Lady Pamela Hicks, Cousin of Prince Philip and Former Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Elizabeth II, Dies at 97

Lady Pamela Hicks, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth II and one of her childhood friends, died aged 97. Her daughter India Hicks posted on Instagram that her mother died peacefully. "Whilst there is no tragedy in the death of a 97-year-old who has lived a full life I know grief will be unavoidable, lurking around waiting for me, but today I am simply grateful that she was my mother," India Hicks wrote.

"And through the prism of a crowded and remarkable past, she made incomparable company, carrying her memories lightly, and always with humour," the post continued. " Lady Pamela was the cousin of Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh, and the youngest daughter of Earl Mountbatten of Burma. She traced her lineage directly to Queen Victoria as her great-great-grandmother.

Her grandmother was Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, the eldest granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Pamela Carmen Louise Mountbatten was born in 1929 at the Ritz Hotel in Barcelona. The King of Spain, Alfonso XIII, and the Duke of Kent served as her godfathers.

She stood beside Princess Elizabeth as a bridesmaid at her wedding to Prince Philip in November 1947. On August 27, 1979, an IRA bomb destroyed Lord Mountbatten's fishing boat, Shadow V, off the coast of County Sligo in Ireland. The blast killed Lord Mountbatten, 14-year-old Nicholas Knatchbull, and 15-year-old Paul Maxwell.

Lady Pamela's sister Patricia and brother-in-law Lord Brabourne suffered serious injuries. Lord Brabourne's 83-year-old mother was also injured and later died in hospital. Lady Pamela remained at Classiebawn Castle that morning and heard the explosion from the shore.

In 1960 she married interior designer David Hicks at Romsey Abbey. The wedding drew 1,300 guests and Prince Philip proposed the toast. David Hicks died of lung cancer in 1998. Lady Pamela is survived by three children—Edwina, who married actor Jeremy Brudenell; India, a former model and businesswoman; and Ashley, an interior designer—and eight grandchildren.