Two Blondes: Cindy Beale and Princess Diana
By Suzanne Morine
How can Cindy Beale compare with Princess Diana?
Both were striking blondes, holding title to a variety of compelling smiles, outfits, and male admirers.
Surprisingly, both also managed to be lovely, considerate mums. They each had an older sister and two sons. (Okay, Cindy also had two sons and a daughter while Di also had a brother and another sister.)
Di and Cindy were both British and were both based in London at least some of the time. Each also travelled to other countries, sometimes with their children (okay, Cindy kidnapped hers).
Both women had difficult marriages. Their husbands were successful men who did not stay attentive once settled into married life.
At first, Di and Cindy tried hard to make their marriages work, including helping their husbands in their careers. Both women grew increasingly dissatisfied. They had a few affairs. Each had an affair with a man who was somewhat in their service (Cindy's local pool lifeguard, Di's riding coach). And two of their men "on the side" were car salesmen (Cindy's David Wicks and Di's James Gilbey).
Late in her marriage, Cindy had a long, very passionate affair with her husband's cousin, the unforgettable David Wicks. Di's affair with her riding coach lasted much longer, about five years. "Yes, I adored him," she once said.
A tangential similarity is in Di's husband, Charles, who had a long affair with a woman he has found unforgettable through the decades. Cindy lived in poorer areas than Di, such as London's East End. But she had one clear advantage over Diana. Cindy was not hounded by the press. (By the way, the press revealed, in August 1992, a slight connection between the two women: Di was an EastEnders viewer and did not envy Cindy's situation of having another man's child.) Di's marriage ended in divorce in 1996. Cindy's was still on the books upon her death. However, after she hired an assassin to shoot her husband, Ian, and ran off with their kids to Italy, her marriage was otherwise finished. (Ian survived the attack and fleetingly had feelings for Cindy but that was as far as that went.)
Cindy's children were quite young when she died. Di's children were teenagers upon her death. Cindy's children were surrounded by caring relatives (including a gran: Pat). Di's children were also surrounded by such relatives, plus assorted servants, and in posh surroundings. Both sets of children also had concerned relatives in faraway South Africa! Di's brother, Charles (the ninth Earl Spencer), lives there with his family and publicly proclaimed he would do all he could for Diana's kids.
Cindy's kids' Gran, Kathy, also lives in South Africa, with her son and brother. She presumably has frequent phone and letter contact with her grandchildren. Charles Spencer had some surprisingly frank remarks against the royals and the press at Diana's funeral.
At Cindy's funeral, Barry Evans showed up unexpectedly and eulogized her surprisingly nicely. He said that Cindy, "never judged me, and she treated me with respect. And not many people do that. And I'll never forget her for it." Even Ian had positive sentiments at her funeral: "she was also loving and funny, and she never gave up because she loved life." At Di's funeral, her brother said, "Diana was the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty."
He also remembered, "your wonderfully mischievous sense of humour with the laugh that bent you double." Both women have been said to be misunderstood. More sadly, they seemed to misunderstand themselves, at least while in their twenties. Both Diana and Cindy perished unexpectedly while still young, in tragic circumstances, and despite being under guard. Cindy died in childbirth, while in police custody. She had a blood clot in her lung. Di was killed in a horrendous car crash while fleeing the press. Of those in the car, only her bodyguard survived. The shocked world mourned both deaths, though the tributes were greater in number and feeling in Di's case. The reason why is no mystery (though the two were so very similar, as has been shown). Classism is surely involved but, let's face it, Di was an international ambassador for good causes (and she was the Princess of Wales), while Cindy was a fictional character who did nothing much for anyone but her kids and boyfriends, and sometimes her husband. Both died in their thirties. Diana was born on 1 July 1961 and died at 36.
Cindy was probably born on 10 May 1967, dying at 31. (The specifics: Cindy was two years older than Ian, according to the EastEnders Handbook. Walford.net gives Ian's birth date as 2 March 1969. This means 1967 was Cindy's likely birth year. The 9 May 1995 EastEnders episode revealed that 10 May was her birthday.) Di's life ended at about 4 a.m., on Sunday, 31 August 1997. Cindy's life expired on the evening of Guy Fawkes Day, 5 November 1998 (a Thursday). They were both buried in their respective ancestral homes. Di's body is laid to rest in Northamp-tonshire, in Althorp, specifically on an island in the middle of a lake.
Cindy's final resting place is in a cemetery in Devon. A touching detail in Cindy's story is that her sister and mother are raising Cindy's newborn daughter, whom Ian named Cindy in her memory: As Earl Spencer said, at Di's funeral, "We will all feel cheated always that you were taken from us so young, and yet we must learn to be grateful that you came along at all."
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