Prince Charles Was Once Questioned In Private Over A Desperate Note Diana Wrote

The man tasked with conducting the interview was John Stevens — now known as Lord Stevens — who led Scotland Yard at the time. It took place on December 6, 2005, not long after Charles had married Camilla Parker-Bowles — now Queen Consort. And it was only years later, in August 2021, that Stevens detailed the whole incident to the media.

Stevens told the Daily Mail newspaper, “The interview was unique. Of course, it was a unique situation. But we approached it as we would any other witness.” There are no prizes for guessing what the interview was in reference to. Scotland Yard was investigating a new theory about the tragic death of Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi al-Fayed.

You'll remember that news of the car crash that killed Diana in 1997 reverberated all around the world. She was one of the most famous and photographed women on the planet, after all, and her death was deeply shocking. So it was important that a full investigation took place. Scotland Yard assembled a team for that purpose and dubbed the investigation “Operation Paget.” But they probably didn't know it would lead them to an interview with the future king.

Yet one person in particular had a deep interest in Operation Paget. This was Mohamed al-Fayed, the father of Dodi. According to Stevens, Mohamed was kept constantly updated on the team’s findings. But he was also a wild card. He was constantly telling the media he believed his son and the princess weren’t victims of an accident. As Mohamed saw it, they’d been murdered.

Stevens still clearly remembers the day he walked into St. James Palace to interview then-Prince Charles. The royal staff had taken steps to ensure nobody — even other members of Operation Paget — knew about it. Only four people were in on the secret. These were Charles himself, plus Stevens and his right-hand man, DCS Dave Douglas, and Charles’ private secretary, Sir Michael Peat.

The day of December 6, 2005, was a busy one for Charles. That evening he had a Prince’s Regeneration Trust reception to attend. But the interview with the detectives was deliberately left out of the Court Circular, the document that keeps staff and the media informed of all royal activities. They didn't want the event leaking to the press, after all.

When the two detectives arrived at the heavily guarded palace, they were greeted by Michael Peat and quietly led through the main parts of the massive building. One room, they remembered to the Daily Mail, was laid out for a staff Christmas dinner. There were decorations and party hats all around. But what the detectives had to discuss was not merry at all.

The detectives waited in Charles’ drawing room for him to enter. When he did, he said, “It’s nice to see you again, Lord Stevens. How is the inquiry going? What is it you want us to do today?” And then Stevens presented him with a note that called back to a time of scandal — and much pain.

The note had been written in 1996, at a point when evidently Diana thoroughly believed Charles was having an affair — but not an affair with Camilla. The object of Diana’s rage, in fact, was a pretty young woman named Tiggy Legge-Bourke. She was the nanny Charles had hired to look after the young princes William and Harry.

Diana was seemingly jealous of Tiggy from the start — but not because of her relationship with Charles. Instead, it was actually because William and Harry had taken to her right away. As Diana and Charles went through their messy divorce, Tiggy became a figure of support for the young boys. Diana apparently hated that another woman was becoming a mother figure for her sons.

Tiggy — real name Alexandra — was exactly the sort of nanny the royal family would seek out: she was young, jolly, and had aristocratic connections. Her mother had been a lady-in-waiting to Princess Anne, while her brother had been a page to the Queen. Plus, she’d gone to the very same finishing school that Diana herself had once attended.

In other words, Tiggy was in many ways just like Diana — but having an easier time. She got to take the young princes out and serve as a “fun parent” type, while Diana was mired in misery. At one point, Tiggy was reportedly heard referring to Harry and William as “my babies,” which surely made things even worse.

It seemed that Diana also despised that Tiggy smoked around the children and allowed them to go out hunting. And she supposedly grew gradually more and more obsessed with this woman who seemed to have such a hold on her family. According to her one-time equerry Patrick Jephson, Diana eventually began sending letters to Charles about the Tiggy situation.

Jephson wrote in his 2000 book, Shadows of a Princess, “On her instructions, I drafted letters from the Princess to her husband pointedly asking for clarification of Tiggy’s duties and asking to be involved in decisions concerning her contact with the boys. I do not think she ever got an entirely satisfactory answer, but I doubt if one was possible.”

But there were even bigger problems. Jephson wrote that in addition to Diana coming to terms with “the reality of her reduced influence over her children’s activities,” she was starting to become paranoid about Tiggy. He went on, “The Princess developed an increasingly lurid fantasy picture of Tiggy’s private life. No man in [Charles’] entourage was safe from her, including the Prince himself.”

Diana grew convinced that Tiggy had not only slept with Charles but that she had also become pregnant and had an abortion. Diana then seemingly decided to confront Tiggy about it at a staff Christmas party. According to those who were there, Diana approached Tiggy and told her, “Sorry about the baby,” causing Tiggy to flee in tears.

Tiggy got lawyers involved in an attempt to stop Diana from spreading the rumor. The Queen’s private secretary wrote a letter to Diana reading, “Your allegations concerning Tiggy Legge-Bourke are completely unfounded. Her relationship with the Prince of Wales has never been anything but a professional one.” This was according to Diana's former butler, Paul Burrell, in his book A Royal Duty.

The letter went on, making things absolutely clear to Diana, “On the date of the supposed abortion, she was at Highgrove with William and Harry. It is in your own best interests that you withdraw these allegations. You have got this whole thing dreadfully wrong.” The incident also apparently caused Patrick Jephson to hand in his resignation.

It was around the time of this horrible scandal that Diana wrote the note that later caught Scotland Yard's attention. It was a deeply shocking message. It began, “I am sitting here at my desk today in October, longing for someone to hug me and encourage me to keep strong and hold my head high. This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous — my husband is planning an accident in my car.”

Diana’s note went on, “Brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry Tiggy. Camilla is nothing but a decoy so we are being used by the man in every sense of the word.” It seemed such was Diana’s fixation on Tiggy that she had even moved Camilla to the side.

The crazy thing is that Charles had actually been having an affair with Camilla, and Diana knew it full well. In 1995, of course, she gave a bombshell interview with BBC reporter Martin Bashir that was broadcast to the whole nation. In it, she said, “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”

Diana had written directly to Charles in the note as well. Another portion of it read, “I have been battered, bruised and abused mentally by a system for 15 years now, but I feel no resentment... I am strong inside and maybe that is a problem for my enemies. Thank you Charles for putting me through such hell and for giving me the opportunity to learn from the cruel things you have done to me.”

After Diana died in a way that was similar to the way she’d predicted, obviously her note became of huge interest. This was what the Scotland Yard detectives were visiting Charles to inquire about. It wasn’t just a polite few questions, but an interrogation to find out one thing: Why did Princess Diana think her husband wanted to kill her and marry the nanny?

The media had gotten hold of the note before detectives had, thanks to Paul Burrell. He was the one the letter had actually been written to, and he had released the contents to the press in October 2003. Newspapers then analyzed it and concluded it was most likely genuine. This naturally created a lot of media interest in Burrell and his knowledge of Diana.

And perhaps not-so-coincidentally, Burrell published his book A Royal Duty that same year. In it, he wrote about Diana’s state of mind around the time that she wrote the letter. According to him, the princess “felt there was a concerted attempt by what she referred to as the anti-Diana brigade to undermine her in the public’s eyes.”

Many years later, then, Lord Stevens revealed to the Daily Mail everything that happened at the palace once the note was read out to Charles. Stevens asked him, “Why do you think the princess wrote this note, sir?” The prince then answered, “I did not know anything about [the note] until it was published in the media.”

Charles clarified to the detectives that he had never discussed the note with Diana or even knew it existed. He didn’t know why his ex-wife would have written such a thing and was really as much in the dark as the detectives themselves were. Stevens finished up the interview with the customary, “Is there anything else you would like to tell me, sir?” Charles answered no.

Stevens left certain that Charles had nothing to do with Diana’s death whatsoever. He told the Mail, “At the end of the day, he was incredibly cooperative because he had nothing to hide.” An interview transcript was sent to Charles, who signed it and sent it back. Scotland Yard no longer has it, though... and this also created a conspiracy theory.

An anonymous source told the Daily Mail regarding the document, “It’s too hot to handle. What commissioner would feel comfortable about being the custodian of that statement?” So it’s currently in the National Archives in London, kept sealed from the public until 2038. But what of the original, explosive note? Well, no one knows where that ended up.

Operation Paget came to an end in December 2006, and Stevens presented his team’s findings to the media. He declared to gathered reporters, “Our conclusion is that, on the evidence available at this time, there was no conspiracy to murder any of the occupants of the car. This was a tragic accident.”

Stevens said, “I very much hope that all the work we have done and the publication of this report will help to bring some closure.” He elaborated, though, on one of the major factors that contributed to the deaths of Diana, Dodi, and their driver. He informed the world, “Had they been wearing seatbelts, it may well be that they might not have died.”

That concluded the inquiry into Diana’s death... But it didn't stop the public from obsessing over Diana's life. In fact, there was another investigation to come and this one turned into a huge scandal. But by the end of it, the public had an answer to another important question. That is, “Why did Diana believe Tiggy Legge-Bourke had an affair with Charles?”

It all went back to Diana’s notorious 1995 TV interview, the one where she’d gotten candid about Charles and Camilla. Martin Bashir had become famous the world over for conducting the interview and getting Diana to speak out against the royal family. But as it turned out, he had dramatically lied in order to get her to agree to it.

Bashir had faked documents, it transpired. He’d shown Diana a false bank statement that made it look as though Patrick Jephson and others had been paid to spy on her. Yet when it came to Diana's feelings about Tiggy Legge-Bourke, something even more dramatic happened. It seemed that Diana had been manipulated into believing lies about her.

It turned out that, even though Diana had disliked Tiggy for other reasons, some of her hatred for the other woman could have been a result of Bashir’s lies. The journalist had not only forged bank statements, but he’d also faked a “receipt” implying that Tiggy had indeed gotten pregnant and had the abortion. In reality, though, this was not true.

Prince William made a public statement when the lies were revealed. He said, “The interview was a major contribution to making my parents’ relationship worse and has since hurt countless others. It brings indescribable sadness to know that the BBC’s failures contributed significantly to her fear, paranoia, and isolation that I remember from those final years with her.”

Stevens spoke at length about Bashir’s manipulations in his interview with the Mail. He said, “If there’d been an allegation then that Bashir had produced allegedly fake documents to Princess Diana, which is a criminal offense, we’d have investigated it. My goodness me, we would have done… It would have been part and parcel of the inquiry to get to the bottom of it.”

The detective went on, “We just thought that [Bashir’s] interview with [Diana] was a straightforward arrangement giving her side of the marriage to Prince Charles. It may well be that Bashir stumbled across her at a vulnerable time in her life or he may have exacerbated her mental state or he may have generated that paranoia.” As for Tiggy, she continues to be a part of William and Harry’s lives to this day.

She’s actually one of the godparents to Archie, Harry’s firstborn child. If Diana had lived, maybe she would have been angry about this — or maybe she’d have simply put the past behind her. One thing’s for sure, though, Diana was utterly devoted to her children, but there are niggling claims that she treated them very differently. Caused by Tiggy’s interference or not, it seems the people’s princess might have purposely given more outward affection to one brother in particular.

Good mothers do, of course, never have favorites. But in the decades since her death lots of information has surfaced about the relationships that Diana had with her sons. And it seems that while she may have treated them with equal love, this was expressed quite differently. People who knew her, you see, have claimed that she was in fact more demonstrative towards Harry.

Diana sadly passed away in 1997, leaving both her sons bereft. Harry has subsequently talked a lot to the media about the mental health issues he has faced as a result of that trauma. And before she died, Diana had spoken quite openly to individuals about how she raised her sons in slightly different ways. What’s more, she also revealed her precise reasoning for doing so.

Fast-forward 21 years and William and Harry are now adults – and parents themselves to boot. William is married to Kate Middleton, with whom he has three children. And Harry is the proud husband of Meghan Markle, who share one child together so far. So just like their mother before them, both men balance their parenting responsibilities with their royal duties.

Both princes have talked in detail about what it was like having Diana as a mother. For example, in 2017 they helped create a documentary called Diana Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy. It granted an in-depth look into William and Harry’s childhood as royals, as well as their memories of their beloved mom.

When Harry opened up to the camera crew, then, the resulting footage was emotional. “This is the first time that the two of us have ever spoken about her as a mother. She was our mum. She still is our mum,” he said. “And, of course, as a son I would say this: she was the best mum in the world. She smothered us with love, that’s for sure.”

William and Harry recalled how their mother had strived to teach them to be normal children rather than little princes. “She was very informal and really enjoyed the laughter and the fun,” William explained. “She understood that there was a real life outside of palace walls.” Meanwhile, Harry affectionately admitted that his mother “was one of the naughtiest parents.”

Harry proceeded to reveal more about this side of Diana to viewers. “My mother cherished those moments of privacy and being able to be that mother rather than the Princess of Wales,” he continued. “She made the decision that – no matter what – despite all the difficulties of growing up in that limelight and on that stage, she was going to ensure that both of us had as normal a life as possible.”

And Diana clearly achieved her aim of giving her sons a normal life filled with precious memories. “If that means taking us for a burger every now and then or sneaking us into the cinema, or driving through the country lanes with the roof down in her old-school BMW to listen to Enya, I think it was... part of her being a mum,” Harry remembered fondly.

Indeed, Diana’s efforts to raise her sons “normally” have been well documented. It was Diana who chose the school they would attend, for instance. And she would drive them there herself whenever possible. In addition, when it was time to have some fun, Diana took her children to theme parks. Just like all the other visitors, nevertheless, she ensured her boys waited patiently in line for each attraction. No preferential treatment on her watch, seemingly.

In the documentary, the princes spoke openly about the last conversation that they had had with their mother before her untimely death in 1997. She had spoken to them via phone from Paris. “If I’d known now obviously what was going to happen, I wouldn’t have been so blasé about it and everything else,” William explained. “But that phone call sticks in my mind quite heavily.”

William was not alone in that sentiment. Harry also expressed deep regret over the casual nature of what was to be his last conversation with his mother. “Looking back on it now, it’s incredibly hard. I have to sort of deal with that for the rest my life,” he admitted. “Not knowing that was the last time I was going to speak with my mum, and how differently that conversation would have panned out if I had even the slightest inkling that her life was going to be taken that night.”

Harry has often talked openly about the emotional problems that he suffered in the wake of Diana’s death. For example, in 2017 he gave a frank interview to The Daily Telegraph about the years of “total chaos” he’d endured. Although his brother William tried to help him, Harry said that for a while he simply “shut down all his emotions.”

And Harry had been very young when Diana died – indeed, he hadn’t yet even reached his teenage years. “I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12, and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years, has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but my work as well,” he stated.

Harry also discussed his coping mechanisms and explained that initially he dealt with it all by “sticking [his] head in the sand, refusing to ever think about [his] mum. He said, “From an emotional side, I was like, ‘Right, don’t ever let your emotions be part of anything.’ So I was a typical 20-, 25-, 28-year-old running around going, ‘Life is great’ or ‘Life is fine.’ And that was exactly it.”

Harry’s time as a royal wild child didn’t go unnoticed by the media, of course. Indeed, for a long time he was labeled “the party prince.” As a young man he smoked weed, causing his father, Charles, to make Harry go to a rehab facility for a day. A spokesperson for St. James’ Palace claimed in 2002 that “it is not that he had or has a serious problem, but he did take the drug.”

Then there was the infamous costume-party incident. Back in 2005 Harry shocked the nation when he chose to don a Nazi uniform at an informal social gathering. Needless to say, the response from the media and the public was one of outrage. Harry subsequently made a statement of apology, though, and he said, “I am very sorry if I caused any offense or embarrassment to anyone.”

Harry also got himself into significant trouble in 2012 when he decided to engage in a spot of strip billiards. Despite the game unfolding in the privacy of the prince’s hotel room, though, unfortunately one of the guests chose to capture these antics on camera. And even worse for Harry, the images left nothing to the imagination. Needless to say, they were leaked to the media. The prince must have had to do some very awkward explaining to his grandma regarding his Las Vegas trip.

Eventually, however, the party prince realized that hedonism wasn’t helping – and that he could no longer outrun the pain he’d tried to suppress. “I started to have a few conversations and, actually, all of a sudden, all of this grief that I have never processed started to come to the forefront,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “And I was like, there is actually a lot of stuff here that I need to deal with.”

In addition, Harry confessed that when he came “very close to total breakdown,” it was his big brother who stepped in to support him. According to Harry, William had told him, “Look, you really need to deal with this. It is not normal to think that nothing has affected you.” And of course, the older prince was absolutely correct.

Harry subsequently sought therapy and also worked out his anger through sport. “During those years, I took up boxing, because everyone was saying boxing is good for you, and it’s a really good way of letting out aggression,” he explained. “And that really saved me, because I was on the verge of punching someone. So being able to punch someone who had pads was certainly easier.”

Another traumatic incident that had a lasting effect on Harry was the memory of his mother’s funeral. Yes, Diana was given a massive public memorial service. And as a result, her two young sons were forced to walk with their father, uncle and grandfather behind her coffin, before vast crowds of onlookers.

Harry later spoke of his anger at being exposed to such an ordeal. “My mother had just died, and I had to walk a long way behind her coffin, surrounded by thousands of people watching me while millions more did on television,” he told Newsweek in 2017. “I don’t think any child should be asked to do that, under any circumstances. I don’t think it would happen today.”

Nonetheless, in that same interview Harry talked positively about his improving mental health. “I didn’t want to be in the position I was in. But I eventually pulled my head out of the sand, started listening to people and decided to use my role for good,” he said. “I am now fired up and energized and love charity stuff, meeting people and making them laugh.”

Knowing about Harry’s difficult past also grants plenty of insight into the human he is today. But there’s another, previously unknown element to his childhood. Because while raising her two boys, Diana made sure she treated Harry differently to how she treated William. And there was a very good reason for that distinction.

Richard Kay, a journalist to whom Diana often spoke, wrote a piece about the princess and her parenting practices for the Daily Mail in 2018. He claimed that Diana gave Harry a lot of extra focus in order to counteract the preferential treatment bestowed upon William. Apparently, other members of the family lavished attention on the heir to the throne.

Kay went into some detail about this matter. “As compensation, Diana poured more love and attention into Harry,” he claimed. “‘I have to,’ she would often tell me. ‘Charles and I worked so hard to ensure both boys receive equal amounts of our time and love, but others in the family seem to concentrate on William.’”

However, Diana objected to the other royals putting William first. “Harry had complained that whenever he and William visited their great-grandmother at Clarence House, it was always William she made a fuss over and who sat next to her,” Kay wrote. Harry had thought that it was unfair and told his mother so.

“Diana took it up with the Queen Mother explaining, as delicately as possible, that she would prefer it if she didn’t show favoritism to William,” Kay claimed. “For her part, the Queen Mother argued that as William was heir to the throne, he should be groomed as such.” And the Duke of Cambridge was indeed told from a young age that he would be king one day.

Moreover, royal biographers have also noted that the duke was frequently treated as the golden boy. “William often received the lion’s share of attention from some senior members of the family and some of the staff,” stated writer and royal correspondent Marcia Moody. She penned this opinion in her 2014 book entitled Harry: A Biography.

Moody, too, had heard that the brothers were treated differently. “The Queen Mother used to put a seat next to her and call for William to sit on it, and he also used to go to Clarence House, without Harry, to see her.” Furthermore, the young Harry had also once reportedly told William, “You’ll be king, I won’t; so I can do what I want!”

A one-time protection officer of William and Harry, Ken Wharfe, was also interviewed for the biography. And he had some surprising comments about the boys’ first nanny. According to him, she “favored William far more than Harry, which didn’t appeal to Diana.”

Wharfe alleged that when the boys went out with this nanny, “Harry was very small, and he would be ignored almost to the point where it didn’t really matter what happened to him.” Moreover, despite the young Harry often becoming very carsick, Wharfe claimed, the nanny would just say, “He’s alright, he’s fine.”

Diana consequently felt compelled to intervene on the subject. After she made her feelings clear to the family, Kay wrote in his article, “things did change a little.” She was evidently determined to stand up for her younger son and ensure his feelings didn’t get hurt. “More than anything, Diana didn’t want Harry to have a complex about his position in the family,” Kay added.

The younger brother of a person due to inherit usually occupies a curious position in royal families. For a long time, in fact, pairs of sons born to princesses were nicknamed “the heir and the spare.” It stems back to the days when being royalty was a very precarious position. That’s right: if the heir was killed, there was always another prince to fall back on.

Of course, there’s less chance now that William will be killed on a battlefield – and Harry has mixed feelings about kinghood, anyway. “Is there any one of the royal family who wants to be king or queen?” he ruminated when interviewed by Newsweek in 2017. “I don’t think so, but we will carry out our duties at the right time.”

William has perhaps been mindful about his childhood when it comes to raising his own kids, especially his oldest son. Prince George is very likely to be crowned king one day, but William and Kate are not only not grooming him for the monarchy, but reportedly they also haven’t even told him about his future job yet.

In fact, William seems determined to continue his mother’s legacy. He plans to raise his own offspring in the way she raised himself and his brother. “There’ll be a time and a place to bring George up and understand how he fits in the world,” he told the BBC in 2016. “But right now it’s just a case of keeping a secure, stable environment around him and showing as much love as I can as a father.”

And Harry, after all, is a father now, too. In May 2019 he and Meghan welcomed into the world their first child – a baby boy named Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor. Thus, Archie has a surname but no title. People have speculated that Harry and Meghan have opted not to hand him one so he can have a more normal existence – just as Diana had wanted for her two boys.

It remains to be seen whether Harry and Meghan will ever give Archie a younger sibling, mind you. Harry has implied in the past, though, that he wouldn’t mind having more than one child. And if that happens, it’s pretty likely that Harry will raise them the way his mother nurtured him and William – not allowing one adolescent to feel more important than the other.