Two people can be told their formal path to influence has narrowed or closed entirely and respond in completely different ways. One treats the loss of the expected title or position as the end of any real influence at all, and withdraws accordingly. The other redefines what influence actually means for them, choosing a different, less official kind of standing that doesn't depend on the position they were originally meant to hold. Diana said this line during her explosive BBC Panorama interview with Martin Bashir in November 1995, at a point when her marriage to Prince Charles had publicly and irreversibly broken down and her eventual path to the British throne, as queen consort, was no longer realistic. Rather than treating that loss as the end of her public relevance, she reframed the entire premise, trading a formal, inherited title for something she considered to be won through direct emotional connection instead.
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