The hearings scheduled for the inquest on Princess Diana’s death are expected to reveal details on her life that have not been known by now. And that it exactly what happened when her former butler, Paul Burrell, came to testify to the High Court. Burrell, who has been her butler for a decade, until her tragic death in 1997, described her plans to marry Dr. Hasnat Khan, whom she had had a secret relationship with for two years. Sadly for her, they split up in the summer of 2007, and according to her butler, Princess Diana was heartbroken when she engaged in the “30-day relationship” with Dodi Al Fayed, how Burrell described it.

However, it is not the first time the former butler describes Diana and Dodi’s relationship as a friendship one, as he previously denied the claims of Dodi’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, that Diana was expecting a child and was going to announce her engagement with Dodi right before the accident. “The princess had just finished a long-term relationship with someone she cared deeply about […] when she met someone who was very kind and attentive and generous,” the butler said. Furthermore, he quoted Diana as saying she wanted to get married again “like I want a bad rash”, which was also confirmed by Annabel Goldsmith, a friend of Diana’s.

The marriage she was very serious about though, and that she wanted very much, as Burrell said, was that with Dr. Khan. The former butler told the Court he was personally asked by Princess Diana to try and arrange a private marriage between her and Mr. Hasnat Khan, and that he had a discussion with his wife’s priest about the possibility for a Christian woman and a Muslim man to marry. Khan, who recently divorced his wife of 3 years, did not mention anything about marriage, but he admitted they considered moving to Pakistan, an offer that Diana later turned down.

The conspiracy theory that is the subject of an ongoing investigation lead to the reveal in 2003 of a note Diana wrote in 1995, when she expressed her fears of being killed: “This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous. My husband is planning ‘an accident’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry…” The woman Diana was referring to was not Camilla Parker Bowles, but her son’s nanny. Mohamed Al Fayed believes the most in this theory, claiming that it was Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II that ordered for his son and Princess Diana to be killed in Paris on August 31, 1997.