Could death of the aunt who predicted Di’s doomed love unite her sons?
WHILE most of Britain had wedding fever ahead of Prince Charles’s marriage to Lady Diana Spencer, one close relation refused to be caught up in the excitement.
Diana’s aunt, Mary Roche, who died last Friday aged 88, had a dreadful sense of foreboding.
She caught her niece looking ‘unhappy’ at a pre‑wedding reception in 1981 at Buckingham Palace, even though others had reported the bride‑to‑be in good form.
Having shared a close bond with Diana while she was growing up, Mary knew her to be ‘ very natural and prone to giggles, a lot of fun’.
She could tell when Diana was being herself. ‘I just remember her being unhappy at that reception,’ she later revealed.
Mary, daughter of the 4th Lord Fermoy, was the elder sister of Diana’s mother, the late Frances Shand Kydd. Their father was a friend of George VI.
Mary later admitted that she had thought her 20‑year‑old niece illmatched with the future King Charles, then 32.
‘They were at very different stages of development,’ she explained. ‘Diana was young and had limited life experience and Prince Charles was already a great thinker. They were, perhaps, different people.’
Diana’s death wasn’t the only tragedy Mary suffered. The first of her three husbands, the Tory MP Sir Anthony Berry, was murdered by the IRA in the Brighton hotel bombing in 1984. Could the feuding Princes William and Harry be reunited for the funeral of their mother’s aunt?