How Princess Diana Changed The Way The Royal Family Protects Its Privacy

Well-known personalities usually require their staff to sign nondisclosure agreements to prevent vital information from leaking out. Even the royal family protects the privacy of its members using these legal documents, but it took Princess Diana’s death for them to realize one glaring mistake.

The entire world was horrified to learn of Princess Diana’s untimely death in a Paris car crash in 1997. Naturally, public interest about the tragic life story of the People’s Princess skyrocketed.

A steady stream of Diana books and biographies kept people’s curiosity satisfied. But what was surprising was that most of these books came from the very people who worked for the Princess of Wales, the same people who signed confidentiality agreements as part of their employment contract.

Royal author Penny Junor explained why these people were able to write and publish materials about the late royal. With the princess’ death, Diana’s former employees were apparently no longer legally required to observe the confidentiality agreements they previously signed.

“It used to be that if your principal had died, the undertaking of confidentiality died with him or her,” Junor quoted former Keeper of the Privy Purse Alan Reid in her book “The Firm,” which came out in 2005.

With the agreement rendered ineffective after the princess’ death, some of those who worked for her grabbed the opportunity to make money out of the knowledge they gained during their employment. “This is how people who worked for the Princess of Wales were able to publish with impunity after her death,” Junor revealed.

The royal family quickly learned this lesson and had that loophole fixed. These days, staff can no longer publish materials as they wish even if their royal employment expires.

And the solution was actually very simple. “Now contracts are in the sovereign’s name, and the sovereign never dies,” Reid added.

What Reid meant by that statement is that while individual kings and queens will inevitably die, there will always be one on the throne. Thus, the contract won’t be invalidated even with the death of a monarch because someone will take his or her place as the sovereign.