Buckingham Palace has issued a rare and unusually forceful denial after claims made by the brother of the late Princess Diana that King Charles III said his first wife would soon be forgotten in the days after her death.
In a soon-to-be published memoir, Charles Spencer recounts the emotional days in the aftermath of Diana’s 1997 death in a Paris car crash at the age of 36.
One excerpt published Wednesday alleges a heated exchange with the then-Prince Charles over whether Princes William and Harry — then 15 and 12 — should walk behind their mother’s coffin in the funeral procession.
Spencer says he expressed that Diana would not want them to endure such an ordeal, and claims this was met with a “stream of anger” from Charles. The aristocrat writes that Charles “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.”
In response, Buckingham Palace issued a forceful statement denying the claims and suggesting that grief for his older sister may have impacted Spencer’s memory.
“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 color memory in ways others do not recognize, even many years after such a loss,” said the statement, released Wednesday.
Diana’s 1997 funeral procession is etched into modern memory.
Her brother and two young sons were among those who walked solemnly behind her coffin as it passed through central London.
India McTaggart, a royal correspondent at The Telegraph newspaper, told NBC News: “Earl Spencer’s book is expected to contain a number of incendiary claims, and perhaps this was the palace trying to get on the front foot and get ahead of some of the allegations we expect to see.”
The royal family mostly avoided commenting when Prince Harry published his autobiography “Spare” in 2023, which also garnered global headlines with claims of bitter family feuds.
Queen Elizabeth II famously issued a brief but forceful statement in 2021, following allegations of racism by Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex. “Recollections may vary,” the late queen famously noted.
“The Palace will certainly be bracing for more headlines” as a result of the new memoir, said McTaggart.
“At the same time, we’ll see Harry carrying out public engagements this week, while the king and the prince and princess of Wales continue with theirs. It will be interesting to see how all of that is covered now that they’re all in Britain at the same time.”
Diana was one of the most photographed women in the world after marrying Charles in 1981. Their high-profile marriage ended in 1996 and she died a year later, after being chased by paparazzi with her partner Dodi al-Fayed. Her death in a Paris tunnel brought the world to a standstill.
At the time of her funeral the royal family received criticism from the public and in the press for being seemingly slow to react to the outpouring of love and grief from the public, for a woman they posthumously dubbed the ‘people’s princess.’
Spencer’s book, “Swan Song: Diana, My Sister,” is due to be published next week. The Daily Mail published the first in a series of extracts late Wednesday.
Source: NBC
--Agencies
