20 ways Princess Diana’s legacy of good lives on

LONDON – AUGUST 31: Flowers, photographs and tributes are placed in memory of Princess Diana, Princess of Wales on the gates of Kensington Palace on 31 August 2005 in London. The Princess of Wales and her then boyfriend Dodi Fayed died in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

16. The British grieve differently

“The massive outpouring around her death has really changed the British psyche, for the better,” Prince William said in a recent GQ interview. Two and a half billion people watched her funeral worldwide. Thousands of people lined the streets for days leading up to the ceremony. Prince William recalls people wailing and throwing things. At the end of the ceremony, the city joined in an applause that led all the to her sons at Westminster Abbey.

The Queen realized she didn’t handle the Princess’s death properly. She shared, “I for one believe that there are lessons to be drawn from her life and from the extraordinary and moving reaction to her death.”

Author Andrew Morton has said he believes Diana changed the emotional connections between the people of England. He said, “Britain’s stiff upper lip brigade ended with the funeral. And we have more of a trembling lower lip. I think that we’ve become a more expressive nation, a more touchy, feely nation than we were perhaps 30 or 40 years ago. And I think that Diana is a symbol of that.”

Prince William shared in his GQ interview that he felt the enormous outcry of love and celebration of David Bowie would never have happened before Diana. She was the first of her kind.