Ethel Mary Eyre, died 25 June, 2025, aged 93.
She was a former senior soloist ballet dancer with the Royal Ballet who was romantically linked in the 1950s with the the then Lord Carnegie (later 3rd Duke of Fife), a cousin Queen Elizabeth II.
It was rumoured, but never confirmed, that Queen Elizabeth refused to consent to the betrothal of her cousin to the ballerina on the grounds that Mary was a Roman Catholic. Lord Carnegie would have lost his position, albeit a distant one, in the order of succession to the throne.
She was born Ethel Mary Drage in 1931, a daughter of Commander Charles Hardinge Drage, RN (1897-1983), and his wife the former Enid Margaret Lomer (1902-2004).
She married 1stly, 8 April, 1958, Roderick Andrew Joseph Fraser (1927-1964), scion of the Lords Lovat, son of Major the Hon Alastair Thomas Joseph Fraser (1877-1949), and his wife the former Lady Sibyl Grimston (1887-1968), scion of the Earls of Verulam.
Her first husband died 3 Aug, 1964, aged 37. She married 2ndly, 7 July, 1969, Edward Eyre (born 30 June, 1929), son of Edward Joseph Eyre (who died in 1962), and his wife the Hon Dorothy Elizabeth Anne Pelline Lyon Dalberg-Acton (1906-1998), daughter of the 2nd Baron Acton (1870-1924).
Mary Eyre is survived by her second husband and by three sons and a daughter from her first marriage, and by a son and three daughters from her second marriage.
The funeral is to take place in the Wardour Chapel, at Tisbury, Wiltshire, 8 August, 2025.
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