Was This Person Really Princess Diana's One True Love?

Of all the tragic things about Princess Diana, her love story with Prince Charles is perhaps the most heartbreaking. The late Princess of Wales experienced relatable parenting problems with William and Harry, but her situation with Charles was less relatable. Diana, a free spirit who loved life and its simple pleasures, married into the British royal family — what some would deem to be a dream come true — but instead of sunshine and rainbows, she found herself facing adultery, divorce, and, ultimately, an untimely death via car accident in Paris (via Vogue).

Diana's life changed after divorcing Prince Charles in numerous ways. She continued carrying with her the support of the British people; she was the People's Princess, after all, representing the everyday person. However, she no longer had the full support of the royal family, and she may have finally been able to pursue true love after being confronted with false love in her marriage. She attempted this with Dodi Fayed, the Egyptian film producer and heir that died alongside her in the 1997 car accident (via Biography.com). But who was Diana really in love with before her too-early death?

Dodi Fayed shared a long relationship with Princess Diana before their joint death in 1997, but the late Princess of Wales might have been in love with someone else. According to Express, it was the London-based surgeon Hasnat Khan that had Diana's heart, though they both knew a public relationship wouldn't work.

"Hasnat was a decent, intensely private man from a traditional, conservative Pakistani family, and he was worried about how it would work," Jemima Khan, a relative to Hasnat via marriage, once said (via Us Weekly). Diana and Hasnat reportedly loved each other for two years before her death, and the anxiety about a public relationship was mutual. Diana knew the surgeon would struggle if raised to her level of public attention and scrutiny, and he knew he'd struggle, too.

Diana, on the other hand, was all in. "Diana was madly in love with Hasnat Khan and wanted to marry him, even if that meant living in Pakistan," Jemima further explained. Moreover, Diana visited Hasnat's family to inquire about Pakistani life and how hard it would be to adjust to their lifestyle. "She wanted to know how hard it had been for me to adapt to life in Pakistan, and she wanted advice on how to deal with Pakistani men and their cultural baggage," Jemima said.

Ultimately, because of their differing social classes, Diana was forced to "settle" for Fayed after Hasnat chose not to pursue the relationship on a greater level, which "broke" the late princess' heart (via Express).