Royal row between King Charles and Earl Spencer

[Viviennemary]

Buckingham Palace said they don't usually comment but they can't stay silent. Apparently Prince Charles said at the time of Diana's death rest assured we'll forget her soon enough. Which is pretty horrendous. Charles has more or less said grief had clouded Earl Spencer's judgement and memory.

I don't know why he has waited nearly 30 years to come out with this.

One of Diana's sisters said it's too late to back out. Your face is on the teatowels.

There were five 24 hour days between Diana's body landing at the airport and her funeral.

By the way, on the Sunday the boys went to church with the family. The sermon was one of the few in the land that Sunday that did not mention Diana's death. Diana's death was not mentioned once during the service.

Someone has a new book about his sister to spruik…..

The royal family were clear Diana was not a royal and would be having a private family funeral. The public outcry made them reconsider and I believe they did have to devise a funeral plan on the hop. From memory they used another royals plan with some minor changes.

Why (probably)?

She was his mum.

If that's true (and it's possible), just shows what F'd up type of people they are. Why on earth would they not at least pray for her soul at a Christian service? There's stiff upper lip and there's something rotten in the State of Denmark.

Wow.

I remember being asked to read at church that day.

There was undoubtably a lot of public anger, much of which was whipped up by the media who wanted to avoid their own behaviour being scrutinized IMO. However I'm not sure I would trust the reporting of the MSM- I'm sure I'm not the only person who remembers them frantically changing the narrative overnight that they had been pushing for years regarding Diana. And lets not forget it was the BBC who allowed Martin Bashir to deceive and manipulate Diana into giving that bombshell interview- lies which IMO significantly increased her feelings of paranoia and led to her refusing official security.

I thought I’d read that the walking behind the coffin thing happened because Prince Philip spoke to William about it and William said he wanted to do it. I guess that Harry would have wanted to do the same as his elder brother at that time.

walking behind coffins is fairly traditional for every class of people is just that these days very few families have the coffin in a horse drawn carriage.

Re Balmoral. I can recall the furore and people saying ‘she should be in London with her people’ and all the while she was in Scotland with her people.

I remember that because it astounded me. At the time I went to church regularly and during any service people who died would be mentioned. We would all have been outraged if there were two bereaved boys present and their mother's death was not even mentioned.

It wouldn't have to be long. But mentioned in prayers at the very least. I always wondered if this omission was at the request of the royal family.

I’m sorry. I confused posters.

Sorry you are wrong. The media seemed taken aback by the public reaction and scrambling to catch up. This was not whipped up by the media.

There were a fair number of media articles trying to explain the public reaction. They seemed perplexed, but pumped out the photos and coverage to get the readers.

And no the narrative reported was not changed over night. This is another myth. Diana was never portrayed as a saint. People knew she had faults and yet admired her. The myth is that she was criticised before and after her death became a saint. Simply not true. Although it us true the palace stopped pushing crazy ex wife stories about her bulimia.

Be careful what you post on SM - this specific issue was the subject of a legal case. What actually happened was that Diana specifically asked for The Garden house on the Althorp estate. CS turned down her request because not only was the cottage was already occupied by a staff member, but he (rightly) didn’t want the inevitable media circus to impact his children, who were very young at the time. He offered her alternative family properties, including Wormleighton Manor, but Diana herself decided not to use them. Court cases later established that claims he simply abandoned her or barred her from the estate entirely were untrue

I'm sure I'm not the only person who remembers them frantically changing the narrative overnight that they had been pushing for years regarding Diana

I'm sure I didn't dream a newspaper front page headline literally changing overnight.
"We don't like you, Dodi!" it claimed.
Then when the papers came out the next morning all that had completely disappeared and it was all sympathy, mourning etc.
Just wish I could find it somewhere, to know I'm not going mad lol.

This whole thread reminds me of this, at Klosters, about the BBC royal correspondent:

Charles, POW "These bloody people. I can't bear that man. I mean, he's so awful, he really is."

Charles's communication secretary said the prince had not been looking forward to the photo call.
"He doesn't have contempt for the media. A few paparazzi yesterday got the holiday off to a bad start.

The BBC has emphasised that Mr Witchell was at Klosters at the invitation of Clarence House.
"He is one of our finest. His question was perfectly reasonable under the circumstances," a BBC spokesman said.

Take your pick, or pic'n'mix?

KC was dealing with the death of his children’s mother, who he had very mixed and complicated feelings about, his children’s grief, and intense public scrutiny including media pressure/obsession with seeing the children. I think the walk behind the coffin was for the media to get their money-shot and then the boys would be given some space, if that wasn’t done and their faces weren’t filmed at the funeral…the media would still have been in a frenzy trying to follow them an get ‘the first photo’ afterwards.

I think KC put them in that situation both to help them build confidence as it was a huge thing to to and also to teach them how to push themselves to protect themselves from the media by taking control while giving them what they want. I seem to remember stories in the past about the DoE talking to the boys and telling them they might regret not pushing themselves to do the difficult thing of walking behind the coffin, but wouldn’t regret doing it (which he may have been wrong about). But from that, it does appear the boys had a choice (however pressured).

Did KC make the comment? We will never know, he’s bad with words and was under immense pressure, plus Charles Spencer was wanting to argue with him, which probably came across as an accusation of being a bad father…so maybe he said the wrong thing in the moment, although maybe he didn’t, because Spencer is a known cheat/liar.

One thing for certain is that Spencer is trying to make money out of something that, is either false, or should have remained private. Apart from making money for himself, the only other outcome will be hurt for his 2 nephews, and especially for Harry as he may not be in direct contact with KC so may not be able to discuss with him his version of events and get peace of mind directly from his father.

This is one of the big problems with an inherited monarchy system…Charles has never had the level of patience/diplomacy/vocabulary etc of a natural King. In a lot of ways I have empathy for him, because he never chose this role in life, and he didn’t really even chose Diana. If he wasn’t a Prince he would have had the affair with the love of his life Camilla, waited for her marriage to break down and then married her…but at the time the Royal Family and the whole way the British constitution worked wouldn’t accept that…and he was getting to an age where the monarchy needed him to produce heirs, and that’s where Diana unwitting stepped in. I think Charles was always unhappy and between a rock and a hard place and under pressures that become more and more publicly visible, until he eventually was able to marry Camilla and in his own mind and heart put things right for himself.

It seems, publicly at least, that William has just accepted his father, including his faults, and decided to live and let live…but Harry less so.

There was media racism aimed at dodi, this is true.

Clearly we remember things very differently.

Maybe we were all just confused and misheard what Charles really said?

Even if they did revamp the funeral plan for the Queen Mother.

I don’t believe Charles ever said this. Whatever his feelings about Diana were, he’s intelligent enough to realize that his family wasn’t going to forget his sons’ mother anytime soon, and he’s PR-conscious enough to realize that you don’t say something that incendiary to a grieving person.

Ah it was her funeral plan they used! I knew they revamped some royals funeral plan. Diana was not a royal anymore and there was no official funeral plan for her.
Charles was not next of kin and had no right to prevent Diana's mother viewing her body.

Well exactly. KC3 doesn’t have to be a good man either, for his denial to be true. I just thought it was odd to take the line of - I believe he said it, he can’t be trusted, just look at how he treated his wife and children, when Charles Spencer is just as bad in that department, if not worse. If moral failings as a husband and father have any bearing in this he-said-he-said scenario, then surely they apply to both parties.

I think it’s necessary to read between the lines of the alleged reason and the actual reason, but I don’t think it can be denied that regardless of the intention, in the event, William and Harry walking behind the coffin would have discouraged the public from venting their anger at KC along the route.