the coffin carrying Diana, Princess of Wales, arrived in Britain Sunday evening, hours after her body had been irreparably broken in a car crash alongside the River Seine in Paris, along with her companion Dodi Fayed and Fayed's chauffeur.

Princess Diana was probably the most photographed, perhaps the most famous woman in the world, and her stunning death has had an impact equivalent to that of a presidential assassination. French police were holding in "formal custody" seven photographers who had been following her car before it crashed at high speed. And while sympathy and fond remembrance for the 36-year, often star-crossed princess poured in from around the world, there was an undertow of anger at the media, whose obsession with Princess Di's every move may have contributed to her death. "I always believed the press would kill her in the end," said Diana's brother, Charles Spencer, who accused "greedy and ruthless" editors and publishers with having "blood on their hands."

Salon spoke with Christopher Dickey, Paris bureau chief for Newsweek magazine, who has been covering the story since the accident occurred.

Seven photographers have been detained in Paris and Princess Diana's brother, Charles Spencer, said today that every publisher who has ever bought a photo of Princess Di from a paparrazi has "blood on their hands." Do you think the paparazzi killed Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed?

It's more complicated than that. Princess Diana had a very complex and sometimes symbiotic relationship with the paparazzi who covered her. I think it's very strange for her brother to say that the paparazzi and the press have blood on their hands, when in fact one reason why she was so loved, so followed and so revered is because the paparazzi constantly kept her image in the public eye.

And she knew this. A woman who's been followed by the press as much as she has does not embrace her Egyptian lover in public on a boat where she knows there are going to be people floating around offshore taking pictures unless she means to make a statement. She played a game of sometimes hard-to-get and sometimes of great accessibility with the photographers who covered her.

Which brings up the question: why did Di and Dodi try to lose the paparazzi in the way they did, by trying to outrun them? Was that the only way they could avoid them?

You could also ask why did they chose to go out? Dodi's father owns the hotel. If he wanted to be discreet with Diana and not have the paparazzi bother them, they could have stayed in any of the best suites in the hotel. It's a protected environment. But I think another important point is that Dodi was just not used to the paparazzi the way Diana was. There were reports from some of the paparazzi that we talked to that he was becoming increasingly irritated with their presence.

A correspondent for one of the British tabloids -- which have taken the brunt of the criticism over press excesses -- said on television last night that the French police would tip off the paparazzi about Princess Di and Dodi's whereabouts.

I don't know that the French police tip off the paparazzi, but hotel security people do. Although the Ritz is very discreet and keeps people out of the building, there are certainly ways for the paparazzi to know when important persons are going to emerge from the front entrance, or the back entrance, on Rue Cambon, which is normally closed to the public, but it's easy to make use of it, especially if your daddy owns the hotel. We were told today by some photo editors that on Saturday night, there were people in Ritz security who tipped off the paparazzi that Di and Dodi would be emerging in the next five minutes or so. They didn't specify which entrance, but there were enough paparazzi out there to cover both entrances.

With the paparazzi out in full force, why didn't Di and Dodi just go back into the hotel?

The only answer that I can think of is either machismo or stupidity on Dodi's part. The driver was a hotel driver. He's not a crazy guy, but he does what Dodi tells him to do. There was at least one significantly sized BMW motorcycle in pursuit. You know and I know that a Mercedes is not going to outrun a bike like that. I am disturbed to think it, but I don't think you can rule out the possibility that there was an element of privileged joy-riding here. I'm sure that some of the last words heard in that car before the crash were the equivalent of "Step on it!"

It's also ironic in that Di and Dodi, at least theoretically, could have been protected by French privacy laws.

Which are extremely tough. In France, it's very hard to publish pictures that are taken without someone's consent. There are suits filed by famous individuals all the time that are won. For instance, the famous toe-sucking pictures of Fergie. They were published all over the world, but she brought suit in France because this is one country where she had a real good chance of winning, and she did win.

Still, the paparazzi didn't seem too concerned by the laws.

That's right. Like many things that happen in France, there are very strict rules, and there are hundreds of ways to break them. But I would say that the police themselves are not very sympathetic to the paparazzi, or to photographers generally.

There is talk of bringing manslaughter charges against the detained paparazzi.

You bet. In France, there are some wonderful catch-all laws. One is "failure to come to the aid of a person in danger." That would apply to almost anyone who was on the scene, who didn't take an active role in stopping the danger, as it were. Some of the paparazzi took pictures of the car right after the crash. There's also a question of whether some of them tried to get away with their film, which would raise the charge of leaving the scene of an accident, or even worse, leaving the scene of a crime. And finally, in France, you don't need to prove a causal link between the fault and the death. You only need to prove that was a link. So the driver can be 90 percent at fault and the paparazzi on 10 percent, and yet they could still be brought up on charges of manslaughter.

One gets the sense that this is very embarrassing for the French.

Yes, it is very embarrassing for the French. Remember that this is a country where the wife and mistress of the late President Francois Mitterand went to his funeral together. This a country where the president had a mistress for years and a illegitimate daughter, and no one wrote a word about it. Everyone knew that after he and his wife attended public functions, he would go home to his mistress and his daughter out of wedlock. That is the kind of privacy that exists in France. And the French value that kind of privacy. If you want to live that way in France you can.

Is that one reason why Princess Di, in one of her last interviews, hinted that she would prefer to live in France -- or at least anywhere but Britain?

Yes, but the problem is that once you've lived the other way -- very much in the public eye -- it's very hard to go back again. And I don't mean in the public eye as a politician or as a statesman, but as a celebrity. What was Diana known for? We can talk about her good works, but what she was really known for was her love life.

But as you said, that's not a crime in France.

What happened here is that the amounts of money involved were so astronomical -- I'm talking about the equivalent of at least $1 million for a photo -- that the whole system went out of control. And one thing that the French don't like is to be out of control. Which is one reason why there are seven photographers cooling their heels in the Conciergerie, the same building, incidentally, where Marie Antoinette was held before she was beheaded.
Aug. 31, 1997

Jonathan Broder is Salon's Washington correspondent.