Princess Diana aunt Mary Roche 'WILL’ unveils shocking surprises

Ten months after the death at the age of 88, Princess Diana's aunt, Mary Roche, leaves behind a hint of mystery in her recently published will.

Mary and her younger sister, Frances, who was Diana's mother, belonged to a family that experienced significant wealth two generations prior. 

This prosperity originated when Mary's grandfather, James, 3rd Lord Fermoy, married an American heiress.

But Mary did not leave an immense fortune. Far from it: after taxes and other costs had been paid, her total estate amounted to £425,983 – a decidedly modest sum for a woman who, at one stage, owned an airline taking passengers on safari around Kenya and who, early in the first of her three marriages, bought a house in Wilton Crescent, Belgravia, always one of London's most punishingly expensive addresses, where houses today effortlessly sell for more than £20million.

But, more intriguingly, Mary, whose father, Maurice, 4th Lord Fermoy, was shooting with George VI at Sandringham the day before the King's death, decided against leaving anything to two of her four children.

Instead, she stipulated that her estate would be shared equally by the eldest of her three daughters, Alexandra, and her only son, Edward.

The two younger daughters, Antonia – known as Anya – and Jo, were omitted. Until recently, both lived modestly in Frome, Somerset. Jo remains there, in a property on a 1980s housing estate which she bought for £170,000 in 2016; Anya was on a neighbouring estate but appears to have sold up for £220,000 in 2020.

Her son, Edward, tells me his mother's judgment about her will was similarly assured.

'My mother gave various things to my sisters at different times and, in the interests of fairness, that's how it ended up,' he explains.