In August 1997, the world was captivated by photographs of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Fayed embracing on a yacht in the Mediterranean. The romance seemed like a fairy tale ending for the princess. But a woman in Los Angeles was watching those same images with a very different perspective.
Four days after the famous "Kiss" photograph was published, Kelly Fisher sat before cameras wearing a sapphire and diamond ring. She claimed she was engaged to Dodi Fayed and that their wedding had been set for August 9th. She said she had been left to read about the end of her engagement in the newspaper like everyone else. Seventeen days later, Fayed was dead in a Paris tunnel alongside the most famous woman on earth, and her story was buried with him.
To understand the summer of 1997, one must first understand the man. Dodi was born in Alexandria in 1955 to Mohamed Al Fayed and Samira Khashoggi. His mother was a prominent Arab writer and the sister of the infamous arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. The marriage ended in disgrace within a few years, and Dodi was raised by his father, a man who had been humiliated by his expulsion from the Khashoggi family circle.
Mohamed Al Fayed spent the next four decades building a version of himself so grand that no one could ever reject him again. He added the "Al" prefix to his name to suggest a noble bloodline. He bought Harrods. He acquired the Ritz in Paris. Dodi was raised inside that construction project, as an exhibit of his father's success.
The boy was sent to the most exclusive schools, including the Institute Le Rosey in Switzerland, known as the "School of Kings." He did not distinguish himself. A brief stint at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst followed. A roommate later described him as having a "reasonable build," adding that he was "not fat and pampered and soft and flabby." Even the kindest memories of Dodi Fayed arrived braced against the accusation of softness.
After Sandhurst, Dodi held a brief post as an attaché at the UAE Embassy in London. It was the last position he ever held that his father did not create for him. Everything that followed came from his father's pocket. By his early twenties, he had a flat in Mayfair, a Rolls-Royce, and an allowance. He learned early that the fastest route to being liked was to pay.
In 1979, his father founded a film company called Allied Stars and installed Dodi as chief executive. The real work was done by others. The company produced *Chariots of Fire*, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1982. Dodi’s name was on the film as executive producer. The producer who actually made it, David Puttnam, thanked the Fayed family from the stage, saying they "put their money where my mouth was." Even in the triumph, Dodi was the checkbook, and someone else was the artist.
The industry’s private opinion of Dodi was harsh. Puttnam later claimed he caught Dodi supplying cocaine to the cast and crew and threw him off the production. He called Dodi "one of the laziest human beings I have ever come across" with "the attention span of the average flea." The Fayed family denied all of it.
Dodi’s financial life was a paradox. He received an allowance of $100,000 a month, but he was constantly in debt. American Express sued him for over $116,000. He wrote bad checks. He owed back taxes. He ran up bills at the Ritz, a hotel his father owned. He rented homes in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He had a flat in London that his father had given him as a boy.
The mechanism of control was simple. When Dodi stayed at a hotel in Los Angeles, Mohamed Al Fayed telephoned the management and told them he was not paying his son's bills. One producer described the relationship as a choke chain. "You give a little freedom then you need to give a pull." Dodi was encouraged to fly and then not allowed to. He telephoned his father constantly, reporting in every day.
His relationships followed a pattern. He proposed to model Suzanne Gregard and married her in 1986. It was over within eight months. In another case, he bought a model a penthouse for $175,000 in cash. When the relationship ended, he tried to take the property back and sued her. The gesture came first, and it was enormous. But the gesture was not a promise. It was a purchase, and he would quite like the goods back.
Kelly Fisher met Dodi in Paris in July 1996. She was an American model with a working career. By her account, he proposed within eight months, giving her a sapphire and diamond ring valued at over $200,000. The wedding was set for August 9, 1997. He asked her to stop modeling and promised her $500,000 to compensate for the career she was setting aside. She received $60,000 in cash. A check for $200,000 bounced.
On July 2, 1997, Dodi bought a house in Malibu for $7.3 million. Fisher understood it to be the house they would live in after the wedding. Nine days later, Diana, Princess of Wales, landed on the French Riviera as a guest of his father. The villa was his father's. The invitation was his father's. The boat was his father's. Dodi simply arrived.
Diana arrived on July 11th with her sons, William and Harry. The boys enjoyed the holiday. Harry later said the trip was "heaven" and that "Mommy was smiling." But according to Fisher, she was also brought down to the south of France that July. She was placed on a smaller Fayed vessel, the *Cujo*, a few hundred meters away from the main yacht. She has said that the days belonged to Diana and the nights came back to her.
On a recorded telephone call played in court a decade later, Fisher confronted Dodi. "You even flew me down to St. Tropez to sit on a boat while you seduced Diana all day," she said. His answer was three words: "We broke up, Kelly." He had not told her. He simply stopped and let the news do the work.
The photograph of the kiss was taken off Sardinia in the first week of August. It was sold for a reported sum between one and three million dollars. It ran on the front page of the *Sunday Mirror* on August 10th under the headline "The Kiss." The market had just been shown what a single frame of those two people was worth. Every photographer in Europe adjusted accordingly.
On August 14th, Kelly Fisher walked into a room full of cameras in Los Angeles wearing the ring. Beside her sat attorney Gloria Allred. The claim was breach of contract. Allred said Fayed had "led her emotionally all the way up to the altar and abandoned her." She also said her client was willing to meet the Princess of Wales to tell her what had happened. No reply ever came. Diana had 18 days to live.
The press conference did not land as it should have. The Fayed side denied any formal engagement existed. And the world preferred the other story. A princess who had been unhappy for years had found somebody. Nobody wanted the version with a lawsuit in it.
On August 30th, Diana and Dodi flew from Sardinia to Paris. They visited the Villa Windsor. They arrived at the Ritz in the afternoon. Dodi walked to a jeweler and came back with a brochure. They had dinner. At 12:06 AM on August 31st, a black Mercedes S280 pulled away from the rear of the Ritz. Henri Paul was driving. Trevor Rees-Jones was in the front passenger seat. Diana and Dodi were behind them. None of them was wearing a seat belt.
Pursued by photographers, the car entered the underpass at the Pont de l'Alma at an estimated 105 km/h in a 50 km/h limit. It struck the 13th pillar. Henri Paul and Dodi Fayed were pronounced dead at the scene. Diana was still alive. She died at 4:00 AM. She was 36. Dodi was 42.
Mohamed Al Fayed spent the next 26 years insisting his son had been murdered. He alleged a conspiracy involving the British royal family and intelligence services. He claimed Diana was pregnant and that the couple had been engaged. The Operation Paget investigation, which examined 175 separate conspiracy allegations, concluded there was no conspiracy. The inquest jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing due to the grossly negligent driving of the following vehicles and the impairment of the driver's judgment through alcohol.
The jury made no finding that Diana and Dodi had been engaged. The ring bought in Paris on the last afternoon of his life was found by the only court that ever examined it to prove nothing at all. There was, however, another ring. That one had been photographed on a woman's hand in Los Angeles 17 days before he died.
Kelly Fisher dropped her lawsuit on September 2nd, two days after the crash. Allred said Fisher had decided to forgive Dodi Fayed for the past injustices. She kept the ring. She said very little for a decade.
In December 2007, she was called to give evidence at the inquest in London. The recorded telephone calls were played in open court. Asked to demonstrate that a dead man had once intended to marry her, she said, "It is just quite humiliating to sit here and try to prove to people that someone wanted to marry you."
She has given almost no interviews since. She married a Russian pilot in 2007 and settled in South Carolina. She is the only principal in this story still alive to be asked about that summer. She has spent most of thirty years declining to discuss it.
Mohamed Al Fayed died on August 30, 2023, one day short of the 26th anniversary of the crash. He was buried beside his son. A year after his death, more than twenty women alleged in a BBC documentary that he had sexually assaulted them. He had never been charged with anything in his lifetime.
That is the man who wrote the official version of the summer of 1997. He spent 26 years insisting his son had been about to marry the Princess of Wales. He never once conceded the engagement that had a date, a house, a part-paid promise, a bounced check, and a court filing.
Dodi Fayed had been given everything and permitted to be responsible for nothing. He had never once been made to choose. In the last summer of his life, his father placed both women on the same stretch of French coast, and he moved between them because moving between things without choosing was the only method he had ever been taught.
On the 14th of August 1997, a woman sat down before the cameras in Los Angeles wearing the ring and told the truth as she understood it. Seventeen days later, the other story became sacred, and hers became something nobody was willing to hear. She has been carrying it quietly ever since.