Princess Diana Slammed by Lady Pamela Hicks: "She Was Really Spiteful"

Jayne Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images

It's been nearly 16 years since Princess Diana died in a tragic car accident, but some members of the British Royal Family refuse to let her rest in peace.  In a Vanity Fair profile, Lady Pamela Hicks—first cousin to Prince Philip and a member of Queen Elizabeth II's 1947 bridal party—explains why she was never fond of Prince Charles' first wife.

"She had enormous charisma, she was beautiful, she was very good at empathy with the general crowd...and she had no feeling at all for her husband or his family," Pamela snipes of Diana. "Quite the reverse!"

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According to Pamela, Diana was "really spiteful" and "really unkind" to Charles during their 15-year union. "My God, he's a man who needs support and encouragement," the 84-year-old says of Charles, who went on to marry Camilla Parker Bowles in the spring of 2005.

Pamela also claims Charles' marriage to Diana "destroyed" him. "He looked grey and ghost-like," she tells the mag of Prince William and Prince Harry's father. "Now of course he's blossomed again."

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The British aristocrat—whose own fashion designer daughter, India Hicks, served as one of Diana's bridesmaids—believes the late princess reveled in the public's pity. "She made everybody believe she'd been thrown to the wolves. Such nonsense! She was given the Queen's favorite lady-in-waiting, Sue Hussey, to help her, to teach her. But she didn't want to be told anything. 'That's boring, Sue,' she'd say. Instead, she wanted to listen to her music and go disco-ing or to some jive concert," she telsl Vanity Fair. "She didn't try. She had no need to try because she saw the people admired her, then they admired her more. She reckoned she was the star."

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Diana Nyad in homestretch on way from Cuba to Fla.

Updated 6:30 a.m. ET

KEY WEST, Fla. U.S. endurance simmer Diana Nyad's representatives say she's covered roughly 90 percent of her route from Cuba to Florida.

Early Monday morning, Nyad's team tweeted that she was approximately 10 miles from her goal - Florida's Key West. Overall, the swim was expected to be about 100 miles if she's able to complete it.

Later, a team member blooged, "We can see the lights of Key West growing brighter and brighter before us. Diana is swimming strong after 43 hours non-stop. She knows where she is and it's giving her added strength."

Nyad was expected to complete her swim in the early evening hours, her navigator tweeted Monday.

Her team posted on Facebook Sunday afternoon that she had "swum farther north than the farthest end point of any of her previous attempts."

The 64-year-old is trying to become the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. It's her fourth attempt in the last three years.

Most of Nyad's previous attempts were derailed by run-ins with box jellyfish.

On this attempt, she was wearing a full body suit and custom face mask to protect against the venomous stings, reports CBS News' Elaine Quijano - though her team blogged late Sunday night that she hadn't used the mask to that point.

Nyad has said, "The box jellyfish takes you into an area of what I'd call science fiction. You feel like you've been dipped in hot burning oil. You burst into flames."

If she's successful this time, she expects to take about 80 hours to reach the Florida Keys.

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