Princess Diana did not want Charles to be king

London: Princess Diana thought her husband should not be king and that the crown ought to skip a generation, the inquest into her death was told.

Diana, killed in a high-speed Paris car crash with her lover Dodi al-Fayed in August 1997, also repeatedly told lawyers Maggie Rae and Sandra Davis that she feared for her life.

''She believed what she said (about her life being in danger) but I thought it was unrealistic,'' Rae told the court on Tuesday.

The lawyers both felt her fears were not credible but police were officially informed about the suspicions she had voiced.

Rae painted a poignant picture of the princess's life.

Glamorous and much photographed on the world stage, Diana in contrast led a lonely existence in her Kensington Palace apartments in London, heating her own food in a microwave.

''I thought she lived in an odd environment,'' Rae said. ''I thought she was quite lonely.''

Rae said Diana wanted her son William and not her husband Charles to take over as the next head of the House of Windsor.

That, in Diana's view, was ''the happiest solution for the future of the monarchy.''

Rae, part of the legal team that negotiated Diana's divorce settlement from the heir to the throne, said they felt ''outgunned'' by the sheer size of Charles' staff and the back-up he could rely on.

''I always felt we were up against a big machine,'' Rae added. In a long day of witness testimony in London's Royal Courts of Justice, Diana's former butler Paul Burrell also returned to the stand where he was given a gruelling cross-examination.

Butler Cross-Examined

He was repeatedly asked by lawyer Michael Mansfield, representing Dodi's father, Mohamed al-Fayed, exactly how much he knew about the secrets he was supposed to have held for Diana.

''If I put it politely, you are all over the place,'' Mansfield told Burrell after running through conflicting evidence he gave to the court.

Burrell, bleary-eyed after just two hours' sleep, returned to court after making a 400-mile round trip to his house in northern England to retrieve so-called ''secret'' documents requested by the coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker.

But, after reviewing the documents that included letters from Diana, Scott Baker told Burrell: ''Having examined the matter, it doesn't seem to me they are secret at all.''

Burrell, giving his second day of testimony, said: ''I am constantly wracking my brains to find the right answer.''

Confessing to confusion at trying to remember a lifetime of memories, Burrell said: ''Quite frankly, it's been horrid. It's been quite disgraceful actually. I didn't expect it to go to such depths.''

Al-Fayed alleges that his son and Diana were killed by British security services on the orders of Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth's husband and Diana's former father-in-law.

Fayed believes her killing was ordered because the royal family did not want the mother of the future king having a child with his son. He alleges that Diana's body was embalmed to cover up evidence she was expecting a baby.