Princess Diana “knew what she was doing” and knew how to provoke the royal family into wanting her to divorce Prince Charles, her ex reportedly claimed while discussing her state of mind and motives.

Speaking during a documentary to mark what would have been the Princess of Wales 60th birthday, Richard Kay, a journalist and long-time confidant of the Princess of Wales’ boyfriend, Hasnat Khan, said Mr Khan believed Diana could anticipate the royal family’s reaction to news events.

“We all know Diana was tricked or fed things, but I learned something quite interesting recently and it came from Hasnat Khan, and he told me that she knew what she was doing,” he says.

“She said ‘I know how the royals react to this. I know what they’ll do’, and she said ‘they’ll now want me to divorce’”.

The prediction proved apt as the royal family did ask Diana and Prince Charles to divorce.

During the documentary Diana, which will air at 9pm on Thursday on ITV, it emerges that having seen her parents divorce aged six and her mother lose custody of Diana for being “unfit”, the princess was terrified she would be separated from her children, Prince William and Prince Harry.

It partly explains why she agreed to the interview with BBC reporter Martin Bashir, to promote the narrative that she was not mad but instead persecuted by the royal family and the media.

It comes as a fire chief who treated Diana on the night she died claimed she asked “oh my God, what’s happened?” in her final moments.

Sergeant Xavier Gourelon, who was one of the first rescuers to arrive at the Alma tunnel on 31 August, 1997, said he stayed with her and held her hand in an attempt to calm her.

He did not know who he was treating until, having helped her into an ambulance, a colleague told him he had cared for the Princess of Wales.

Diana lost consciousness in the ambulance and was later pronounced dead at hospital.

Her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, and the driver of the Mercedes, Henri Paul, were killed in the crash. Diana’s bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was the sole survivor.

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