Queen Elizabeth offered to reinstate Princess Diana’s HRH after she died

Some of the most interesting parts of Charles Spencer’s Swan Song are, for me, everything around Princess Diana’s funeral planning and his memories of how people behaved and what was said. Then-Prince Charles was “giddily elated” and ranted about how Diana will soon be forgotten. The Windsors acted high-handed and tried to control Diana’s funeral. Prince Charles argued that his sons needed to walk behind their mother’s casket at a public funeral. Well, here’s another big reveal: Queen Elizabeth II offered to reinstate Diana’s HRH in death. When Diana and Charles divorced, the terms of the settlement included the removal of the “Her Royal Highness” royal-style. Diana hated that the Windsors took that away from her. But Charles Spencer says that he refused QEII’s offer:

The late Queen dramatically offered to restore Princess Diana’s royal title on the day of her funeral, a bombshell book claims. Earl Spencer describes in his explosive memoir – being exclusively serialised by the Daily Mail – how Queen Elizabeth proposed handing back his sister’s Her Royal Highness title, which she controversially lost when she divorced Prince Charles.

The earl was told of the extraordinary offer by Robert Fellowes, the Queen’s Private Secretary and his brother-in-law, as they travelled by Royal Train to Diana’s private burial at Althorp, the Spencer family’s 13,000-acre estate in Northamptonshire.

Writing in Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, the earl, 62, said Diana was ‘dreadfully hurt’ by the ‘petty and vindictive’ removal of her HRH title a year earlier and that despite the Queen’s ‘well-meaning’ gesture, he decided to reject the ‘consolation prize’.

‘I felt that I knew in my bones how she would view this posthumous award,’ he writes. ‘That’s very kind of the Queen, of course. But what’s the point, Robert? Now? I mean – Diana’s dead.’

[From The Daily Mail]

I’m sure there’s more context in the book, because this offer doesn’t even sound like something QEII would come up with on her own. It sounds like something Tony Blair came up with, right? Because by then, Blair was dictating to the Windsors and dragging them kicking and screaming into acting right. And Spencer is correct – it made no difference at that point. Some have even argued that Diana basically sold her HRH back to the Windsors for a larger financial settlement in the divorce. Diana had just seen what Sarah Ferguson had gotten in her divorce too – Fergie was stripped of her HRH AND Fergie barely got any money.

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