London, Oct 21: In an extraordinary claim, which is likely to re-fuel conspiracy theories about Diana's death, the Princess is sensationally said to have predicted the car crash that killed her.
It is still not clear if Diana's alleged letter is a premonition, paranoia or a late, pulverising PR blow to the British royal family.
In a letter she reportedly wrote 10 months before her death in a car accident in Paris, Diana is said to have claimed her car's brakes would fail and she would suffer serious head injury in order "to make the path clear for Charles to marry".
The hand-written letter, claimed as Diana's true voice from beyond the grave, is published in a new book, A Royal Duty, written by her former butler of 12 years Paul Burrell. The book is due out in bookshops within the next 10 days.
The timing of the revelations has sparked controversy with some commentators deriding it as yet another publicity-seeking strategy to capitalise on Diana's death. Some royal watchers say it is yet another attempt to make Diana speak from beyond the grave. The offices of the British Queen and her son and heir, Charles, refused to comment.
The butler said that he was worried that Britain had still not held a public inquiry into Diana's death, six years after she tragically passed away.
But cynics said that the remarkable revelations appeared to be well-timed with a huge publicity upswing for Charles' mistress and long-time lover, Camilla Parker-Bowles. The royal mistress is noticeably seen to enjoy a high media and public profile at present.
Yet another of Diana's former aides, her high-profile secretary, has already publicly warned Britain that Parker-Bowles is preparing to "get on to the British throne... as Queen Camilla or whatever".
Diana's butler claimed that the Princess wrote the letter to him as he watched in the drawing room of her London home, Kensington Palace. She then signed and sealed it in Burrell's presence, he claimed, and told him to keep the letter as insurance for the future "just in case". On Monday afternoon, in yet another extraordinary twist to the tale, editor of Britain's starchy Majesty magazine, Ingrid Seward, pronounced the letter "completely genuine". Seward claimed the Princess had said almost exactly the same things to her just eight weeks before her death alongside Dodi Fayed in August 1997.
Diana's alleged letter names the person she believes was plotting the car "accident", but the name has not been published yet for legal reasons.
In the letter, written exactly two months after her historic divorce from the heir to the British throne, Diana claimed: "This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous."
Underlining the word "most" for extra emphasis, the Princess is said to have told her butler that her burgeoning public support put her "in the way" of Charles' moving on.
The butler, once described by Diana as "my rock", says that "Rightly or wrongly she felt the stronger she became, the more she was regarded as a modernising nuisance... She certainly felt that 'the system' didn't appreciate her work and that for as long as she was on the scene Prince Charles could never properly move on."