Something profound and elemental runs through Charles Spencer’s book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister.
It is not simply the depth of his grief for Princess Diana, from whom he was estranged when she died. Rather, it is the enduring intensity of his hostility towards King Charles — a resentment that has burned for more than three decades.
In extracts published by Our News Outlet, Spencer’s anger is unmistakable. His account presents a deeply damaging portrait of the then-Prince Charles, suggesting that he viewed the death of his former wife with something approaching satisfaction.
The implication is that Charles was almost relieved that Diana, aged 36 and the much-loved mother of his two young sons, had died in a car crash in Paris.
“I suspect the prince’s first reaction must have been to think more of how this event might free him to marry the woman he loved, rather than appreciating the loss of one he did not,” Spencer writes.
Spencer recalls that, unlike others who called to offer their condolences in the hours and days after Diana’s death, Charles sounded “giddily elated — like a lottery winner”. It is a devastating accusation, yet one presented without independent evidence or the broader historical context needed to support it.
According to Spencer, the prince also sounded “strangely matter-of-fact, given the enormity of the disaster”.
How, though, could someone sound both euphoric and emotionally detached at the same time?
Earl Spencer recalls that Charles sounded “giddily elated — like a lottery winner” when he called after Diana’s death to offer his condolences
In Earl Spencer’s telling, his own grief was overwhelming, while the prince appeared to respond to Diana’s death with the detachment of someone watching an insect disappear beneath a windscreen.
Oh dear, how sad — and then life goes on. That is the attitude Spencer attributes to his former brother-in-law during a moment of extraordinary public shock and private anguish.
Spencer also claims that Charles told him: “Rest assured,” he allegedly hissed, “we’ll forget her soon enough!” The line sounds almost like something from a Bond villain, rather than the King Charles many people recognise. It is also open to several interpretations — and could simply have been misheard.
Could Charles instead have said, “They’ll forget her soon enough” — referring to the public frenzy surrounding Diana’s death?
It is equally possible that Spencer’s own heightened emotional state, as his world collapsed, affected how he understood words spoken over the telephone from the royal residences.
The Palace addressed this latest allegation by saying: “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.” Recollections may vary — once again.
Some believe the King should have ignored Spencer’s claims. I disagree. The allegation is so serious, and the potential damage to his reputation so great, that allowing it to pass without response would have been difficult.
By publishing such inflammatory claims, Spencer appears determined to inflict maximum damage: to portray a 77-year-old King, whose health has been a matter of public concern, as a heartless and feeble adulterer who felt little or nothing at the death of his former wife.
Spencer’s judgment is harsh for many reasons, but particularly because it leaves almost no room for Charles’s humanity — or for the possibility that, in the worst moments of their lives, people may not respond with perfect composure.
Earl Spencer and Prince Charles attend the official opening of a fountain built in Diana’s memory in London’s Hyde Park in 2004
Ultimately, the dispute comes down to a choice that feels almost medieval: whom do you believe — Spencer or Windsor, the King or the earl, the former husband or the grieving brother? I know who I consider the more convincing man. It is not Earl Spencer.
Is this a choice Prince Harry must also make? One wonders how he can remain on close terms with his fuming uncle while his father is being so viciously traduced and the monarchy attacked. It seems impossible that he can remain neutral, a gingery Switzerland of calm in this bloody war of attrition.
In later chapters, for example, the earl also recounts his version of the row regarding Prince William and Prince Harry walking behind Diana’s coffin at her funeral procession. Are we back here again? I am afraid so.
This is an issue Harry has bemoaned, too, as further evidence of the moral futility and chronic failings of monarchy.
Look. No doubt it was an ordeal; two young boys in their smart suits and neat hair, trying not to cry in front of the whole world. It still breaks my heart just to think about it.
Yet there is a price to pay for the trappings and advantages of being a member of the Royal Family – and here it was, being marched out in funeral lockstep across a city and a nation in mourning.
Perhaps, with hindsight, they could all look at it another way: that walking behind the coffin was a privilege, it was an honour, it was what was expected of them as heirs to a throne that stretches back more than 1,000 years.
She was their mother, this was their destiny – and in the end, what did it have to do with Charles Spencer? He was an uncle, a man whose views were welcomed – but surely those views could only be secondary to the wishes of the boys’ father?
From that day onwards, all four of these men had to learn how to live without a mother, without a sister and without a first wife.
Some of them, of course, have done so better than others. Spencer and Harry have much in common, for both of them are caught in the amber of three decades of hurt and resentment, unable to move on. Compare this to Prince William, whose burden grows heavier by the day but who never complains. And then there is Charles Spencer, a historian who wants to rewrite history.
Back in 1997, Earl Spencer welcomed his sister’s body back to Althorp in a way he did not welcome her presence in life. When she asked if she could live in the Garden House on the estate in 1992, he said no. Now, she lies in her island grave at Althorp but she does not rest in peace. Her brother has seen to that.
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