LON­DON (AP) — Above all, there was shock. That’s the word peo­ple use over and over again when they re­mem­ber Princess Di­ana’s death in a Paris car crash 25 years ago this week.

The woman the world watched grow from a shy teenage nurs­ery school teacher in­to a glam­orous celebri­ty who com­fort­ed AIDS pa­tients and cam­paigned for land mine re­moval couldn’t be dead at the age of 36, could she?

“I think we need to re­mind our­selves that she was prob­a­bly the best known woman in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world, aside from per­haps Queen Eliz­a­beth II her­self,” said his­to­ri­an Ed Owens.

“And, giv­en this mas­sive celebri­ty per­sona that she had de­vel­oped, to have that ex­tin­guished overnight, for her to die in such trag­ic cir­cum­stances, at such a young age, I think re­al­ly came as a mas­sive shock to many peo­ple.”

It was that dis­be­lief that ce­ment­ed Di­ana’s lega­cy as the woman who brought last­ing change to Britain’s roy­al fam­i­ly, help­ing bridge the gap be­tween cen­turies of tra­di­tion and a new, mul­ti­cul­tur­al na­tion in the in­ter­net age.

First, there was the out­pour­ing of grief from the pub­lic who streamed to the princess’ home at Kens­ing­ton Palace to mourn the loss of a woman most had nev­er met. That alone forced the roy­als to rec­og­nize that Di­ana’s com­mon touch had con­nect­ed with peo­ple in ways that hadn’t yet oc­curred to the House of Wind­sor.

Those lessons have since in­spired oth­er roy­als, in­clud­ing Di­ana’s sons, Princes William and Har­ry, to be more in­for­mal and ap­proach­able. For proof, look no fur­ther than the glitzy con­cert that was a cen­ter­piece of June’s Plat­inum Ju­bilee cel­e­brat­ing the queen’s 70 years on the throne.

There were rock bands and opera singers, dancers and lasers paint­ing pic­tures of cor­gis on the sky. But the biggest ap­plause was for Eliz­a­beth her­self, who ap­peared in a short film to share a pot of tea with British na­tion­al trea­sure Padding­ton Bear. She then solved a long­time mys­tery and re­vealed what’s in­side her fa­mous black hand­bag: A mar­malade sand­wich — just for emer­gen­cies.

It wasn’t ob­vi­ous Di­ana would be a roy­al rebel when she mar­ried Prince Charles.

A mem­ber of the aris­to­crat­ic Spencer fam­i­ly, Di­ana was known for floun­cy bows, sen­si­ble skirts and a boy­ish blond bob when she start­ed dat­ing the fu­ture king. Af­ter leav­ing school at 16, she spent time at a fin­ish­ing school in the Swiss Alps and worked as a nan­ny and preschool teacher while liv­ing in Lon­don.