Princess Diana's former chief of staff says she's still unfairly remembered as 'troubled' by those close to the royals

• Princess Diana's former aide says people close to the royals unfairly remember her as troubled.
• Patrick Jephson worked for Diana throughout the "War of the Waleses" era in the 1990s.

Princess Diana continues to be remembered as mentally "troubled" by people close to the current royal establishment, one of her former aides has said.

Patrick Jephson, Diana's former chief of staff, opened up about spending eight years working for the late Princess of Wales during an appearance on the "The Scandal Mongers" podcast, set to be released on Spotify next week, Page Six reports. In it, Jephson, 66, will detail how King Charles' staff framed Diana as mentally ill in the 1990s and how that view of her lasts to this day, the publication added.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Jephson worked for Diana from 1988 to 1996, a period of time often referred to as "The War of the Waleses." Diana died a year later in 1997, at age 36.

"If you ask people close to the current royal establishment — if you dare bring up the subject of Princess Diana, which very few people would — then I think that is the answer you would get; that it was a tragic story and that she was essentially troubled mentally, and the implication being that she was not entirely up the job, which essentially then she failed at," Jephson said on the podcast, according to Page Six.

He also took aim at the view that Camilla, the Queen Consort, is the antithesis of Diana.

"The unspoken addition is that everything is alright now because we have her replacement, who is wonderfully down-to-earth and grounded and not at all flakey or paranoid," Jephson said. "I knew Princess Diana probably better than almost anybody — certainly professionally — and she was one of the most sane people I ever met."

While Jephson said that Diana "could be a bit of a handful" on occasion, he said she was always grounded and "extremely aware."

Jephson and Buckingham Palace did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

The former royal staffer worked for the princess up until his exit in 1996. In March 20222, he told The Telegraph he felt he had to resign after his once-close relationship with Diana crumbled due to lies told about him to her by former BBC journalist Martin Bashir.

Bashir used deceptive means in order to gain access and secure a 1995 interview with Diana on BBC's "Panorama," Insider previously reported.

According to The Telegraph, Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, was shown forged bank statements that tricked her into believing Jephson and another member of her royal household were betraying her.

Jephson was later compensated with a "substantial sum" of damages from the BBC in March 2022 for the incident.

A statement shared by the BBC in The Telegraph report said the broadcaster apologized "unreservedly" to Jephson and paid his legal costs. It added that Jephson intended to donate the monetary damages paid to him to his choice of British charities.

"The Princess died thinking I had betrayed her after eight rewarding but often difficult years in which we had worked so closely," Jephson told The Telegraph. "Because I now know what Bashir did, I am able to put a date on when the relationship changed."