King Charles Slams Diana’s Brother Over Claim He Said She’d Be Forgotten

King Charles has fired an astonishing clapback at his former brother-in-law, Charles Spencer, over claims made in a new book about Diana’s death in 1997.

An extraordinary statement issued by Buckingham Palace on Wednesday night came in response to Earl Spencer’s new book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, which is being serialized in the Daily Mail this week ahead of publication next Tuesday.

The Palace’s response, in full, reads: “While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss.”

Courtly phrasing notwithstanding, the message is brutally clear: the sovereign is calling the 9th Earl Spencer a crazy liar, albeit one whose “memory” has been “cloud(ed)” by “fraternal grief.”

As the statement makes clear, the King’s office usually maintains a steely silence about books. Indeed, when Harry published Spare, the Palace said nothing on the record. The late Queen’s “recollections may vary” statement after Harry and Meghan were interviewed by Oprah was considered a veritable thunderclap at the time.

While this statement has echoes of that, it undoubtedly goes much further by seeking to undermine the credibility of the named individual making the claims. One can quite understand why the palace felt they couldn’t let this one ride, although it is notable that in follow-up briefings to UK media, palace aides are aiming for a measured tone, with one aide telling The Telegraph that the alleged comment about Diana was “just not in his nature and it certainly wasn’t in his nature at that time, when he was a man absolutely grief-stricken,” adding that at the time, the then Prince of Wales was “paralyzed with grief” and defied protocol by insisting that Diana be afforded a full state-style ceremonial funeral, and that her coffin be draped in the royal standard as it returned from Paris to London.

Some recollections may vary here as well, as much commentary since then has concluded that it was Tony Blair who told the royals they should give Diana a state funeral.

Spencer alleges, according to the extract published on Wednesday, that the dispute began when one of the late Queen’s most senior aides told Spencer that William and Harry, then 15 and 12, would walk behind their mother’s coffin.

Spencer says he replied: “That’s not going to happen.”

Minutes later, he claims, Charles rang him, insisting he had walked behind Lord Mountbatten’s coffin in 1979. When Spencer pointed out that Charles had been 30 at the time, not a child, the prince “went nuts” and questioned the Spencer family’s “sense of duty.”

Spencer writes: “Prince Charles continued his stream of anger, without me interrupting. Then he stopped. I assumed the pause signalled an effort to bring himself under control, but then he unleashed down the phone what I have always taken to be his pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death. ‘Rest assured,’ he hissed, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough!’”

Spencer says he replied flatly, “I can’t believe you just said that,” and hung up.

Bombshells like this sell books, and the King’s response will only fuel fascination with Swan Song, which Spencer says he wrote to correct “untruths that have become accepted” about his sister.

For the King, faced with a widespread perception that he has badly handled the Meghan and Harry crisis, these extracts threaten to drag the country back to the very lowest point in the modern monarchy’s history: the week in September 1997 when the royals hid away at Balmoral, the tabloids turned on them, a grieving nation could not understand why a flag could not be hung at half mast over the Palace, and there were real question marks whether the institution could survive at all.

Spencer’s funeral eulogy, with its pledge that Diana’s “blood family” would protect her boys, was the most wounding public rebuke the Windsors had ever received.

This exchange also confirms just how toxic relations between the Spencers and Charles remain, three decades on. This is not a family feud that has healed.

Harry, the Duke of Sussex, spent time with his uncle this summer, and it beggars belief that Harry could have been unaware of how Spencer feels about the King. Many in the royal family will therefore regard his and Meghan’s cozying up to the Spencers in an effort to claim his mother’s mantle as a gross betrayal.

Just when the world thought the House of Windsor’s troubles could not get any worse, the Mail’s serialization continues this weekend, promising further claims about the marriage and the chaotic aftermath of Diana’s death.