When Diana of Wales died in 1997 she was embarking on an international career as a humanitarian ambassador that we will never know how it would have ended. At that time, with the divorce already signed, the British princess embarked on her own project in which, in the words of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, she demonstrated that when she spoke the world listened. Diana of Wales’s audience was global and her personal story was very difficult to match.so there has never been the possibility that a princess of her characteristics would exist again and it has been assumed that her legacy was still alive thanks to the projects undertaken by her sons, Princes William and Harry. However, there is a member of current royalty who does not share blood ties with Princess Diana and with whom she did not even coincide within the Royal Family, who without awakening the fervor that Diana generated, has silently resumed his humanitarian profile: Duchess Sophie.
© Getty ImagesWhile the focus is on the recovery of Kate Middleton, who has just overcome cancer, and the first trip of Kings Charles and Camilla to Australia, the Duchess of Edinburgh tours Chad, a country that had never been on the agenda of British royalty, to learn first-hand the impact that the war in Sudan has had on the population, especially women and girls, victims of rape as a weapon of war in a conflict that has been forgotten by the international community.
© royal.uk
© royal.uk
© royal.ukThe Duchess of Edinburgh – Sophie Rhys-Jones née and Countess of Wessex until her husband, Prince Edward, inherited her father’s title – traveled to Adré, a town located 400 meters from the border with Sudan to meet with humanitarian workers who receive refugees fleeing the war in the neighboring country. There he became interested in the needs of the different organizations on the ground (including Unicef and UNHCR) and also in a protection plan for the youngest people financed by the United Kingdom.
Discreet and with measured gestures, Duchess Sophie (a defender of the UN Women, Peace and Security Agenda (WPS) and an advocate of the United Kingdom’s Prevention of Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI)) ended up crying at the hearing the story of the Sudanese civilian population who managed to take refuge in the neighboring country and conveyed it, visibly shocked by the devastating stories. “What they do to the children is… I can’t even use words,” said the former daughter-in-law. favorite of Elizabeth II. A visit and statements that have served to put the focus on a conflict that has remained on the margins, despite being a country that until 1955 was under the Anglo-Egyptian protectorate.
© GTRES
© Getty ImagesIt is the first time that a member of the Windsor house has given visibility to this conflict and in this the connection between Sophie, who has also undertaken projects in Ethiopia and Tanzania, with Diana of Wales, who focused on conflicts that did not attract attention, is evident. international attention or those that were not directly talked about. The distances between them are evident, Princess Diana entered into competition with the British Royal House at a time when the institution wanted her to reduce her presence and adjust to being only the mother of the heir’s children, while the Duchess Sophie has been working from within in a discreet and progressive way since 2002when it was decided that he would close his company to become a full-time royal.
© Getty ImagesSophie arrived at the House of Windsor in 1999, when Princess Anne, Diana of Wales and Sarah Ferguson had signed the divorce, so it was even more difficult for her to gain the trust of the institution and the citizens. However, Sophie, the public relations officer who ended up closing her company due to the difficulty of maintaining a private company within a public institution, fit in very quickly with Elizabeth II and ended up being one of the few people who were in her inner circle. , she was one of the few “friends” the queen had at the end of her life. Over the years Sophie gained the trust of the sovereign and the entire institution. As Countess of Wessex (the title given to her at the time of her wedding) she witnessed the arrival of the new stars (Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle) who received a higher title (that of duchesses, a rank that had also been granted to Camilla in 2005) and were immediately compared to Diana of Wales, without guessing that within there was already a person willing to take over as soon as she was given the opportunity to set her own agenda.