Days after Princess Diana’s death, Prince Charles said ‘we’ll forget her soon enough’

When the Daily Mail reported that four copies of the Earl Spencer’s book, Swan Song, were stolen in the Netherlands, my first thought was “super-convenient for the British press, all of whom are eager to print advanced excerpts.” But some of you had another theory: that the books were stolen on behalf of Buckingham Palace, as they try (yet again) to get ahead of another terrible press cycle. Could be. I still think it was probably a press operation though. In any case, the heist scared the crap out of the Daily Mail. The Mail must have laid down serious money to get the the serialization rights for Charles Spencer’s book, and they’re protecting their investment. They dropped the first part of their serialization on Wednesday – an excerpt of Swan Song where the Earl Spencer wrote about a phone call between himself and then-Prince Charles just days after Diana’s death in 1997.

A furious Prince Charles told Earl Spencer days after Princess Diana’s death, ‘rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough’, according to a devastating memoir. In allegations that will send shockwaves through the Royal Family, Charles Spencer’s bombshell book – to be exclusively serialised in the Daily Mail from tomorrow – lifts the lid on an incendiary row with the now King over funeral arrangements.

The argument followed the decision, opposed by Diana’s brother the Earl, that Prince William and Prince Harry, then aged 15 and 12, would walk in their mother’s funeral procession. The Earl says he insisted to the then Prince of Wales that Diana would not have wanted her young sons to endure such a public ordeal. It is claimed Charles then questioned the Spencer family’s sense of duty before saying his ex-wife, whose death sparked a global outpouring of grief, would soon be forgotten.

Earl Spencer says the comments ‘unleashed’ by the King almost 30 years ago reflected ‘his pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death’.

The astonishing account of the King’s alleged outburst is included in Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, which Earl Spencer, 62, says he has written to correct ‘untruths’ told about his older sister. The Daily Mail can disclose that it includes a string of further extraordinary claims about Diana’s failed marriage to King Charles and the tumultuous aftermath of her tragic death in a car crash in Paris in 1997. Revelations from the book are set to plunge Buckingham Palace into a fresh storm just weeks after the dramatic return of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their children to the UK from California.

On September 6, 1997, six days after Diana’s death, Earl Spencer famously delivered a defiant eulogy at her funeral that was later named one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century. His raw oration in Westminster Abbey was delivered after he walked alongside William and Harry, as well as Prince Charles and Prince Philip, behind Diana’s coffin in a funeral procession through central London broadcast to 2.5billion people worldwide.

In his book, Earl Spencer writes that when one of Queen Elizabeth’s most senior aides told him in the days before the funeral that William and Harry would take part in the procession, he responded: ‘That’s not going to happen.’

But minutes later he received a phone call from Prince Charles who insisted that 18 years earlier he had walked in the funeral procession of Lord Mountbatten, his great-uncle, who he affectionately called ‘uncle Dickie’. The memoir describes how Charles ‘went nuts’ after Earl Spencer pointed out that the Prince had been 30 at the time of Lord Mountbatten’s funeral in 1979.

In one of the book’s most extraordinary passages, Earl 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!”’

Earl Spencer said that he was ‘so stunned’ by the alleged remarks that he took a few seconds to reply. ‘“I can’t believe you just said that,” I said flatly, before hanging up,’ he writes.

[From The Daily Mail]

Then-Prince Charles going on an unhinged, stream-of-consciousness rant about how much he hated a woman? Wow, Prince William really is his father’s son. Seriously, change up the names and it sounds exactly like the Spare story of William ranting down the phone at Harry about how much he hates Meghan (and they absolutely want the same fate for Meghan as well). The thing this story really blows up is King Charles’ decades-long rewrite on how he *actually* reacted to Diana’s death. A lot of people have spent a lot of time, money and effort to force a narrative that King Charles was truly emotional and deeply grieving when Diana died. Turns out, not so much. Turns out, that entire family could not wait to forget about Diana.

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