LONDON – Princess Diana's letters to "Darling Dodi" were read Friday at the inquest into the deaths of the couple, and others she exchanged with Prince Philip, whom she called "Dearest Pa," were also presented.
In a letter thanking Dodi Fayed for a six-day holiday on his yacht in the summer of 1997, Diana wrote: "This comes with all the love in the world and as always a million heartfelt thanks for bringing such joy into this chick's life."
Michael Mansfield, a lawyer for Fayed's father, Mohamed Al Fayed, also produced a letter which the princess sent with a gift of cufflinks.
Click here to read the letter.
"Darling Dodi, these cufflinks were the very last gift from the man I loved most in the world, my father," she wrote.
"They are given to you as I know how much joy it would give him to know they were in such safe and special hands. Fondest love, Diana."'
In another note to Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, Diana asked for his guidance in her marital problems with Prince Charles, the Telegraph reported. She and Charles were on the brink of separation when she wrote to her father-in-law for help.
"Dearest Pa, I was particularly touched by your most recent letter which proved to me, if I didn't already know it, that you really do care," Diana wrote.
"You are very modest about your marriage guidance skills, and I disagree with you! This last letter of yours showed great understanding and tact, and I hope to be able to draw on your advice in the months ahead, whatever they may bring."
As with the letters to Dodi Fayed, Diana signed those to Philip "with fondest love."
Click here to see Diana's letters to and from Prince Philip.
Diana's correspondences with her father-in-law were presented at the inquest in an attempt to dismantle the theory held by Fayed's father, Mohamed Al Fayed, that the couple were targets of a plot directed by Philip and carried out by British intelligence agents.
The notes between Diana and Philip were brought to the inquest by the duke's private secretary, Brigadier Sir Miles Hunt-Davis. Portions that elaborated on particularly intimate details of Diana's life were blacked out.
Mansfield introduced the letters to Dodi Fayed as he questioned Diana's friend Rosa Monckton, who had said on Thursday that she believed Diana was still recovering from a previous relationship when her romance with Fayed bloomed.
"She was treating this relationship with Dodi as a serious matter wasn't she? It doesn't suggest it was little more than a fling after a couple of days," Mansfield said.
"She tended to speak and write in an extravagant way," Monckton replied, but agreed that the sentiment was genuine.
Monckton quoted Diana as saying she would still have been in a relationship with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, but Khan could not cope with the publicity that followed the princess and ended the relationship.
Monckton rejected Mansfield's suggestion that Diana had dropped Khan because she had fallen in love with Fayed.
"She told me Hasnat would never have her back once the photographs of her with Dodi had appeared and she was very upset about it," Monckton said.
Monckton said as she left court that she was glad her part in the inquest was over.
"Some of the questioning was rather aggressive, but I just told what I knew," Monckton said outside court.
Diana and Dodi Fayed died as a result of a car crash on the night of Aug. 31, 1997, as they were being driven through the streets of Paris. French and British police have concluded that driver Henri Paul, the acting security chief at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, was well over the legal alcohol limit.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox