Diana 'against' Charles becoming king

Princess Diana thought Prince Charles should not become king of England and that the crown ought to skip a generation, one of…

Princess Diana thought Prince Charles should not become king of England and that the crown ought to skip a generation, one of her lawyers told the inquest into her death today.

The princess, killed in a Paris car crash with her lover Dodi al-Fayed in August 1997, also repeatedly told lawyers Maggie Rae and Sandra Davis that she feared for her life, the inquest heard.

"She believed what she said [about her life being in danger], but I thought it was unrealistic," Ms Rae told the court.

The lawyers both felt her fears were not credible, but police were informed about the suspicions she had voiced.

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Ms Rae said Diana wanted her son, William, and not Charles to take over as the next head of the House of Windsor. That, in Diana's view was "the happiest solution" for the future of the monarchy, she said.

Ms Rae depicted Diana living a lonely, private existence in her Kensington Palace apartments in London, heating her own food in a microwave. "I thought she lived in an odd environment," Ms Rae said. "I thought she was quite lonely."

Dodi's father, Mohamed al-Fayed, alleges that his son and Diana were killed by British security services because the royal family did not want the mother of the future king having a child with his son.

He alleges that Diana's body was embalmed to cover up evidence she was expecting a baby.

Ms Rae, who kept letters written to Diana by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, did not support that conspiracy theory.

"All of those letters seemed to me to be more in sorrow than in anger and really some of them were quite poignant," she told the court, adding that the tone of the letters "certainly was not hostile".