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LONDON - Princess Diana thought Prince Charles should not be king and that the crown ought to skip a generation, the inquest into her death has been told.
Diana, killed in a high-speed 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.
"She believed what she said (about her life being in danger) but I thought it was unrealistic," Rae told the court.
The lawyers both felt her fears were not credible but police were officially informed about the suspicions she had voiced.
Rae painted a poignant picture of the princess's life.
Glamorous and much photographed on the world stage, Diana in contrast led a lonely existence in her Kensington Palace apartments in London, heating her own food in a microwave.
"I thought she lived in an odd environment," Rae said. "I thought she was quite lonely."
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."
Rae, part of the legal team that negotiated Diana's divorce settlement, said they felt "outgunned" by the sheer size of Charles' staff and the back-up he could rely on.
"I always felt we were up against a big machine," Rae added.
Dodi's father, Harrods owner Mohamed al-Fayed, alleges that Dodi and Diana were killed by British security services on the orders of Prince Philip.
Fayed believes her killing was ordered 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.
Rae, who kept in safe custody letters written to Diana by the Queen 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."
- REUTERS
