Prince Charles reportedly quarrelled with his mother, The Queen, about how Princess Diana’s body be returned to the UK in the days after she was killed.
The tragic death 24 years ago today left the country devastated but it has been revealed Prince Charles ‘fought harder for Diana ’ in the days after her death ‘than he did in her lifetime’.
The Queen and Charles are said to have disagreed behind Palace walls about how Diana’s body be brought back to the UK.
Prince Charles wished to travel to Paris on the royal plane to bring the body back to London, but initially the Queen refused the request, a report in The Mirror suggests.
Journalist and friend of Diana, Richard Kay, previously told the Channel 5 documentary, Diana: 7 Days That Shook the Windsors: “This was a surprising and brave move.
“He was an ex-husband, he had no right to be there other than as the father of her sons.
“Charles wanted to take the royal flight to Paris but the Queen wouldn’t allow it.
“Charles fought harder for Diana than he had ever fought for her in her lifetime.”
In the end, he refused to back down and eventually the Queen gave him permission to use the royal plane to bring Diana back to the UK.
He flew to Paris alongside Diana’s sisters Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes before being taken to Pitié-Salpêtrière University Hospital, where the princess died.
Diana’s former butler, Paul Burrell, was already at the hospital with some of her other closest members of staff.
He said: “He was devastated. This was a woman he had loved in his own way.”
Princess Diana and Charles had only been granted their divorce one year when she was killed in a car crash on August 31 1997.
The bitter split has been well documented over the year but it has recently been claimed that Prince Charles ‘absolutely fell apart’ on learning of his ex-wife’s death.
After spending a short time in the hospital Charles and Diana’s sisters emerged as did Diana’s coffin. It was draped with the Royal Standard at the prince’s request
Her coffin was taken to the royal plane, which was waiting at an airport in Paris, and just 16 hours after her death, it touched down at RAF Northolt just outside of London.
She was taken to a private mortuary before being moved to St James’s Palace and then Kensington Palace.
Meanwhile, just 20 minutes later, the plane took off again to take Charles to Aberdeen so he could return to his heartbroken sons, who were still at Balmoral.
The family had been staying with the Queen and Prince Philip at Balmoral on that devastating day, and the job of telling the young boys the devastating news fell to their dad, Prince Charles.
Princess Diana’s tragic death 24 years ago today left the world and the royals in shock, but nobody was hit harder than her beloved son, Princes William and Harry.
Her funeral came six days later on September 6, 1997, at Westminster Abbey.
Charles walked behind the coffin as part of the funeral procession with his sons, Diana’s brother Charles Spencer and Prince Philip.
