Following the death of The Countess Mountbatten of Burma earlier this week, Prince Charles has paid tribute to his last surviving godmother.
In a statement released via Kensington Palace on Wednesday evening, Charles expressed his grief.
“I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of my very special godmother, Lady Mountbatten whom I have known and loved ever since I can first remember,” the 68-year-old said.
“She played an extremely important part in my life and I shall miss her presence most dreadfully.”
The 93-year-old Countess, who was Prince Philip’s first cousin and The Queen’s third cousin, died peacefully on June 13 at her home in Mersham, Kent.
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With strong ancestral ties to the Royal Family, in 1946 when she married John Knatchbull, the 7th Baron Brabourne, she had two regal bridesmaids in Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret.
The couple went on to welcome eight children and 18 grandchildren.
In 1979, Patricia was rocked by tragedy after the IRA bombed and killed her father, The Earl Mountbatten of Burma, her mother-in-law, and her 14-year-old son Nicholas, while they were on a boat in Siglo, Ireland.
The Countess was on board the boat when the explosion struck but miraculously, she survived.
Charles shared a very close bond with his godmother.
“My own memory is of a vision of a ball exploding upwards and then of ‘coming to’ in the sea and wondering if I would be able to reach the surface before I passed out,” she told The Telegraph in 2008.
“I have very vague memories, now and again, of floating among the wood and debris, being pulled into a small rubber dinghy before totally losing consciousness for days.”
“As anyone whose child dies will know only too well, this news utterly devastated me. In fact, I was so overwhelmed by grief for Nicky, who was just on the threshold of his life, that I began to feel guilty that I was not able to grieve for my father, whom I really adored, in the same way. But the world was mourning him, and there was a comfort in knowing that,” she added of the horrific assassination.
Despite her life-changing loss, she managed to live a long and prosperous life.
“If you are bitter, it consumes you, your family and the people are around you. It is corrosive. It destroys your normal life. If my father had survived he would have felt the same,” she once said of the attack.
