NOW WE begin to understand why the most popular and enduring tragic plays of history have been written about kings and princes and earls, and not about, say, the European Union or the Parliamentary Labour Party.
All human tradition dictates that Saturday was to be an end of it; the burial of the dead marking the start of the slow passage back to whatever the living can recapture of their old normality.
An archbishop might say it was a time for healing. Possibly the archbishop did. By the time he spoke, no one was listening properly. They were trying to take in the enormity of what they had previously heard.
This was probably the most public occasion the world has ever known. Earl Spencer used it to come as near as anyone has done within Britain since 1745 to raising the rebel standard against the monarchy. His address was not a eulogy, but a battle cry.
Even before he began, one observer in Westminster Abbey thought the scene resembled the House of Commons. The Spencers in the North Lantern staring across at the Windsors in the South Lantern, a couple of sword-lengths away. But these are two families that match each other, and any political party, for internal dysfunction, for the range of their splits, feuds, sub-feuds, and even the odd lingering cross-
current of affection. Now they are ranged, institutionally, against each other: Montagues and Capulets for our times, but with the war outlasting both love and death.
The life of Diana was a tragic story. We may now be embarking on the sequel: The Tragedy of Charles III. But maybe there is never going to be a Charles III.
And, if there is, then in the overblown atmosphere of this weekend one could be forgiven for wondering whether it really will be Charles Windsor rather than Charles Spencer, the new popular hero, and a far more gifted moment-seizer than the Windsors have ever produced.
After all, how will he respond if the royals dig in and he does not get his way on the boys╒ future upbringing? He is godson to the Queen, ex-brother-in-law to the Prince of Wales and uncle to Prince William, the perfect CV for a vengeful medieval usurper.
Throughout the speech, the Queen sat stony-faced. Ten years ago, it used to be considered mild lese-majesty if a women╒s magazine said she didn╒t smile enough when she waved. In the Mall, as the crowd began to drift away, the support for Earl Spencer seemed unanimous.
╥Fantastic,╙ said an elderly gent from Chester, who had just camped out for the first time in his life. ╥Right on the button,╙ said a man from Hounslow. ╥I thought he was excellent,╙ said a middle-aged lady from Luton. But hadn╒t he sort-of declared war on the Royal Family? ╥Oh, yes,╙ she replied, ╥just a touch.╙
It was the strangest imaginable climax to this strange and mournful day. Despite the vast throng in the Mall and Whitehall, there was a silence the streets of Central London never hear these days, not even at five in the morning.
There were no clouds in the sky. The sun glinted on the St James╒s Park lake, and the stonework of the palace gleamed. It felt like the capital of a different, distant, country. The atmosphere in the abbey was actually more relaxed. The list of the Great and Good may have been mildly Spencerised, with the inclusion of the odd rock singer and charity worker, and the exclusion of the tabloid editors.
But most of them were well used to funerals, even terrible ones, and they did what non-principals do on such occasions, and gossiped quietly with old acquaintances.
The occasion was defined better by ear than eye. The low hum of chatter, and the organ music inside. The silence from outside. And every minute the muffled tenor bell ╤ respectful but insistent ╤ as the cortege drew closer.
It was the same when the ceremony began. The royals froze into their characteristic poses: the Queen sphinx-like; the Prince of Wales as if broken; William masking his feelings with what looked like boredom.
But the sound kept changing: I Vow To Thee My Country, the perfect abbey hymn, came out rather uncertainly; there was that turgid version of Psalm 23 bewilderingly chosen instead of the much-loved Crimond setting; and Tony Blair, taking his control of the significant pause close to the point of self-parody. Then Elton John, professionalism carrying him through when everyone insisted he would break down.
It was at this moment that we heard the sound which several writers have compared to distant rain. That is precisely what it was like. It was the crowd in Parliament Square applauding. Inside there was one applaud, hastily stopped. No one claps at funerals. Not in England. Or rather, no one used to clap at funerals.
Then came Earl Spencer. Let╒s be cool about this. His address contained elements of disingenuousness bordering on mendacity. To describe Diana vs the tabloids as an encounter between ╥genuine goodness╙ and total evil is a grotesque distortion of a complex relationship. When he warned against sanctifying her memory, he said that was wrong, but only because of her ╥mischievous sense of humour╙. Even in a funeral oration, it is customary to paint over the cracks more convincingly than that.
The urge for vengeance was one of Diana╒s characteristics, and it runs in the family. This was a brilliantly crafted oration. Maybe he is the master phrasemaker; maybe he had help. But in his amazing climax, he used words and phrases ╤ ╥blood family╙, ╥sing openly╙ ╤ whose force he understood perfectly.
Like his dead sister and unlike the Windsors, he knows the power of word, and gesture, and symbol. He despises those who convey the symbols to the masses. He has not resolved the paradox.
Then came the rain again. And this time it spread inside. It would be fascinating to work out exactly who did and did not applaud, who did so wilfully, who half-heartedly and who because they simply forgot themselves and followed the herd. William and Harry clapped; Charles was seen to tap his thigh; Hyde Park erupted.
The most beautiful moment of all, for me, was the choir of angels singing her to her rest with the hymn to the tune of Danny Boy. But this was no longer a funeral, not even this most fervid of funerals. It had gone way beyond that.
Luckily, weariness had descended on those outside. If Earl Spencer had gone a step further and called for immediate insurrection, they would have marched. But it was time to go home and resume being British again.
On a Radio 4 phone-in last Tuesday, a man from Leeds rang in and said his wife had died of cancer in April. They had loved each other deeply, and been together 44 years. But he had cried more for Diana.
He was followed by a sceptic. ╥The public is on a flight of fantasy. They╒re just trying to fill a void in their lives.╙
We know which of the two spoke for England this week. The body of a beautiful, gifted, kind, flawed, fated human being lies on the island at Althorp. A huge proportion of the population believes she is Diana, Saint and Martyr, victim of the wicked Windsors. She may be at peace. The nation is not.
