The "20-something" responses to the death of Princess Diana have been a major surprise. Polls consistently show young people in this age group are least interested in preserving royalty, yet -- as reactions from writers under the age of 25 make clear -- some aspects of her life struck a particular resonance for them. Josh Parr, who has traveled widely in Asia, works as a youth counselor in the Bay Area.

Diana was heroin. Like the drug, she was a catalyst for the unraveling of the self-assurance of Western civilization in the 1990s

She was opium for the masses who craved enchantment. Addictive, embalming, ultimately killing. For the hollow-eyed around the world, saddled with debt, unsatisfactory love lives, divorce, low ceiling lives, piles of "People" magazine in the bathroom, she represented the fairy tale -- cracked and flawed but human and alive.

It was a continuing saga, with a new hit coming to the newsstand tomorrow and tomorrow and every day. The final twist on her life, as with heroin, is tragic. The sensations are illusory and ultimately self-negating.

But then there is the overexposure -- cracks magnified by paparazzi journalism. "People" got it wrong. The familiar story unraveled. The Prince was a philanderer, the Princess was divorced, the young princes were latchkey kids. Chivalry disappeared in the face of the public's hunger for enchantment. Royalty became a kind of public TV show.

I love it that Diana was an unconditional romantic. She searched for love with a colored man. It's possible England will righteously rise up over the fact that she died with an Egyptian playboy -- they will even smear Diana as a "whore" to show sympathy with the motherless princes.

Someone, hopefully the Disney studios, will try to set the record straight. The greedy Egyptian prince kidnaps her, Prince Charles and the Western press rush to her aid, but too late -- the Egyptian kills them rather than surrendering himself and the unwilling white woman to the vengeance of the empire.