Di wanted to save marriage

2002-11-09 07:53

Paul Majendie

London - Princess Diana was desperate to save her marriage to Prince Charles but it was torpedoed by feuding factions, her former butler said on Saturday.

Paul Burrell, giving his latest tabloid glimpse behind palace walls, said the blighted royal couple never had a chance - everyone from the prime minister to the archbishop of Canterbury interfered in their crumbling marriage.

"Diana never wanted a divorce. It was thrust upon her. She tried so hard for it not to happen," Burrell said in the latest "What The Butler Said" revelations in the Daily Mirror.

"In the end, her marriage was taken away from her. She was only a passenger. Everyone was interfering - (the then) Prime Minister John Major and the Archbishop of Canterbury (George Carey) and other people who thought they knew best.

"They all came to see her with their different agendas. No marriage could survive that level of interference," he said.

Five years after her death in a Paris car crash, the ghost of Princess Diana still haunts the House of Windsor.

Burrell has been front-page news in the royalty-obsessed tabloids for a week after his trial on charges of stealing Diana's belongings dramatically collapsed.

The 44-year-old butler was cleared of stealing more than 300 personal items belonging to Diana when Queen Elizabeth suddenly remembered he had told her he was holding them for safekeeping.

Burrell, who Diana called "My rock," has been locked in a battle of words with Diana's family, saying the Spencers were jealous, hypocritical and foul-mouthed.

After first arguing that dignified silence was the best retort to Burrell's attack, Earl Spencer issued a statement on Friday saying the accusations were "hurtful lies".

Diana's marriage to the British heir to the throne collapsed amid recriminations and admissions of adultery on both sides. But Burrell said Diana had been desperate to avoid a divorce.

"The princess wasn't happy so many others were deciding the fate of her marriage. She felt it was her own," Burrell said.

"I remember when John Major came to see her at Kensington Palace and she said: 'Why do I have to see him? It's for Charles and me to decide'."

Burrell said the couple were caught in a battle between rival palace camps: "They were puppets being governed by their own servants.

"It was impossible for them to be around each other. Diana cried an ocean of tears," he said of the fairytale romance that turned sour.

- Reuters