King Charles is fondly remembered for walking Meghan Markle down the aisle during her 2018 wedding to Prince Harry after her father was unable to attend. But this was not the first time the former Prince of Wales had stepped up to take on that responsibility. Two years before the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s wedding, he gave away Princess Diana’s goddaughter Alexandra Knatchbull at her 2016 marriage to IT entrepreneur Tom Hooper .
Lady Alexandra is the daughter of the 3rd Earl and Countess Mountbatten of Burma and great granddaughter of Lord Louis Mountbatten, who Charles later referred to as the ‘grandfather I never had’. At the time there was much speculation as to why Alexandra’s father, Earl Norton Louis Knatchbull, who is cousins and close friends with Charles, could not walk her down the aisle at Romsey Abbey.
The answer given by Reverend Canon Tim Sledge was a straightforward one: ‘he was simply not well enough’, the vicar declared. He added, referring to Prince Charles’ offer to take on the role: ‘What better than to have a family member give her away’. Alexandra’s family and the royal family have been intertwined for decades. So it was not, perhaps, such a surprise that Charles, who was best man at her father’s wedding, would take on the role.
Others, however, speculated there was another reason why the bride may have chosen not have her father walk her down the aisle at what was said to be the society wedding of the year. The father and daughter were believed to have a strained relationship in the years leading up to the big day. In 2010, her father abandoned his 31-year marriage to Penelope Knatchbull (nee Eastwood), known as Penny, to run away to Nassau in the Bahamas with fashion designer Jeannie Nuttall. As a result, Penny had to tell staff that she would be running the 6,000-acre estate on her own from that point onwards.
One local said on the Earl’s departure: ‘Not for one moment did Penny allow her husband’s departure to interrupt the smooth running of the estate. She was impressive.’ The relationship ended in 2014 which led him back to the historic estate, where Noel Coward had played piano at weekend house parties, and the late Queen and Prince Philip were guests. But he the Earl not allowed to stay in the main home and was banished to live in a converted barn.
In the lead up to the wedding, a family friend said: ‘It’s very unusual to be given away by someone else at your wedding – even if it’s the Prince of Wales. ‘At the time Alexandra was absolutely furious with her father for leaving her mother, but of course she still wanted him at the wedding.’ Over the decades, the Knatchbulls were hit with a series of tragedies, which undoubtedly would have made their daughter’s wedding a bittersweet day.
In 1979, when the Earl was 32, his grandfather Lord Mountbatten was killed in an IRA bomb attack, alongside his younger brother Nicholas, 14, as well as a local boy Paul Maxwell, who was 15. It was in the church that Alexandra was married that Lord Mountbatten is also buried. During the wedding, the Queen and Prince Philip, who was Mountbatten’s nephew, paid their respects to ‘Uncle Dickie’, standing in silent contemplation.
Following the death, Norton’s wedding to Penny, the daughter of a butcher who went on to set up Angus Steakhouse, was postponed by three months. In more recent times the family have endured equally painful tragedies. In August 1990, while Penny and Norton were on holiday in Majorca with the then Prince and Princes of Wales, Charles and Diana, Leonora became ill.
Just 14 months later, the bright little girl died. There was a huge outpouring of public sympathy as millions had watched the young girl on the Buckingham Palace balcony that June to watch Trooping The Colour, months before she died. Leonora, who was also a goddaughter of Princess Diana, was dressed all in red and wore a hat to cover the loss of hair from undergoing chemotherapy.
The little girl was buried at the family’s Broadland estate, where the Queen and Prince Philip as well as Charles and Diana spent their honeymoon in the years prior. A tall stone monument that stands on a plinth 100 yards from the house which can be seen from the drawing room. Penny makes her ritual daily visit to Leonora’s grave and said she would never leave the estate. Following Leonora’s death, her parents set up the Leonora Children’s Cancer Fund in her memory – it was later merged with the Edwina Mountbatten Trust in 2010.
Money poured into the Leonora Children’s Cancer Fund, which the Brabournes founded in their daughter’s memory. It was merged with the Edwina Mountbatten Trust in 2010, the year Norton took off. After her daughter’s death, Penny became close friends with Prince Philip, who taught her how to drive a horse carriage. (He had taken up carriage racing after retiring from polo.) She became a confidantes of Prince Philip despite being 32 years his junior and was pictured on walks with the Duke over the years.
Penny was close to both the Queen and Prince Philip towards the end of their lives, becoming a regular visitor at Wood Farm, the cottage on the edge of the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk where the Duke spent much of his time after retiring from public life in August 2017. They also had to help their son Nicholas Knatchbull, 41, who struggled with years of drug addiction and rehabilitation. Nicholas was once a mentor to Prince William at Eton before he became addicted to crack cocaine and heroin.
He appeared at Alexandra’s wedding, helping his 90-year-old grandmother, Countess Mountbatten, who died the following year, into the church. The vicar told the wedding congregation: ‘They’ve put a huge amount of effort, thought and care into it. It’s got that personal touch. ‘The most important thing is that Alexandra and Thomas have the most memorable day that they possibly can.’
Seven years later, Alexandra and Thomas remain happily married. They have two sons: Alden Peter Theodore Mountbatten, who was born on March 27 in 2020 and Inigo Norton Sebastian Mountbatten, born on December 21 in 2017.
