The floodlights of Kensington Palace gardens had long dimmed, but the shadows of that fateful Paris night in 1997 still loomed large. For nearly three decades, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, the stoic eldest sister of the People’s Princess, had carried a burden heavier than the crown her sibling once wore. At 70 – not 60, as breathless headlines have misreported in their frenzy – Sarah has finally cracked open the vault of silence, her voice fracturing like fine china under the weight of unshed tears. In a raw, hour-long interview aired last night on ITV’s Royal Shadows: The Untold Spencer Legacy, the aristocrat who once dated Prince Charles herself before playing unwitting Cupid to Diana, confessed to a revelation that has ignited global conspiracy fires anew: “I dared not speak out before. That person… they’re too powerful, too frightening. But now, at my age, what have I got to lose?”

The studio lights caught the glint of diamond studs – heirlooms from Althorp, the Spencer ancestral seat – as Sarah’s composure crumbled. Tissues twisted in her manicured hands, she leaned forward, her blue eyes, so eerily like Diana’s, pooling with the grief of what-ifs. “For years, I buried it deep,” she whispered, her Lincolnshire lilt cracking. “The pain, the doubts, the endless nights replaying that call from Paris. Diana wasn’t just taken by accident. There was a plot – a deliberate move to silence her voice, her heart. And I knew… God help me, I knew more than I let on.”

It was August 31, 1997, when the world stopped breathing. A Mercedes S280, pursued by a wolf pack of paparazzi flashes, careened into the Pont de l’Alma tunnel. Driver Henri Paul, three times over the French limit, lost control. Dodi Fayed, seated beside him, perished instantly. Trevor Rees-Jones, the bodyguard, survived with shattered bones. And Diana? The 36-year-old mother of future kings, strapped in yet ejected on impact, gasped her last words – “My God, what’s happened?” – before succumbing to internal hemorrhaging in a hospital bed 200 yards from the Eiffel Tower. Official inquiries, from France’s 1999 probe to Britain’s exhaustive 2004-2008 inquest, ruled it unlawful killing by grossly negligent driving and paparazzi pursuit. No conspiracy, they concluded. Case closed.

But for Sarah, the file never sealed. Born Elizabeth Sarah Lavinia Spencer on March 19, 1955 – the first of four siblings in a crumbling aristocratic dynasty – she was always the protector. Six years Diana’s senior, Sarah shepherded her through the rigid halls of West Heath School, introduced her to polo ponies and, fatefully, to Charles in 1977. Their brief courtship fizzled amid Sarah’s candid quip to the press: “I wouldn’t marry him if he were the dustman or the King of England.” Yet she beamed at Diana’s 1981 wedding, whispering vows of eternal sisterhood. Through the fairy-tale facade – the bulimia, the infidelities, the Waleses’ 1996 divorce – Sarah remained the unshakeable anchor. “Di called me her ‘rock,’” Sarah revealed in the interview. “The only one she trusted with the raw truth.”

That trust extended to the shadows. In the weeks before the crash, Diana confided feverishly: tales of MI6 surveillance, whispers of royal retribution for her landmine crusades and rumored pregnancy with Dodi’s child – a Muslim heir that could upend the Anglican succession. Sarah testified at the 2008 inquest, recalling a yacht call from August 29 where Diana fretted over bugs planted by Mohamed Al-Fayed, Dodi’s tycoon father. “She sounded scared, not smitten,” Sarah said then, casting doubt on the whirlwind romance. But privately, diaries glimpsed by family (and allegedly shredded post-mortem under Sarah’s watch) hinted at deeper dread: coded notes about “the Firm’s long arms” and a “figure in the palace who wants me gone.”

The interview’s bombshell? Sarah’s tear-streaked allegation that a “powerful figure” – unnamed, but sources close to the Spencers murmur “the late Duke of Edinburgh” or even “higher” – orchestrated the hit. “Di told me days before: ‘If anything happens, Sarah, it won’t be an accident. They fear what I know, what I’ll say about Camilla, about the boys’ future.’” Sarah paused, dabbing her eyes. “I thought it paranoia from the hounds. But after… the ambulance’s inexplicable two-hour crawl to the hospital, the erased CCTV from the tunnel, the seatbelt that ‘failed’ despite her being religious about buckling up… It gnawed at me. And then, letters arrived – anonymous, from insiders. Warnings to stay silent, or William and Harry would pay.”

Those missives, Sarah claims, vanished in a 1998 burglary at her Grantham home – unsolved, like so much in the Diana dossier. She flew to Paris that dawn with sister Jane Fellowes and Charles (then Prince of Wales), cradling Diana’s cooling form for the repatriation flight. “Her hand was still warm,” Sarah sobbed in the doc. “I whispered promises to protect her legacy. But fear paralyzed me. The royals circled wagons; the press bayed for closure. I played the dutiful sister at the funeral, reading from Corinthians like a robot. Inside? I was screaming.”

Why now? At 70, Sarah’s life reads like a Spencer saga: married to banker Neil McCorquodale since 1980, mother to three (Emily, George, Celia – the latter wed in the Spencer Tiara Diana once donned), High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 2009, master of the Belvoir Hunt until hunting bans clipped its wings. She helmed the Diana Memorial Fund, raising £112 million before its 2012 shuttering, and stood sentinel at William and Harry’s milestones – from Kate’s 2011 vows to Harry’s 2018 nuptials. Yet cracks showed: a 2017 BBC doc where she haunted over the seatbelt anomaly (“She was religious about it – why that night?”), and whispers of anorexia in her youth mirroring Diana’s demons.

The catalyst? Last month’s “very bad fall” from her horse, fracturing her pelvis and sidelining her for weeks. Brother Charles Spencer, 61, spilled on Gyles Brandreth’s Rosebud podcast: “She’s punchy, a handful in hospital. But it shook her – made her confront the unfinished.” Bedridden, Sarah pored over Paul Burrell’s 2003 kiss-and-tell (A Royal Duty) and the 2021 Spencer film’s fever-dream depictions. “I realized silence honors no one,” she said. “Di fought for truth; I owe her mine.”

The fallout? Twitter – or X – erupts with #SarahSpeaks, blending heartbreak and hysteria. “Finally, the cover-up crumbles!” tweets royal watcher @CrownChaser, sharing grainy tunnel recreations. Al-Fayed loyalists revive 2008 claims implicating Sarah herself in the “plot” – absurd, given her inquest testimony debunking his son’s “fiancée” myth. Palace insiders scoff: “Grief’s cruel alchemy,” one aide tells Vanity Fair. “Sarah’s devoted to the nephews; this wounds William and Harry most.” The princes, tight-lipped, issued a joint statement via Kensington Palace: “Aunt Sarah’s courage in sharing her pain reminds us of Mummy’s enduring light. We ask for privacy as the family heals.”

Yet backlash brews. Tabloids decry “senile sensationalism,” while conspiracy pods like The Tin Lid hail her a “whistleblower saint.” Petition.org surges with 500,000 signatures demanding a reopened inquest, citing 2006’s “suspicious seatbelt sabotage” chatter. Netflix eyes a sequel to The Crown’s finale, with Imelda Staunton’s Queen facing off against a fictionalized Sarah. And in Althorp’s lake, where Diana’s urn rests, fresh lilies bob – anonymous tributes, or threats?

Sarah ended the interview with a plea, voice steady amid sniffles: “Don’t let this divide us. Honor Di by questioning power, protecting the vulnerable. She’d want that – not vendettas, but vigilance.” As credits rolled, a black-and-white clip faded in: Diana, 1987, giggling with Sarah at polo, whispering secrets into the wind. The what-ifs linger – was it a plot? A tragic fluke? One thing’s certain: at 70, Sarah McCorquodale has traded silence for a roar, unearthing ghosts that may haunt Buckingham forever.