The trip features in the final season of The Crown.
Season five of The Crown ends with Princess Diana packing for vacation, after Mohamed Al Fayed and his wife, Heini Wathen-Fayed, invited her and her sons on their yacht in Saint-Tropez. On that trip, Diana would meet Fayed’s son, Dodi Al Fayed, who would go on to become her last boyfriend, and their relationship, as well as the second trip Diana took with him on the Fayed yacht, then named the Jonikal, play an integral role in The Crownseason six.
“Everything about that trip to St. Tropez was heaven,” Prince Harry shared about the vacation he and Prince William joined his mother for aboard the vessel in his memoir, Spare. Here, some of the most memorable photos of Princess Diana with her sons and the Fayeds on the Jonikal in July 1997.
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Princess Diana on board the Jonikal yacht, where she first got to know Dodi better
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Princess Diana was friendly with Mohamed Al Fayed, who had been in royal-adjacent circles for some time due to his ownership of Harrods department store
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Diana brought her two sons, Prince William (head down, center) and Prince Harry (right), on vacation with her.
“We’d been with Mummy weeks earlier when she first met him, in St. Tropez,” Harry writes in Spare—the ‘him’ refers to Dodi. “We were having a grand time, just the three of us, staying at some old gent’s villa
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At the time, Diana had recently broken up with British Pakistani heart surgeon Dr. Hasnat Khan, who could not handle the media attention surrounding their relationship. Her friends later shared that they believed her fling with Dodi was to make Hasnat jealous
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Diana pictured with her bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, who would later be the sole survivor of the crash that killed Princess Diana and Dodi.
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Princess Diana waved to Trevor ashore in Saint-Tropez.
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The Princess looked happy to be spending time with her sons.
Harry writes, “There was much laughter, horseplay, the norm whenever Mummy and Willy and I were together, though even more so on that holiday. Everything about that trip to St. Tropez was heaven. The weather was sublime, the food was tasty, Mummy was smiling
