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.

I thought the 50th party was before Diana died

He's just trying to flog a book and get some press coverage - same with the shenanigans about copies of the book being stolen. All PR hype.

The people who will be most impacted by this unedifying treatise are William and Harry and their children (George at Eton particularly will doubtless be teased).

Spencer isn't a particularly honourable bloke himself.

sorry- misread it as Camilla's party- had very little sleep last night

Spencer gives me the creeps. Punting out Diana tattle for a few quid, let the women’s memory rest. People say and do all manner of weird things in grief and shock - if what he claims was said - and I think there’s a big if- what purpose does it serve to expose that now?

Seem to recall he wasn’t that keen to help her post divorce by letting her live back on the Althorp estate post split.

Judging by the number of wives he’s gone through and his own kids swerving of him, I wouldn’t be holding him up as some kind of saint, just because he was related to Diana, herself no saint either.

I remember being shocked at Charles' comments caught on camera about Nicholas Witchell!

I can actually well imagine him saying this. I can also imagine Dominic West recreating it!!

I can’t believe people are saying this didn’t happen. The king is well known for being petulant (remember the pen?) I agree that Earl Spencer is a bit of a knobber, but I believe that this happened.

Charles Spencer's euology at the funeral included words about protecting Diana's boys. Why does he want to damage W&H's relationship with their father? His motivation can only be cash.

I’m sorry to see these continued wounds being reopened publicly in the family for the sake of Diana’s kids. This does make me wonder if this forthcoming book and presumably having the support of Earl Spencer; relates to the timing of Harry Wales returning to live in the UK. He has an uncle who seems as angry and sad about his mum’s death as he is.

Not suggesting William is not as angry and sad but he has managed to emotionally contain his mum’s loss in the way that he lives his life in public, at least.

Its really sad to see a family still taking swipes at each other after all these years but complex bereavement between complicated people can be like that. Hopefully everyone eventually finds what they are looking for; even though it seems unlikely now.

Sorry, but people repeatedly bringing up a tetchy couple of seconds over a pen as a sign of Charles' temper 😁

Even if what happened happened, it's best to leave these things in the past and not muck rack for cash. Especially when he will upset William and stoke up the fires where his paranoid nephew is concerned. He ought to have more class.

The reason the palace have broken the 'never complain, never explain' rule is because it is so believable. I don't mind King Charles but it's a matter of record how out of step the royal family were with the extent of public grief at the time.

Another one old enough to remember.
The RF did initially misjudge and underestimate the outpouring of grief for Diana. They seemed aloof, disconnected, preferred to stay in Balmoral rather than return to London and respond to her death. At his sister’s funeral Spencer’s scathing remarks about the RF were loudly cheered by many outside Westminster Abbey and more discreetly by some inside.
Whether or not this was said, Charles Spencer, who promoted himself as protective of William and Harry, is doing his nephews a considerable disservice.
If I’d been KC3 I’d also have had a “tantrum” about a pen. He was under considerable stress having just lost his mother and was undergoing a packed schedule of broadcasted public events. I’ve lost both parents and I couldn’t have done what he did.

30 years later I doubt either of them remember the conversation exactly. They both looked devastated at the time and grief often leads to words said hastily that we may regret later. Most of us don't have to live through our relatives and total strangers writing books about our ex, or our parent, for money, and for that we should all be grateful.

No one comes out of this whole saga looking perfect, everyone involved probably has regrets from the time. But after 30 years I wish we could let Diana rest in peace. That it is her brother stirring everything up again is sad.

Charles Spencer’s eulogy at the funeral was absolutely furious at the Royal Family. His idea of how to support the boys may have been very different from how it happened. Not saying any of these parties on either ‘side’ are saints or sinners or reliable narrators now, but at the time it was obvious Earl Spencer was squarely blaming them for all the upset for his sister of recent years.

Of course the monarch would never admit to such an outburst if it happened. Given the circumstances, it would be too controversial.

And yes, to be fair to King Charles, by all accounts he was the one who insisted that Diana’s remains were brought back from Paris by the Queen’s flight and not a standard aircraft. He insisted on going to Paris personally with Diana’s sisters. And he insisted that the coffin was draped with a Royal standard. Quite right too.

And this issue apparently was the cause of a fierce argument between himself and the late Queen who thought that as the couple were divorced and Diana had had her HRH title removed and she was no longer a working member of the royal family, that her remains should be handled privately.

I have just looked it up and it was reported that “Charles fought harder for Diana than he had ever fought for her in her lifetime”.

But I am now wondering how all of this became known and who put this information. about Charles standing up to his mother in to the public domain?

The journalist Richard Kay who had been on good terms with Diana prior to her death, first broke the story, but I wonder who his source was?

Charles’s actions seemed absolutely legitimate, appropriate and sincere at the time and may well have been so, but thinking about this, it is quite unusual that the details of such a sensitive and private conversation between monarch and heir should become public knowledge?

And Diana’s memory hasn’t been treated well by the RF since her death. Patrick Jephson, Diana’s former chief of staff, has spoken about this at length. He said in a podcast I listened to that there had been efforts by those close to Charles to reframe her reputation since her death and imply that she wasn’t “up to the job” when he knew having worked with her for over seven years that this was absolutely not the case.

As for William and Harry, both of them struggle with their relationship with Charles by all accounts, and maybe all of this is partly why?

Grief clouds/colours/affects judgment

i'm sure we've heard something similar from Buck House before:

Recollections may vary etc. .

Bit of gaslighting perhaps? To the PP who mentioned that Charles was fully aware of Diana's popularity...yes, and he hated it.

Personally I wouldn't be surprised if he did say it.

I remember seeing Prince Charles' face when he accompanied Diana's body back to England. I do not believe it was the face of someone who would have made that remark. He had their children to think about, would a father have said that?

It's not tripe it was reported in the Times in detail. Ragwort was one of the issues I seem to remember it triggers him in his Inclusivity and Healing garden or some such name !

@KWhOoo
They seemed aloof, disconnected, preferred to stay in Balmoral rather than return to London and respond to her death.
This was a decision taken by QE2 and PP in order to protect the boys and allow them to process their grief privately. A decision most caring grandparents would have made, eh? It was Tony Blair who pressured the return of the princes to help the nation grieve. I know what I'd have done - their mistake was in allowing Blair to persuade them into going along with all that public shitshow.

This exactly
Diana cheated too

They should never have got married in the first place! That’s the long and short of it, they weren’t suited at all.

I doubt he said it

Sort of makes sense though why that couple are back from USA. They need the Dosh to let's trash the royal family and then they will be needed... Hahaha never!

He may well have said it but what’s the point in raking it all up now? I’d be interested to know why ES has popped up out of the woodwork now just when H&M are back, between them they seem determined to damage the RF.

The whole thing around Diana’s death was ridiculous, people who never knew her bleating on about what the RF should and shouldn’t do while they were apparently just trying to do the best for her sons, the people genuinely affected by her death.

It is and it underlines one of the problems of having an inherited monarchy as the head of state when you have social media , a free press and a populace that enjoys feeding on the whole soap opera. Lord Attenborough is often touted a s dream President and we have never had his foibles dragged through the media - maybe because he has none worth speaking of. How you behave in private is a good indicator as to who you are and strangely we never heard anything about the late Queen- most probably because that who she was.

I don’t think it is sad. Charles Spencer may feel that Diana’s memory hasn’t been allowed to rest in peace by those in power who had reasons to besmirch it and who wanted to legitimise their own relationship in the process. He may have felt that the thirtieth anniversary of Diana’s death is one of his last opportunities to do this.