles separated but they did not divorce until 1996, a year after she went on the record in a bombshell BBC interview.
In it, she told the BBC: “I don’t think many people will want me to be Queen. Actually, when I say ‘many people’ I mean the establishment that I married into, because they have decided that I’m a non-starter.”
She added: “They see me as a threat of some kind, and I’m here to do good: I’m not a destructive person.
“I think every strong woman in history has had to walk down a similar path, and I think it’s the strength that causes the confusion and the fear. Why is she strong? Where does she get it from? Where is she taking it?
“Where is she going to use it? Why do the public still support her? When I say public, you go and do an engagement and there’s a great many people there.”
Morton wrote in his book that Diana turned instead to her own friends and trusted confidantes outside the royal system.
James Gilbey, a very close friend who famously called the princess “Squidgy,” told Morton: “She gets on much better with them [outsiders] than the men in grey because they are tied up with preserving a system which she feels is outdated.
“There is a natural built-in confrontation there. They are trying to uphold something and she it trying to get out.”
Felix Lyle, her astrologer, told Morton in 1992: “She has a soaring spirit and optimism which is easily defeated. Dominated by those with strong character, she does not yet have enough self confidence to take on the system.”
