Ten years ago, she was known as the people's princess. But as the world gathers to remember Diana Spencer on the 10th anniversary of her death, there are some who can only remember a people's embarrassment. Are they being fair?

The mass hysteria that captivated people when she died in a Paris tunnel car-crash has considerably died down. Now some some Brits are looking back at that time as a rare moment of overreaction, going against the typical aloof behaviour they are known for.

"It has become an embarrassing memory, like a mawkish, self-pitying teenage entry in a diary," wrote Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian about the mountain of flowers, teddy bears, and free-flow of tears outside the palace gates. "We cringe to think of it."

Sociologists have several theories on why the masses gathered not only for Diana's death but continue to gather for others whose lives are cut short. The term "makeshift memorial" is now part of the lexicon of public grief.

Although it was remarkable to see at the time of Diana's death, public displays of grief are not so extraordinary anymore. In North America, it is typical to drive by impromptu shrines by the side of the road, created to mark the spot of fatal car accidents.

People will often even attend memorials of perfect strangers or send notes of sympathy to their families though they have no connection to their death.

In another 10 years, these public displays will be so commonplace, they won't even be worth thinking about, says one pop-culture academic.

Dr. Jennifer Brayton, a media and culture expert at Ryerson University, said she expects to see a similar display of mourning at Diana's memorial on Friday, much like the recent milestone anniversary or Elvis' death brought thousands of people to Graceland.

"Diana still emotionally resonates with people, even a decade after her death," she told CTV.ca.

"I wouldn't be surprised if in another 10 years from now, there will still be an outpouring of people showing up at memorials."

Diana had qualities that her devotees related to, continued Brayton. She was the mother of two children, she was unhappy with her marriage, she didn't get along with her in-laws, and she suffered from an eating disorder.

"Diana allowed herself to be presented as 'emotional' to the public and that resonated with people, who in turn, treated her death as an emotional event," she said.

The mourning nation

The Princess of Wales represented more than just the average woman -- she represented a deep desire for political change in Britain, says Deborah Lynn Steinberg, co-author of "Mourning Diana: Nation, Culture, and the Performance of Grief."

Steinberg, an American living in London at the time of Diana's death, said wouldn't call the mass display of grief "cringe-worthy" at all. Instead, she believes people were connecting the death not with a princess but with a woman who represented a modern British population.

Shortly before she died, the Labour Party beat the Conservatives by a landslide and Britons were clamouring for a more liberal society, a value Diana seemed to embody with her lifestyle, beauty and fashion sense, Steinberg told CTV.ca.

"She was a rebellious figure, the renegade figure who represented the possibility of multicultural cosmopolitan Britain while the Tories were about an island mentality and a homogeneous society," she said. "Those things became crystallized when she died."

Criticisms of Diana that portray the princess as a manipulative liar undeserving of public tears have always been around, even at the time of her death, Steinberg recalled.

"The critiques are definitely not new, they were just drowned out by what people were saying," she said.

As much as there were people who stopped their lives to commemorate the death of Diana, there were just as many Britons who refused to buy into any of it, Steinberg recalled.

It was hard to gauge which side the public was on, she said, when television channels dedicated much of their air time to specials to Diana and newspapers had her splashed all over their front pages. Nonetheless, the British people were not overwhelmed by "hysteria," she said.

"I don't think it was hysteria, the loss of a public figure can be a touchstone for other issues," she said.

Even The Guardian's columnist Freedland agreed at the end of his musing that, in fact, the public display of emotion in reaction to Diana's death typified the British stiff upper lip.

"People queued patiently for hours at a stretch, an act of quiet contemplation rather than a manic outburst," he wrote. "On the day of the funeral, whole streets were draped in silence; even the famed applause, which started outside and spread into Westminster Abbey, was soft and low.

"It all combined to make an atmosphere that was, despite the revisionism of recent years, a warm one to inhabit," he continued. "I visited Kensington Gardens the night before the funeral and it remains one of my most cherished London memories."