The funeral, the Queen decided, should be a small, family affair at Windsor, followed by a burial in the graveyard at Frogmore, where successive generations of the royal family, with the exception of the reigning monarch and their consorts, are laid to final rest (since Queen Victoria’s time, kings and queens have been buried at St George’s Chapel, Windsor). The Queen’s private secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes, agreed. The situation, however, was being torn from their grasp. In London, the crowds of mourners were perilously close to turning into a mob. Their wrath was palpable and growing. They wanted to know why no flag was flying at half-mast over Buckingham Palace, why no royal tributes to the princess had been forthcoming and, above all else, why the royal family had chosen to remain in Scotland instead of returning to the capital to join in the nation’s mourning.

In fact, there was nothing unusual or pernicious in their decision to remain where they were. The royal family traditionally does its grieving in private and in a more devout age their wish to keep their sorrow to themselves would have been treated with quiet respect. There had been no complaints when the royal family had gone into retreat at Balmoral following the deaths of the Duke of Kent in 1942, of the Queen’s glamorous cousin Prince William of Gloucester in 1972, or of Prince Charles’s beloved great-uncle Earl Mountbatten of Burma in 1979. Like Diana, all had died violently: Kent and Gloucester in plane crashes, Mountbatten at the hands of the IRA.

But Diana was different. Her death had changed the rules to such an extent that even the royal family’s attendance at Crathie church on the morning of her death had been criticised. How was it, the swelling army of critics were asking, that they could go to morning service, taking the bereaved Princes William and Harry with them, and show not a glimmer of grief? It was a cruel judgement which either missed or ignored the point that the Windsors are a religious family who find quiet solace in their faith, not in an Oprah Winfrey-style exhibition of public soul-wringing.

A public display of royal grief, however, was exactly what the millions converging on the capital were demanding, and the flag over Buckingham Palace became the symbol of what was now being perceived as the royal family’s cold-hearted indifference. By time-honoured tradition, the only flag that flies over the palace is the Royal Standard and then only when the sovereign is in residence. It never flies at half-mast, even on the death of the sovereign, never mind a semi-detached princess, because the Royal Standard is the symbol of the state and the state is ongoing. As the heralds proclaim: ‘The King is dead, long live the King.’