Focus: This wasn't just R v Burrell. It was Windsor v Spencer

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From the moment Earl Spencer delivered his devastating oration during the Princess of Wales's funeral in Westminster Abbey, the gloves were off in the war between the Spencers and the Windsors. Five years on, and the trial of Paul Burrell has provided a telling reminder of just how deep is the feud.

This extraordinary episode was not just about whether one man was a thief or not. It was not about monogrammed pyjamas and tea parties with Naomi Campbell, nor even about where the limits of a butler's duties lie – rivetting though all those details were. It was really about Diana herself – and the battles fought over her between the family she had been born into and the one into which she had married so disastrously.

The enigma of Diana was always that she could be all things to all people. Since August 1997, indeed since long before then, cultural historians, feminists, writers and artists have interpreted her and reinterpreted her so many times that – like the Andy Warhol screenprint she was surely worthy of – the "real" Diana, whoever that was, was somehow flattened into a kind of anonymity, or at least a blank canvas on to which all manner of projections were possible.

What the Royal Family knew of Diana while she was married to Charles was that she was at best a loose cannon, at worst so emotionally unstable that she risked doing untold damage to the entire royal edifice. The divorced Diana, so deeply hurt by the treatment she felt she had received during her 11 years as part of "The Firm" – ignored, misunderstood, resented, betrayed and left to suffer her illnesses alone – still had to be carefully watched, and the prospect of her marrying Dodi Fayed did little to ease the lingering tension at Buckingham Palace. What would that liaison have done for Prince William, one day destined to be king, and his brother?

The message that came through to a traumatised public in that extraordinary week following her death was that the Royal Family, and in particular the Queen, just didn't care. Well, Earl Spencer would show them what caring meant. And any sense of relief at her passing – naturally, suppressed – would have been profoundly disturbed when he implicitly denounced the monarch in her own Abbey, declaring that "we [the Spencers], your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty, but can sing openly as you planned".

The terms of this new phase in the war had been laid down. The world was told in no uncertain terms what Diana stood for, and the Royal Family would have Earl Spencer's words to haunt them should they deviate from this path.

All this was just about tolerable as long as the Royal Family could keep a semblance of control over the Diana history. The point about the Burrell trial was that it threatened the exposure of things that the Queen and Prince Charles would have wanted kept under wraps. We may or may not yet discover what was in Mr Burrell's evidence. It's fair to say that it would hardly have reflected well on the Palace.

Thus it was that the Spencers, not the Windsors, who were appearing as prosecution witnesses, fully prepared for intimate truths to be revealed. Initially supportive of Mr Burrell, who had done so much to help and comfort the Princess during her troubles, they nonetheless weren't happy about losing to him possessions of Diana's that they wanted at Althorp for a Diana museum – obviously a way to make money, but also an entirely appropriate adornment to his family's seat. It was also the family's way of reclaiming her and making a further point at the Palace's expense.

So, whatever the full extent of the Queen's motives in telling Mr Burrell that it was all right for him to take so many items that belonged to Diana to his own home for safekeeping, it certainly had the effect of undermining Earl Spencer. And in revealing that this conversation had taken place – albeit so late in the day – the Windsors successfully thwarted the Spencers in their hopes of recovering – acquiring might be a better word – what they felt was rightfully theirs.

Let's not forget that the Spencers did not exactly emerge from the trial as a united force. Of her sibling relationships, only that with Lady Sarah McCorquodale was shown to be unsullied. That Earl Spencer had denied Diana a retreat on the Althorp estate spoke of rather less loyalty to her than he was to show at her death. It was always a problem for Diana that her other sister, Lady Jane Fellowes, was the wife of the Queen's private secretary.

Then there was the collapse of relations between Diana and her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, in the four months leading up to her death. In fact this was known about at the time (it was the result of an interview Mrs Shand Kydd had given to Hello! magazine in which she talked extensively about her daughter).

This, however, was all grist to the Palace mill. If the Windsors could point to splits within the enemy camp, so much the better. They knew that survival was the name of the game; sticking together no matter what internal conflicts might arise, and dealing ruthlessly with outsiders (Diana, and before her Sarah Ferguson) when they appeared to threaten, or compromise, the royal ideal. They knew far more about this than anybody, certainly the flaky Spencers.

Then there was the shredding of Diana's letters by the Spencers, one of the acts which so troubled Paul Burrell. The evidence of love affairs that it's believed they might well have contained would, if revealed, have surely bolstered the Palace view that Diana was never an appropriate person to be a member of the Royal Family.

For the Spencers' part, such revelations would have made it harder for them to portray Diana in the guise of a latter-day saint – the innocent victim of a cruel, heartless royal establishment for whom it was stiff upper lip at all costs.

It is understood that the Queen told Mr Burrell in their three-hour meeting that she could not understand the Spencers. She thought they had been damaged by divorce. But there was, of course, damage on both sides – and it was both suffered and inflicted. And that meant that there could be no winners.

The Queen

Three-hour conversation with Paul Burrell, her former footman, which did not come to light until the last moment

The Duke of Edinburgh

Let slip to Charles while driving to the Bali bomb victims memorial service that "Mummy had seen Burrell"

The Prince of Wales

Wavered in his support for Mr Burrell. Alerted his secretary when he learnt of the Queen's meeting with Mr Burrell

Prince William

Refused to believe anything bad of Mr Burrell, until it emerged he held photos of the prince with three models

Earl Spencer

Diana's brother would not let her have a retreat at Althorp; wants her belongings in the family archive

Lady Jane Fellowes

Diana's relationship with her sister was troubled because she is the wife of the Queen's then private secretary

Frances Shand Kydd

Estranged mother of Diana, with whom she had no contact in the four months leading up to her death

Sarah McCorquodale

Diana's elder sister approved a £50,000 payment to Mr Burrell from Diana's estate; later turned against him