Royal family braces for fresh wave of outrage over Diana’s death as her brother takes aim

Analysis: Weeks after the return of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, the royal family is now bracing for a potentially bigger crisis as the brother of Diana, the late Princess of Wales, publishes a book promising to expose the “truth” about the beloved royal.

Earl Spencer’s book is threatening to reopen old wounds – not only within Buckingham Palace, which was heavily criticised for its slow response to the public outpouring of grief when Diana died, but among her two sons, who are no longer speaking despite being bonded forever by the tragedy of their mother’s untimely death.

Keenly aware to get on the front foot of the allegations, King Charles − via the palace − swiftly accused Earl Spencer of “clouded reasoning” soon after an extract was published in British media.

Earl Spencer, Diana’s younger brother, claims the then-Prince of Wales told him in the lead up to her funeral: “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough”.

Earl Spencer says Charles “went nuts” and “unleashed ... his pent-up contempt for Diana” during the heated phone call.

The extract from Swan Song: Diana, My Sister has sparked a war of words between King Charles and his former brother-in-law nearly 30 years after Diana’s death, evoking Earl Spencer’s fiery eulogy at her funeral, which took aim at the monarchy.

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King issues extraordinary statement after Diana’s brother claims he said she’d be forgotten ‘soon enough’

The statement from Buckingham Palace, issued on Wednesday night (early Thursday morning in Australia) was swift in casting doubt on the earl’s memory of the events of 1997.

“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 palace said.

It was an unusual move from the palace, which maintained a strict “never complain, never explain” rule under the 70-year reign of Elizabeth II.

Three years since King Charles ascended the throne, he’s thrown out that tried and tested mantra.

Only in very rare circumstances would the late Queen challenge reports about the monarchy.

The biggest example came in March 2021, when the palace said “recollections may vary” in response to Prince Harry and Meghan’s damning Oprah interview, in which they claimed institutional racism and neglect.

The king nor the palace have been given an advance copy of the book.

But fearing what is to come, and the fallout the book could bring, King Charles and the palace, are clearly braced for impact.

Reading between the lines, the statement is clear the king’s version of events differs greatly from the earl’s.

The aftermath of Diana’s death remains one of the most sensitive periods for the royal family.

Queen Elizabeth was condemned, unfairly, for taking too long to return to London from Balmoral Castle, where she was staying with Prince William and Prince Harry, who were 15 and 12 at the time.

The monarch’s delayed address to the nation, and her perceived apathy to the situation, were, to many, signs that she and the royal family as a whole were cold, heartless and out of touch.

“Show us you care,” The Sun declared at the time.

Instead, the queen was protecting her grandsons, and it marked one of the few times of her record-breaking reign that she put family before duty.

Three decades later, the queen’s actions are now seen in a very different light but the scars from that time remain.

Now it seems King Charles is the one protecting his two sons along with himself and the monarchy.

It’s fair to say the royal family has suffered a public-relations blow this year with the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in February, following months of revelations about his past friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The return to Britain of Prince Harry and Meghan last month has seen a flurry of commentary about the long-running feud between the Sussexes and the Windsors, culminating in a strongly-worded statement from the king insisting Harry and Meghan were “private citizens” who were banned from using their HRH titles.

Now, the palace is having to contend with Diana’s brother dredging up the past.

When announcing the book last month, Earl Spencer vowed to “tell the truth” about his sister while correcting the “untruths that have become accepted” since her death.

The book will mark the first time Earl Spencer has spoken at length about Diana and comes after he said he had been “inundated yet again” with requests for interviews about her as the 30th anniversary of her death approaches in 2027.

“This has convinced me to write down my own thoughts and memories, once and for all, rather than having the discomfort of again reading the opinions of others,” he said.

Undoubtedly, the earl is cashing in on Diana’s memory, but he − as her younger brother − has every right to do so.

Yet the book is likely to bring fresh pain and heartache for William and Harry, Diana’s sons Earl Spencer promised to protect, telling mourners at her funeral the boys wouldn’t be “immersed by duty and tradition” and instead given the freedom to “sing openly as [Diana] planned”.

In the book, Earl Spencer recounts a phone call between him and Charles days before Diana’s funeral. He had received word from a palace aide that William and Harry would take part in the procession behind her coffin, to which he replied, “That’s not going to happen”.

He received a call minutes later from Charles, who said he had walked in the funeral procession of Lord Mountbatten, his great-uncle.

The earl said Charles “went nuts” when he pointed out the prince was 30 at the time of Mountbatten’s funeral in 1979.

“Prince Charles continued his stream of anger, without me interrupting. Then he stopped,” he wrote.

“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!’”

The earl said he was “so stunned” by the comments, he took a few seconds to reply.

“‘I can’t believe you just said that’, I said flatly, before hanging up,” he wrote.

The king’s alleged comment about Diana, a source told The Telegraph UK, was “just not in his nature, and it certainly wasn’t in his nature at that time, when he was a man absolutely grief-stricken”.

Charles was “paralysed with grief” at the time, they said, and defied protocol by insisting she be afforded a full state-style ceremonial funeral, including that her coffin be draped in the royal standard as it returned from Paris to London.

Ingrid Seward, Editor of Majesty Magazine, told The Sun Diana “would be horrified” by her brother’s words.

“When I last met her six weeks before her death, she was adamant that she and Charles really loved each other,” Seward said.

“And it was so important to her that their children knew that. So she would be horrified that he would share a comment that could appear to show so much malice. I am sure it wasn’t meant like that.”

Earl Spencer has a relationship with princes William and Harry; the Duke of Sussex and his family stayed at the Spencer’s ancestral home Althorp House last month before their return to Britain.

The reasons for Harry and Meghan’s decision to move back to the UK, six years after their exit, remain unclear. But one theory is the duke wants to play a leading role in tributes to mark the 30th anniversary of Diana’s death next year.

Earl Spencer’s words about the funeral procession echo Harry’s in Spare, in which he claimed there was a heated debate about whether he and William should walk behind their mother’s coffin.

Harry said his uncle “flew into a rage”, saying, “You cannot force these children to walk behind their mother’s coffin. It’s a barbarity!”

Now Harry is back on home soil, he is closer to his uncle and ally as King Charles publicly backs his eldest son by insisting the Sussexes are “no longer working members of the royal family”.

In hours, Prince Harry will make his return to public duty by carrying out the first of several pseudo-royal engagements. Meghan is rumoured to be joining him for an Invictus Games one, despite the couple being “private citizens”.

If King Charles thought the return of Prince Harry and Meghan was the royal family’s biggest worry for the weeks ahead, he is now being haunted by the memory of Diana – and the very real presence of her vengeful brother.