What We Know About Princess Diana's Final Moments

For many royal watchers, the late Diana Spencer has been kept alive in a variety of ways. Of course, her sons — Prince William and Prince Harry — make a point of honoring her within their own commentary, charity work, and touching tributes (the unveiling of her commemorative statue a keen example). Their wives, Catherine, Princess of Wales, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, have been seen emulating Diana's sense of style, the subtle tributes often making headlines. 

And there are other, more expository means by which Diana's truth has been told in modern times. Shows like "The Crown" and explosive films such as "Spencer" have put pressure on the royal family, as Diana's suffering at the hands of the establishment and King Charles III's long-standing affair have been brought back into the popular ether. In many ways, Diana seems just as much a staple in royal commentary as she was 25 years ago.

In the aftermath of her divorce from then-Prince Charles, Diana continued to be a fixture of the royal scene and devoted her time to activist work. The once "Shy Di" had blossomed into a bonafide celebrity, and her young relationship with Harrod's heir Dodi Fayed was getting plenty of attention. Her glass castle shattered, however, in Paris in August 1997. After Diana and Dodi left the Ritz hotel in the late evening, their vehicle crashed in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel. Here's everything we know about the final moments of the "people's princess."

In an extensive timeline of Diana Spencer's final evening compiled by AP News, it was revealed that the royal was wary of the paparazzi in Paris from the time she arrived in the city. Paul Handley-Greaves, the head of Dodi Fayed's security team, conveyed that the former Princess of Wales was convinced that something terrible would happen during their stay in the City of Lights and relayed her worries to the security team.

When leaving their suite after dinner, Diana and Dodi made a point of discussing "the concern that the princess had that something would happen," Handley-Greaves said. "Earlier on in the day, she had expressed concern to bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones at the foolhardiness of the motorcycle riders, not for the safety of the vehicle she was traveling in. She expressed concern that the erratic manner in which they were driving might result in one of them falling under the wheels, either of the lead car or the backup."

Diana's concerns about her safety and the faultiness of a vehicle were not new — in fact, she had written in an October 1995 letter that she was fearful someone would tamper with the brakes in her car. "My husband is planning an accident in my car. Brake failure and serious head injury ..." Diana wrote in part at the time.

When Diana Spencer and Dodi Fayed loaded into the Mercedes, their driver, Henri Paul, was legally drunk. While reports about his level of intoxication have been rampantly different over the years, AP News noted that in his autopsy results, Paul had a blood-alcohol level that was at least three times over the legal limit. However, former bartender Tony Poer, who had often seen Paul at the bar where he worked, told AP News that he "never saw [Paul] extremely drunk," confessing that Paul had even driven him home on more than one occasion.

While Paul's autopsy did show some degree of alcohol consumption, Express noted that France's laws regarding drinking and driving are incredibly strict. The maximum level of blood alcohol a person can have while driving in the country is 0.5mg/ml, as compared to Britain's 0.8mg/ml. Furthermore, Diana's former butler, Paul Burrell, insisted that the driver would not have gotten behind the wheel if he had been in a compromised state.

"Why would [bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones] let a drunk man drive him? Let alone Diana and Dodi?" Burrell questioned, per Express. "That's rubbish. I think there was a mixing up of toxicology results." Such questions have plagued Diana's final moments in the decades since.

Driver Henri Paul and Dodi Fayed were killed upon impact at the scene of the crash, but Diana Spencer was still alive when first responders arrived. Dr. Richard Shepherd detailed her injuries to the Daily Mail.

"She actually suffered just a few broken bones and a small chest injury — but this included a tiny tear in a vein in one of her lungs," Dr. Shepherd explained. "To the ambulance services, she initially seemed injured but stable, particularly as she was able to communicate. While everyone focused on [Trevor] Rees-Jones, however, the vein was slowly bleeding into her chest."

It's still unclear why it took a number of hours between the initial crash and Diana's admittance to the hospital. However, a firefighter who tended to Diana after the crash shared her final words: "My God, what's happened?" she was reported to have said, the Independent noted.

Dr. Shepherd maintains that if Diana had been wearing a seatbelt, her injuries likely would not have been fatal. "Diana's death is a classic example of the way we say, after almost every death: if only," he said. "If only she had been wearing a seat belt. Had she been restrained, she would probably have appeared in public two days later with a black eye, perhaps a bit breathless from the fractured ribs, and with a broken arm in a sling."

Diana Spencer's sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, were just 15 and 12 years old when their beloved mother died. Both remained relatively quiet on the subject in the years that followed, the image of them following her coffin etched into the world's collective memory. But in the BBC documentary "Diana, 7 Days," both William and Harry opened up about the immediate aftermath of her death, explaining that they were in Balmoral in Scotland when they received the heartbreaking news.

"One of the hardest things for a parent to have to do is to tell your children that your other parent has died," Harry said in the documentary, ABC News noted, expressing his own sense of sympathy for his father's responsibility at the time. William shared that he simply froze upon hearing his mother had died. "I remember just feeling completely numb, disorientated, dizzy," William said. "You feel very, very confused. And you keep asking yourself, 'Why me?' All the time, 'Why? What have I done? Why? Why has this happened to us?'"

The princes remained at Balmoral in the immediate aftermath of Diana's death, with Queen Elizabeth II "shielding" them from the press and the public. She was criticized for the move — and for not publicly expressing her grief sooner — but William and Harry stood by her decision to let them grieve behind closed doors, per ABC News.

Questions about Diana Spencer's tragic death ravaged the world in the aftermath of the crash — many of which remain unanswered to this day. A formal inquest was launched into the crash in 2008, with both British and French investigators combing over the details of the night in question. As noted by The Telegraph, it took six months of "claims and counterclaims," 250 witnesses, and more expository work before French and British authorities estimated that Henri Paul was the person responsible for the crash due to his prior use of alcohol and antidepressants, which caused him to lose control of the vehicle.

An inquest jury at the Royal Courts of Justice in London delivered the verdicts of "unlawful killing" of both Diana and Dodi Fayed, The Telegraph detailed, which is comparable to manslaughter. The inquest jury estimated that both Paul and the paparazzi at the scene were responsible for the crash, as their "gross negligence" allowed the car to spiral out of control. The jury further detailed that both Diana and Dodi might have survived the crash if they had been wearing seatbelts.