Here at TIME Daily, we have an interesting window on our readers' tastes -- two, actually. On one hand, we get frequent feedback from you about what you say you like. On the other, we have the technology to see which stories you really did click on -- and which ones managed to sustain your interest over time. As the following list shows, TIME Daily readers are not impervious to the lure of a sensational story, high- or lowbrow. That said, they're more likely to make return visits to a story that provides lasting insight into our culture and the universe we live in.

And then there are stories that seem to transcend our day-to-day lives altogether, as if they came from a fairy-tale world of kings, castles and, yes, princesses. It was such a story that captured your attention above all, combining as it did romance, human frailty and the mythic invincibility of royalty in a tragedy that captivated even non-Britons worldwide. Also from a level slightly above human came a gripping tale about a gentle but terminally deluded cult that left its web page as a cryptic legacy.

But neither Cassandras nor formal cultural achievements were very compelling, apparently -- our audience yawned at global warming and clicked on a story about an ill-starred au pair a dozen times more than on a story about the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Pathfinder's landing on Mars grabbed you, but otherwise your viewing patterns lead us to wonder: Is it the Net's digital bloodlessness that attracts people to the bloodiest tales?

We present the Online Top 10, the stories our readers clicked on the most over the past year. Think of it as a psychological profile of, if not the typical American, at least the typical Internet-wired TIME Daily surfer -- you.

--Mac McKean