LONDON, OCT 24: TO the end, Princess Diana wanted to save her marriage to Prince Charles and wrote on the final day of their split: "I never wanted a divorce".

With words that will shake the Palace more than six years after her death, the princess revealed her undying love for her husband in a handwritten note to her butler Paul Burrell.

"A part of me will always love Charles," Diana wrote in the letter, published in Britain's Daily Mirror yesterday.

"How I wish he'd looked after me and been proud of my work. I want so much to become his best friend. I understand better than anyone what makes him tick."

Diana penned the note on a poignant day for the princess: August 28, 1996 – the day her "decree absolute" came through.

The letter debunks accepted wisdom that Diana's volatile marriage to Charles had ended in mutual hatred, anger and bitterness over their affairs.

Instead, the note shows a princess emotionally torn at the time her divorce was sealed.

"Fifteen years of marriage have now been signed off," Diana said in her note.

"I never wanted a divorce and always dreamed of a happy marriage with loving support from Charles."

Six months earlier, it emerged yesterday, Diana had met the Queen at Buckingham Palace for a one-on-one meeting after Charles publicly confessed to his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles.

The princess asked the Queen: "Does this mean that Charles is going to remarry?"

The Queen replied: "I think that very unlikely."

Diana told the Queen she did not want a divorce, that she still loved the prince, according to Mr Burrell.

But the monarch was more anxious about the effect of the split on her grandchildren, William and Harry.

"My concern is only that those children have been in the battleground of a marriage that has broken down," the Queen purportedly said.

According to Mr Burrell, the February 15 meeting had been arranged to break a stalemate over the divorce that "everyone but the princess wanted".

Just a day earlier she had sent her estranged husband a Valentine's card, signed "With love from Diana".

The letter's release came as Diana's brother defended his own missive – unearthed by Mr Burrell on Wednesday – in which he branded her as mentally ill.

Earl Spencer stands accused of hypocrisy over the letter, in which he banishes her from their family home, because 16 months later in an emotive address at her Westminster Abbey Funeral, he denounced the Royal Family for its callousness.

Yesterday he insisted he was trying to help his sister at a time when she was "at her most complex".

"It is obviously private correspondence that has been taken out of context and out of time," he told an American TV network.

"And I suppose all the loving letters I sent don't have the saleability of this one, in which I have tried to help her.

Mr Burrell said Earl Spencer's description of her "mental problems" in the letter reduced her to tears.

The former servant is releasing private letters between Diana and the royal family on a drip-feed basis to promote his new book, A Royal Duty, from which he stands to make up to $4 million.

Buckingham Palace yesterday conceded it was powerless to prevent publication of the book, which has already caused embarrassment and concerns for the monarchy.

Lawyers for the Duke of Edinburgh have decided Mr Burrell and his publishers Penguin Books had adhered to copyright laws by only using extracts from letters written by members of the Royal family.

Prince Phillip called in the lawyers after the publication of excerpts from a letter he wrote to Diana in which he said Charles would be crazy to leave her for Camilla.

Mr Burrell said Diana clung to a hope the marriage could be saved until its final end.

She blamed Charles' "friends and family" for the marital breakdown

"It has been a turbulent 15 years having to face the envy, jealousy and hatred from Charles's friends and family."

The Courier-Mail