Jan 16, 2008 7:30 am US/Pacific
Bombshell At Di Death Inquest
Di Divorce Lawyer Says Di Wanted William, Not Charles, To Be Next King
LONDON (CBS) ―
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Diana died in a fiery car crash in a Paris tunnel on Aug. 31, 1997. (File)
Clive Brunskill/Allsport/Getty Images
The boy whose mother would have had him be king before his father: Prince William would have made a better one than Prince Charles, in the eyes of William's mother, Princess Diana.
That, reports CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer, was the testimony given by a Diana divorce lawyer at the ongoing inquest into Di's death.
Diana died in a fiery car crash in a Paris tunnel on Aug. 31, 1997.
The inquest heard about a dinner the princess arranged in 1997, at a time when she badly needed allies in her fight with the British royal family. With that in mind, she'd asked to meet a young Tony Blair, who at the time was just months away from becoming Britain's prime minister.
Palmer says one of Diana's divorce lawyers, Maggie Rae, told the inquest Diana wanted the British crown to skip a generation so her eldest son would succeed Queen Elizabeth.
That would deprive Charles of his chance to rule.
It might well have been Diana's anger talking, Palmer observes: She was furious with her cheating ex-husband.
But she also felt bullied by the royal family, especially after her marital problems became public and she began doing high-profile charity work that was more edgy than conventional royal ribbon-cutting.
The royal family, old-fashioned, insular and stuffy, was incapable of changing, the princess is said to have thought; its best chance to modernize lay with young William speedily taking the throne.
Robert Jobson, a royals reporter for The Daily Mail, told CBS News, "The whole concept of Princess Diana's idea that William should come to the throne ahead of Prince Charles was first voiced in (a) panorama interview, in which she sort of made those claims, saying Prince Charles really wasn't fit for the top job."
The handsome young prince is already hugely popular, Palmer points out, while Charles -- awkward and patrician -- isn't. In fact, in a 2006 poll, more than a third of Britons asked agreed that William should leapfrog his father onto the throne.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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