Thomas Kingston, the husband of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent’s daughter Lady Gabriella Kingston, was “happy and positive” at an event in London just days before his shock death aged 45, close friends have said.
The financier and former hostage negotiator, known as Tom, was found dead at an address in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire on Sunday evening, and emergency services were called to the scene shortly after 6pm.
An inquest will be held to establish the cause of death, but there are no suspicious circumstances and no other parties involved.
One friend who spoke to Mr Kingston and Lady Gabriella at a party last Wednesday at the National Gallery told MailOnline: “They seemed happy and positive as ever. Ella was particularly chatty.”
The sudden death has plunged the royal family into shock.
Lady Gabriella, 42, who is 56th in line to the throne, and her elder brother, Lord Frederick Windsor, grew up in an apartment in Kensington Palace.
She and Mr Kingston married at St George’s Chapel at Windsor in May 2019, with Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, the late Duke of Edinburgh, among the guests.
A friend who attended the wedding said: “It’s utterly shocking. None of us saw it coming. I cannot understand it.”
Although Lady Gabriella is not a working member of the royal family, Buckingham Palace said it was supporting Mr Kingston’s family.
She paid tribute to her husband in a joint statement with his family, describing him as an “exceptional man who lit up the lives of all who knew him”.
They described his death as a “great shock to the whole family”.
The King and Queen sent their “most heartfelt thoughts and prayers” to Lady Gabriella, who is known as Ella, and Mr Kingston’s parents and siblings.
Lady Gabriella is the King’s second cousin. They are both great-grandchildren of King George V.
Mr Kingston was a director of Devonport Capital, which specialises in providing finance for companies in “frontier economies”.
The Bristol University graduate had also worked in Baghdad, Iraq, working to procure the release of hostages after joining the Diplomatic Missions Unit of the Foreign Office. He was a close friend of Pippa Matthews — the Princess of Wales’s sister — and the pair were said to have dated in 2011.
Lady Gabriella’s parents Prince and Princess Michael of Kent attended the service for the late King Constantine II of Greece yesterday in St George’s Chapel - where Lady Gabriella and Mr Kingston married. Constantine was Lady Gabriella’s godfather and attended her wedding.
The Prince of Wales, also a godchild of the former Greek monarch, pulled out of attending at the last minute, but his absence was due to a personal matter and was understood not to be connected to news of Mr Kingston’s death.
Gloucestershire Police said in a statement: “We were called by the ambulance service at 6.25pm on Sunday with a report of the death of a 45-year-old man at an address in the Cotswolds.
“The death is not being treated as suspicious and a file will be prepared for the coroner.”
