The latest issue of Newsweek takes a morbid approach to what would have been Princess Diana’s 50th birthday. The deceased royal, whose milestone birthday would have been this week, appears on the front cover of the magazine alongside daughter-in-law Catherine Duchess of Cambridge, also known as Kate Middleton. The cover picture shows newlywed Catherine glancing over her shoulder at Diana, whose image seems to have been photoshopped and distorted to account for the passing of time.
Daily Beast founder Tina Brown paid a tribute to the late princess by writing up a “Diana at 50” article, which describes what Lady Di would have been like had she not been killed in a Paris tunnel crash nearly fourteen years ago. (Tina Brown: Did I say it was a launch?)
Brown, who wrote the nonfiction book “The Diana Chronicles” in 2007, suspects the princess would have maintained her style, dabbled into cosmetic surgery, and had “at least two” new spouses had she lived longer.
“[She would still be] great-looking: that’s a given,” Brown wrote. “Fashionwise, Diana would have gone the J.Crew and Galliano route à la Michelle Obama, always knowing how to mix the casual with the glam. There is no doubt she would have kept her chin taut with strategic Botox shots and her bare arms buff from the gym. Remarriage? At least two, I suspect, on both sides of the Atlantic.”
Brown guesses that Diana would have tired of lover Dodi Al-Fayed, who also perished in the France vehicle accident. Brown says Diana would have probably relocated to the Big Apple and gone after a rich man.
“Always so professional herself, she would have soon grown exasperated with Dodi Al-Fayed’s hopeless unreliability,” Brown wrote. “After the breakup I see her moving to her favorite city, New York, spending a few cocooned years safely married to a super-rich hedge-fund guy who could provide her with what she called ‘all the toys’: the plane, the private island, the security detail. Gliding sleekly into her 40s, her romantic taste would have moved to men of power over boys of play.”
According to the piece, Lady Di would have opted for an Apple smartphone over a Blackberry, as the publication includes a picture of a toned, older Diana clutching an iPhone.
When it comes to Catherine Duchess of Cambridge, who wed Diana’s eldest son William in April, the late princess “would have positioned herself as a firm defender of the Middletons against the palace snobs and ostentatiously made Carole Middleton, Kate’s dynamic mother, her new BFF.”
