Princess Diana’s brother claims King Charles said, ‘We’ll forget her soon enough,’ mere days after her death

Princess Diana’s brother is releasing a memoir about his sister next week. In preparation for it, the Daily Mail is publishing an exclusive serialization of the book. However, in the released chapter, Earl Spencer leveled a series of incendiary claims against King Charles regarding a heated dispute over the funeral arrangements for the late Princess of Wales. The release even prompted an immediate and rare response from Buckingham Palace.

The Daily Mail reported that, according to the memoir Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, the Earl claimed he argued with the then Prince of Wales about whether Princes William and Harry, who were 15 and 12 at the time, should walk in their mother’s funeral procession. The Earl wrote that he insisted that Diana would not have wanted her young sons to endure such a public ordeal. When he didn’t agree to the funeral plans, the then Prince Charles exploded. 

“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!’.”

It all ties back to grief

Per the outlet, Earl Spencer, 62, claims that he was so stunned by the alleged remark that he could only respond by saying, “I can’t believe you just said that,” before hanging up the phone. BBC News noted that the memoir is expected to be highly critical of the Royal Family. The book is scheduled for worldwide publication next Tuesday.

According to the BBC, Buckingham Palace issued an official statement in response to the allegations. The statement read: “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.” 

The outlet noted that this response is notably reminiscent of the late Queen’s famous “recollections may vary” retort. This retort was used in the past to address other high-profile accusations against the monarchy. Interestingly, this isn’t the first controversy to hit the Royal Family from a book this year. Andrew Lownie’s book, Entitled, dropped a few bombshells about Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson.

This published conflict took place right after the 1997 car crash in Paris. In this time frame,  the Royal Family faced intense public scrutiny and accusations of being out of touch with the public mood, per the Daily Mail. Earl Spencer famously delivered a defiant eulogy at Westminster Abbey on September 6, 1997, just six days after the tragedy. That speech remains etched in history, and it followed his walk alongside the young princes and other senior royals behind the coffin.

The memoir also reportedly detailed the Earl’s frustration when a senior aide to Queen Elizabeth first informed him that the young princes would participate in the procession. The book claims that when the Earl responded by saying, “That’s not going to happen,” he was soon contacted by Charles. 

The Earl wrote that Charles insisted on the arrangement by referencing his own experience walking in the funeral procession of Lord Mountbatten in 1979. The memoir notes that Charles “went nuts” when the Earl pointed out that the prince had been 30 years old at the time, rather than a young child. 

With all the revelations from the Epstein Files, the royal family has already had to deal with the fallout from former Prince Andrew over the past few months. So it will be interesting to see how the revelations from Earl Spencer’s book will sit in the public consciousness.

The lead-up to the book’s release has been further complicated by security concerns. BBC reported that four copies of the Dutch-language edition of the memoir were stolen from a truck in the Netherlands while in transit to a warehouse. Publishing sources described the theft as “extremely suspicious,” and local police are currently investigating the matter.

As the publication date nears, these revelations are expected to draw significant attention to the historical tensions within the Royal Family.