With the publication of Charles Spencer’s new book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, there’s been renewed attention surrounding Princess Diana’s marriage to Prince Charles. When the couple got engaged in 1981, she selected what would become one of the most famous rings in the world, but there’s a second, never-before-seen piece of jewelry that’s associated with the final day of her life.
Princess Diana’s iconic engagement ring, which is now worn by Princess Kate, features a massive Ceylon sapphire surrounded by a halo of diamonds, but shortly before her death, Diana’s boyfriend purchased a much different diamond style.
During the summer of 1997, Diana was dating Harrods boss Mohamed Al-Fayed’s son, Dodi Fayed, who was killed alongside the princess in a Parisian car crash. While they were traveling that summer, Fayed purchased a domed gold band from famed Parisian jeweler Repossi—and according to the inquest into her death, it was an engagement ring.
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Princess Diana and Prince William enjoy a yacht holiday with Dodi Fayed (not pictured) in the summer of 1997.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
The ring, known as the Dis-Moi Oui, or “tell me yes,” was certainly not what anyone would expect when imagining an engagement style. The Repossi design was worth £11,600 in 1997, per the Guardian, and featured a wide gold band set with an emerald-cut central diamond and four triangular diamonds in a sort of starburst shape.
In season six of The Crown, Fayed proposes to Diana with the Dis-Moi Oui and tells her, “You said you liked it in Monte Carlo.” Of course, the Netflix drama is a fictional retelling of royal events, and it’s unknown if Diana ever saw the ring or if he proposed.
According to a 2007 report in the Guardian at the time of the inquest into Diana’s death, Fayed was pictured looking at rings in CCTV footage from Repossi’s Paris store on August 30, 1997, a day before they died. On August 31, Claude Roulet, the assistant to the president of the Ritz Paris hotel, was seen bringing a bag from the shop into Diana and Dodi’s suite.
Per Roulet, he showed two rings to Fayed, who chose the Dis-Moi Oui and brought it to his nearby apartment for safekeeping.
Princess Diana was not wearing the ring when she was involved in the deadly car accident, and it was later found in Dodi’s apartment. “A ring bearing the inscription ‘Dis-Moi Oui’ (‘Tell me Yes’) was recovered from the flat after the couple’s death,” the Guardian reported. “A receipt dated August 30 1997, the day before the crash, listing a ‘bague de fiançaille’ (engagement ring), was also recovered.”
However, at the time of their death, Fayed’s spokesperson told the media, “what that ring meant we shall probably never know,” even though Fayed’s father claimed that Dodi was planning on proposing the night that they died in the inquest.
Per the Guardian, Diana’s friends “denied that the couple were engaged or that Princess Diana was thinking of marriage to Dodi Fayed.”
A memorial at Harrods featured the Dis-Moi Oui ring in a pyramid-shaped case, along with a wine glass from Diana’s final meal at the Ritz.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
“We know the ring existed and that Dodi purchased it, but we cannot definitively say that Diana accepted it as an engagement ring or that an engagement had been agreed,” says jewelry expert Nilesh Rakholia, founder of Abelini.
“From a jewelry perspective, that uncertainty makes the piece particularly fascinating,” he adds. “It is a design that looks more like a statement piece than a conventional engagement ring, and we may never know exactly what it was intended to represent.”
The Dis-Moi Oui ring caused such a stir in the media that Repossi actually stopped creating the design, going as far as to destroy the models and drawings of the jewelry. Rakholia estimates that, if its provenance were fully authenticated, the piece could be worth between £200,000 and £500,000 today.
As for the ring Diana likely never received, it sat inside a memorial display at Harrods before being returned to Dodi’s father, who died in 2023. Its current whereabouts are unknown.
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