DIANA; AS PRINCESS OF WALES, LIFE SHOULD HAVE BEEN FAIRY-TALE PERFECT, BUT ...

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived a young woman who never counted on being an idol.

Apart from her blond, willowy good looks, Diana Spencer seemed at first glance pretty ordinary. She was a fairly typical member of Britain's upper crust, a privileged party girl (then only 19) with a shy, pleasantly unaffected manner.

Nothing marked her as a future celebrity, let alone as a future symbol. Instead, she was Cinderella in blue jeans, a commoner lifted out of the ashes and into the media spotlight. Suddenly famous, she looked like a gawky prom queen who'd stumbled into a Hollywood movie by mistake. When she stood next to Britain's medal-bedecked heir to the throne, in what some called the ``Wedding of the Century,'' you had to wonder if she really knew what she'd gotten herself into.

She knew, all right. As it turned out, the princess with the porcelain smile was a whole lot tougher than we'd imagined.

She had to be. Her childhood, it later emerged, wasn't a blissful fairy tale of tea parties and pony rides, but the all-too-familiar story of a broken home. She'd grown up in the shadow of alcoholism and divorce, an ordinary child in need of love.

Her new Prince Charming, apparently, had been such a child himself. The offspring of a distant mother and a harsh, authoritarian father, he'd spent his whole life sequestered in stone houses or rambling across lonely moors, rifle in hand. To the princess he seemed to be a walking suit of armor, with his tweedy good tastes in music, wine, architecture - and extramarital lovers. She preferred Versace gowns and Elton John cds.

As their marriage fell apart, the princess tried turning back to her old life. She cultivated a new set of friends, a number of them playboys and dilettantes, the crowd that always knows the best ski slopes and the hottest discos. Many of her subjects sympathized. Many others disapproved.

But as she set about raising her two sons, their empathy grew. The world began to see her in a warm, even sentimental glow, as a devoted mum determined to give her children the affection she herself had lacked. She humanized the chilly House of Windsor. She made ordinary Britons - and a vicarious worldwide audience of millions - feel strangely closer to the crowned heads.

Though she never fully outgrew her image as a Sloane Ranger, the upper-class British equivalent of a Valley Girl, she overcame it. Even when she seemed silly, spoiled or self-indulgent, jetting off to some glamorous tropical spot or getting caught in a tape-recorded tryst, her flaws only seemed to enhance her mystique. To female sympathizers, she was simply a woman in an unhappy marriage, a single mother making the best of a bad situation. Sadness dignified her. Hardship glamorized her.

Most importantly, her own suffering lent credibility to her new-found role as a missionary, a comforter of children and soldiers, stepping out on the pages of Vanity Fair and turning up at the bedside of AIDS patients. Rather than smacking of noblesse oblige, her actions appeared heartfelt. They made the world look a little kinder, a little more tolerant.

To her husband's family, she became Diana the Difficult, a massive public relations headache that wouldn't go away. When she and Charles finally divorced, the world instinctively took her side. It was an illusion, of course, but many felt they knew her. Rapidly, painfully, she had grown up before our eyes.

Call it voyeurism, if you like. Call it a tabloid culture's twisted love-hate relationship with the rich and famous.

But this week, while police and pundits raked through the ashes, and Internet oracles dished conspiracy theories, gray old London got a dose of spring.

There it was, via satellite, a carpet of brilliant colors, thousands of bouquets strewn in remembrance before the iron gates of Kensington Palace. With fairy tales today in such short supply, can anyone say those flowers were in vain?

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20 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Princess Diana's Life

Special keepsake edition on the Princess of Wales 

(2--Color) In January of this year, Diana visited amputees at the Neves Bendinha Orthopedic Workshop on the outskirts of Luanda, Angola.

Associated Press

(3--Color) Diana and Prince Charles during their engagement announcement on Feb. 24, 1981.

(4--Color) On the balcony of Buckingham Palace after the royal wedding, on July 29, 1981, came the royal kiss.

(5--Color) Aboard HMS Brittania, Diana greets sons William, center, and Harry on Oct. 25, 1991.

(6--Color) Reaching out to an AIDS patient at a Toronto hospice on Oct. 26, 1991.

(7--Color) At a United Cerebral Palsy dinner in New York on Dec. 11, 1995.

(8) Her 21st birthday portrait, taken by Lord Snowden, in 1982.

(9) Getting a traditional Maori welcome during a visit to Eden Park, Auckland, New Zealand, in April 1983.

(10) With day-old son Harry on Sept. 16, 1984.

(11--Color) In a 1974 family photo on the Isle of Uist in the Western Isles, Scotland.

(12--Color) With sons Harry and William and then-estranged husband Charles in September 1995.

(13--Color) At a gala dinner in March 1996, her first public appearance after agreeing to end her 15-year marriage.

(14--Color) With South African President Nelson Mandela to discuss AIDS in March of this year.

(15--Color) Family album picture of 9-year-old Diana Spencer during the summer of 1970.

(16--Color) With Mother Teresa at the Missionaries of Charity in the South Bronx on June 18, 1997.

(17--18--Color) Attending fund-raisers in '96, left, for an Australian medical center and, right, a Pakistani hospital where she wore traditional dress.

(19--Color) Attending an art gallery gala in June of '94.

(20--Color) Sporting a nautical outfit in 1989.