Dodi Fayed’s proposal to Princess Diana: the truth about The Crown season 6’s engagement scene, from the ring at his Paris flat to what his dad, Harrods’ Mohamed Al-Fayed, once claimed
In the The Crown season six, episode three, a proposal takes place – kind of.
After spending their summer basking in the Mediterranean sun far away (or so they thought) from the eyes and camera clicks of the lecherous paparazzi, Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) and Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla) head back to London by way of Paris.
In a hotel room at the Ritz, Fayed puts on Diana’s favourite song (“When You Tell Me That You Love Me” by Julio Iglesia), pulls out a ring and gets on one knee.
“I have a question I want to ask you, to which I hope you will indeed tell me yes,” he says before Diana cuts him off.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Debicki’s Diana replies. “Stop, I can’t bear it. It’s madness. Please get up.”
A heartfelt conversation followed between the pair, who agreed they shouldn’t marry. Diana had been divorced for just a year while Fayed had been engaged to someone else just weeks earlier.
So the question “will you marry me?” is never outright asked, allowing room for The Crown to work inside the shades of grey over whether the real Diana and Fayed were engaged when they died.
Here’s everything we know.
Dodi Fayed did buy a ring that Princess Diana singled out days before their deaths
As depicted in the show’s third episode, Fayed bought a ring from the French luxury jewellery brand Repossi following his and Diana’s visit to a store in Monte Carlo.
However, according to the British newspaper The Telegraph, they weren’t forced into the store after fleeing the paparazzi like the episode depicts, but visited leisurely.
Ten days later, Fayed was captured on CCTV footage visiting the jeweller’s Paris branch.
Per the 2007 inquest into Diana’s death, a ring bearing the inscription “dis-moi oui” (“tell me yes”) was recovered from Fayed’s Parisian flat after his death, as well as a receipt, which listed the purchase of a £11,600 (US$14,450) bague de fiançaille (engagement ring) on August 30, 1997, The Guardian reports.
Mohamed Al-Fayed maintained that his son and Diana were engaged
The Crown suggests that Dodi’s father, the former owner of Harrods, orchestrated their whole relationship and pressured Dodi to pop the question.
The real-life Mohamed, who died at the age of 94 in August, firmly believed that his son and Diana were engaged before they died and were planning to announce it on September 1, 1997.
Speaking on the ITV documentary Diana – Secrets Behind the Crash in 1998, Mohamed claimed that after asking for Diana’s hand in marriage, Dodi called him and shared the good news. He said he also spoke to Diana during the call, who “was completely full of happiness” because she had “found a family she related to”.
Mohamed also alleged during an interview with Piers Morgan in 2003 that Diana was pregnant with Dodi’s child at the time of her death, another claim that the inquiry found was insubstantial based on “overwhelming evidence” to the contrary, including the report from the coroner who examined Diana’s body.
An inquiry found that it was unlikely that Dodi proposed to Diana before they died
As Fayed bought the ring the day before his and Diana’s fateful car crash, he had a limited time to present her with it.
The 2007 inquiry conducted by Metropolitan Police found that while Fayed may have been planning a proposal, that evidence points to the conclusion that one did not take place, per CBS News. The ring was found at Fayed’s flat, which Diana had not visited that day. (It was where the couple were heading at the time of their accident.)
It also cited a friend of Diana’s who had spoken to the princess two days before she died, who said that Diana had told her: “I need marriage like a rash on my face.”
“The weight of evidence is that the Princess of Wales was not intending to get engaged or married to Dodi Al Fayed,” the report read.
This article originally appeared on Insider
