Queen Elizabeth II had been "concerned" about Princess Diana's relationship with Dodi Fayed in 1997, former royal butler Paul Burrell told the London inquest into their deaths on Wednesday. Burrell said the monarch told him Diana had been "over-excited" about Fayed during a private meeting at Buckingham Palace a few weeks after the couple died in a Paris car crash in August 1997.
This was the same meeting when Burrell, 49, says the queen warned him about unspecified "powerful" forces operating in Britain. Fayed's father, Mohamed Al Fayed, claims that the couple, who died along with chauffeur Henri Paul after leaving the Ritz Hotel in Paris, were killed in an establishment plot because they were about to announce their engagement.
Diana and Britain's heir to the throne Prince Charles were divorced in 1996. "Her majesty was concerned that the princess was rather over-excited at the moment," Burrell told the High Court. Asked by Ian Croxford, lawyer for the Ritz, if the queen was concerned about the couple getting married, Burrell said the queen had not mentioned that, but had referred to "a relationship".
Earlier, the former butler agreed with Al Fayed's lawyer Michael Mansfield that the establishment had "concerns" in 1997 about Diana's links to the Fayed family and her work campaigning against landmines. Burrell, who was giving evidence to the inquest for the third day, has delayed his flight back to the United States, where he now lives most of the time, after his spell in the witness box overran.