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Dodi al Fayed, the rakish Egyptian-born heir to the billion-dollar Harrods fortune, seemed an unlikely consort for Britain’s fairy princess. An unreconstructed playboy, his taste in books seemed to run mainly to a little black one that once contained names such as Brooke Shields and Tawny Kitaen. His past was littered with women he had romanced and rejected, as well as with creditors still hoping to be paid for meals consumed and lodging used long ago. And then there was that vexing question of his family’s nationality. Romance novelist Dame Barbara Cartland, Diana’s stepgrandmother, spoke for xenophobic Britons everywhere when she sniffed, “My only concern is that this Dodi is a foreigner.” A writer for London’s Daily Mail was cruder, warning Diana that by marrying into the clan of Al Fayeds she would be “trading in one prison, the life-style of the royal family,” for something worse, “an Arab one.”

But the dashing Dodi was royalty of a different sort. He was the only son of Mohamed al Fayed and his late first wife Samira Khashoggi, sister of Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. The elder Al Fayed is a self-made billionaire whose wealth is greater than the Queen’s. His sprawling empire contains some highly prized European properties. In addition to London’s fashionable Harrods department store, he owns the Ritz Hotel of Paris, the British humor magazine Punch, the Fulham soccer club and a $32 million, 190-ft. yacht. The senior Al Fayed also holds a long-term lease on the Paris villa that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor lived in after the duke abdicated the British throne to marry a commoner. Al Fayed has spent $40 million restoring the villa and its contents, although he announced that Sotheby’s auction house will be selling 40,000 items from it. Al Fayed’s brother owns the elite British clothier Turnbull and Asser.

The younger Al Fayed, who split his early years between Alexandria and the French Riviera, was reared in a rarefied world of international wealth. He attended Switzerland’s tony Le Rosey school and Britain’s Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. Dodi moved easily among his family’s 11 homes, in locations as far-flung as Manhattan, St.-Tropez and Gstaad. He had use of family helicopters and his father’s yacht. In recent years he was one of the jet set’s most renowned hosts, throwing parties in Beverly Hills populated by such celebrities as Tony Curtis, Farrah Fawcett and Robert Downey Jr. Guests say his hospitality ran to the grandiose, including a recent gala in a private home that featured a bowling alley, a band and movie showings in a screening room. It was reported that he owned five Ferraris.

Dodi made his professional mark as a Hollywood producer. The films he helped finance included the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire, The World According to Garp and Hook. But for all his notoriety in the movie business, Dodi was unable to alter the fact that he would always be best known, in the lingo of Fleet Street, as “the playboy” from “the House of Harrods.” His only marriage, to former model Suzanne Gregard, ended after eight months in 1987. In the past decade he had been linked romantically, if usually briefly, to a lengthy list of beautiful and often famous women. A recent flame, model Kelly Fisher, added to the Dodi lore by holding a press conference in Los Angeles this summer to show off a sapphire ring that she said was an engagement ring and to charge that she had been jilted in favor of Diana. Fisher, who also used the press conference to announce a $440,000 lawsuit for breach of contract and fraud, contended that while Dodi was wooing Diana on his father’s yacht in the Mediterranean, he had Fisher hidden away nearby and was begging her to have his child.

The younger Al Fayed was plagued by a reputation for writing bad checks and being casual about paying off debts. He leased a series of mansions in Beverly Hills for rents ranging from $20,000 to $35,000 a month and was sued repeatedly for moving out without paying. He blamed some of the problems on a former merchant seaman named Mohamed Sead, who he said had been impersonating him. The seaman reportedly booked 23 rooms at the Fontainebleau Hilton in Miami in Al Fayed’s name and offered film roles to Jodie Foster and Brooke Shields. Dodi said in a court affidavit that “by impersonating me, Sead has caused immeasurable damage to my good name, my reputation [and] my family.” But Dodi’s spokesman acknowledged before his death that some of the debts and bounced checks were in fact his. Accounts of his own wealth varied, with one report saying he received $100,000 a month from his father.

Despite the elder Al Fayed’s wealth, prestigious holdings and good works, he has never managed to be accepted into British society. He has lived in England for 20 years, and the four children of his second marriage are all British citizens. He was a friend of Diana’s father, the late Lord Spencer, and employs her stepmother Raine, Countess de Chambrun, as a director of Harrods International, the store’s duty-free arm. Al Fayed sponsors the Royal Windsor Horse Show, at which he shares the Queen’s box. Still, the British government has for years denied his requests for citizenship without explanation. Al Fayed also deeply resents a 1990 government report criticizing the financing of his takeover of Harrods. The cold shoulder of his adopted home reflects, he says, contempt for Britain’s fast-growing immigrant population. And ingratitude as well. Al Fayed has invested almost $500 million in Harrods since he bought it in 1984, and he has given generously to British charities. “You don’t want to work hard for 40 years and have a bunch of crooks and bastards and gun runners insult you,” he recently told the New York Times. “They say, ‘You own Harrods, you bloody Egyptian coming from Africa. How can you dare buy Harrods?'” Al Fayed got a measure of revenge against the Conservative Party, which he particularly blames for his rejection, when he helped bring down John Major’s government by disclosing that Tory Members of Parliament took money from him in paper bags or accepted his hospitality at the Ritz Hotel in Paris in exchange for political influence. Al Fayed was happy to take some credit for the defeat of the Conservatives after 18 years in office. “I was proud,” he told the Times, “because I showed the masses and I showed the voters that they were ruled by a bunch of crooks, and my message got through.”

There have been suggestions in the London press that Al Fayed encouraged his son to court Diana as a way to get back–or, as the Independent put it, “cock a snook”–at the British Establishment. Nothing would have made him happier, some royal watchers contend, than for his son to become stepfather to the future King of England. Dodi and Diana’s liaison reportedly began when the elder Al Fayed invited the princess and her two sons to vacation with his family at his villa in St.-Tropez. Adnan Khashoggi told a Saudi newspaper last month, “We welcome Diana into our family.” The relationship between Dodi and Di led to an “inflated sense of pride” for England’s Middle Eastern and Asian communities, contributor Fuad Nahdi wrote in the Independent. “You might hate and abuse us on the high streets and in alleyways, but our boys are cruising off with your biggest catches on the high seas.”

Some of Diana’s friends, however, believed that Al Fayeds’ wealth could do more for the princess than she could do for them. With Al Fayeds’ seemingly endless supply of mansions, boats, helicopters and bodyguards, Dodi had the material resources to provide her with the stability and privacy that her life was so lacking in. The elder Al Fayed’s decision to auction off the contents of the Windsor villa set off speculation that he was cleaning it out so that Dodi and Di could marry and move in. There would have been rich symbolism in the two of them living together in the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s former home, proving to a new generation that there can be life, and love, after royalty. Alas, it was not to be.

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