Jobson: King Charles reacted poorly to Camilla’s father’s 2006 death too

Last week, the Mail broke the story, via their serialization of the Earl Spencer’s Swan Song, about what King Charles said to the Earl Spencer just days after Princess Diana’s death in Paris. According to Spencer, then-Prince Charles was furious that Spencer did not believe that Prince Harry and William should walk behind their mother’s casket for the funeral. Prince Charles ranted at his ex-brother-in-law and then hissed “we’ll forget her soon enough.” Well, royal commentators have been at their wit’s end about it. Old-school reporters (who were actually there) have said that it actually sounds like something King Charles would have said at the time. Other commentators have tried to convince everyone that Spencer is lying. Like, these people are in shambles at the very idea that their king is a piece of sh-t who loathed his ex-wife. That the king threw a temper tantrum over Diana’s funeral arrangements. Robert Jobson has tasked himself with massaging the story in the most bizarre way. Via his latest Mail column:

Why did the palace issue a statement about Spencer’s book? These days, Buckingham Palace does not comment on books, as a matter of principle. It did not comment on Prince Harry’s Spare. I co-wrote Inspector Ken Wharfe’s memoir Diana: Closely Guarded Secret in 2002 covering his years protecting the princess, and that was greeted with silence too….Asked about Earl Spencer’s memoir, Swan Song, a palace spokesman restated the principle, then commented anyway. ‘His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and color memory.’ Somebody, surely, like his top aide Sir Clive Alderton, must have cleared it with the King before it went out. His Majesty should have sent it back with a black line through it. A classic non-denial denial. Too clever for its own good. It reads as a swipe at Earl Spencer. Calls him a liar without actually saying it. Worse, it leaves the impression that something was said. A dignified silence from the throne would have resonated far louder.

The king was so stupid to issue a statement: He is the head of state after all. Justice in Britain is dispensed in the King’s name. He should have risen above the fray, as his office requires, rather than be dragged into mudslinging.

Jobson doesn’t believe Prince Charles was giddily elated: The trouble lies in the phone calls after Diana died. Spencer claims that in one, soon after the news broke, Charles sounded ‘giddily elated, like a lottery winner.’ Do me a favor. Utter twisted nonsense. They also clashed over whether William and Harry should walk behind their mother’s coffin. By the earl’s account, he told Charles that Diana would not have wanted it, then held his tongue through a rant that, according to Spencer, ended when Charles uttered the words, ‘Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough.’ Spencer was in no mood to be ordered about by the Windsors. In his eyes they had treated his sister badly and now they and the courtiers she loathed were dictating her farewell.

But the Earl Spencer had every right to write this book: His eulogy was emotional, powerful. Savage. Spencer has every right to pen his book. He is an historian and a good writer. It is fresh, and he says it sets out his reasons why he spoke as he did that day. Had he waited until the King was dead, he would have been accused of dancing on his grave. Back then, the royals and the press had to take it on the chin. My eyes were locked on the Prince of Wales, and sorrow was written across his face. None of them answered, which did them credit. Twenty-nine years on, the King should have done the same.

Jobson doesn’t buy it though: Charles was stuck in the middle, thinking first of his boys, when Spencer tried to tear up what had already been agreed. Of course, tempers flared. Frustrated? Yes, almost certainly. Elated like a lottery winner? I simply don’t buy it. That phrase says more about Spencer’s bitterness than about Charles. Without the quarrel before it, or any sense of how it was spoken, if it was spoken at all, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough’ tells us very little. If the earl has left his half of the conversation out of the book, that is disingenuous at the very least.

The temperamental king: I have observed Charles for more than three decades. He is a compassionate man. I saw nothing that week to suggest his mind was on marrying Camilla. He has a temper, which tiredness sharpens, as the pens showed us all. Twice, in four days in September 2022, a pen got the better of the new King. First came the pen holder he waved away at his Accession Council, then the leaking pen at Hillsborough Castle, Northern Ireland, prompting Charles to exclaim, ‘I can’t bear this bloody thing.’ Both moments were caught on camera, and the internet turned them into memes before the Queen was even buried. Those who know the King well say he never bears a grudge and always apologizes soon afterwards. But he does not do death well.

King Charles’ reaction to Bruce Shand’s death: Those present recall that when Camilla’s father, Bruce Shand, died in 2006, she was distraught. Charles assured her he understood, because he had been upset over his grandmother. Camilla was stunned. It was her father, she said, not her grandmother and Charles still had both his parents. There was no cruelty in it. He can be lost in his own world.

Charles would never have contempt for Diana!! I will give Spencer this much. If Charles really did say Diana would soon be forgotten, it would go a long way to explain the eulogy, and his vow that her blood family would not let her sons’ souls be ‘simply immersed by duty and tradition.’ The walk behind the coffin cost those boys dearly. Harry says he carries it still. Each new allegation wears the monarchy down a little further – all the more when the palace answers back. Nobody else was on that line. Having re-watched Spencer’s BBC interview, I find his account, as told, impossible to believe. Whatever passed between them in anger, contempt for the mother of his sons is not in Charles.

[From The Daily Mail]

“Whatever passed between them in anger, contempt for the mother of his sons is not in Charles.” I actually feel a tiny bit sorry for these people, because they really have nothing to cling to at this point. Especially for Jobson, who was around in the 1990s, when then-Prince Charles’ contempt for Diana was palpable. Charles and Camilla were already spreading contemptuous smears about Diana, her mental health, her work, her lovers. Is it really so shocking that Charles’ contempt for Diana would have spilled out in a phone call after her death? That he would feel “giddily elated” that Diana had died after the Panorama interview? And the part about how “he does not do death well” and he compared Bruce Shand’s death to his grandmother’s death. Wow. Big “he didn’t say it but if he said it, here are all the reasons why it was okay” energy.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.