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.

Well he wasnt going to tell the truth back then . How could he come out and say ' charles was glad my sister died. I know because I had a telephone conversation with him. ' He was younger and it was different times. You just didnt do that back then.

He could easily have avoided actually praising him for the way he was handling things.

Maybe his father is an absolutte shit

How?

That does not mean that hearing Spencer say so would not be upsetting, which was your question.

Well he wouldn't have said anything at all would he if that was the case. This cleverclogs 'historian' would surely have avoided all money grabbing interviews not just lied 🙄.

It's a load of nonsense , Charles Spencer is well known as being an arse , he s trying to sell copies of his disgusting book hopefully nobody will buy it

I think Charles was having to look like that. He couldnt very well have gone to Paris grinning like a Cheshire cat, could he.

Is there any evidence that William thinks his father is an absolute shit? He seems to have a reasonably good relationship with him, and so did Harry until he met Meghan.

It's all very odd.

Well as a pp literally just said he had previously praised KC, now he's changed his tune completely. No it wasn't 'different times' back then. He had no problem sharing his hissy opinion at the funeral, I'm sure he'd have followed it up with venomous attacks in the media if what he is claiming now was true.

Sounds like something made up in the family lore to me if you look at dates.

The late Queen was engaged to Phillip at 20 years old.

So any 'romantic connection' would have to have happened before then - presumably somewhere in the 16-18 age range?

1942-1944? Records show that Philip spent the Christmas holidays with the royal family in 1943 and that rumours of an engagement started in about 1944 but they waited until the war was over to make it official.

So the romantic connection was before 16? Grim

At any time before the Queen got engaged it would make no sense for Mountbatten to be summoning John Spencer because he would have no authority over him.

At the point he became an equerry the Queen was already married with two children - so is he saying that the Queen was having a romantic connection with him as a married woman?

Exactly. He should have been allowed to marry her in the flipping first place!

Well, quite, he was perfectly happy to be critical of the RF at the time. Some of these posts now are sounding crazy. It's surely possible to dislike Charles and the monarchy without having to turn him into some kind of cartoon villain, cackling in delight over the death of his children's mother.

🤣

He was mid-30’s and the royal family were getting absolutely caned in the press. Charles was hated and there were constant “he should step aside for William” talks.

If he’d said it then the public would have absolutely believed him.

He was old enough and composed enough to have a dig at them in the eulogy, so he absolutely could have said something around that time rather than waiting 29 years,

Everyone on MN knows about emotional affairs

What is CS thinking? How will this make Diana’s sons feel?

I think he’s a horrible man to do something like this at this stage.

What a way to remember his sister.

Money and pure malice, Nice!

I doubt Charles Spencer's mother would have appreciated this "family lore".

Surely Charles Spencer could have done the very easy maths before publishing such a claim in his book.

I did not know that the boys were made to walk behind the coffin so the public wouldn’t boo Charles.
It’s always struck me as an extraordinary and barbaric thing for a father to make his sons do and this is the most plausible explanation I’ve heard for it, sadly.

It's the same as the "whatever love means" comment.

If you watch the original video it seems to be an attempt at a joke after Diana reacts with annoyance to the interviewer asking if they were in love.

The Tina Brown biography of Diana is excellent and actually quite sad because after reading it you could see there was some love and affection between them in the early days.

Love this sketch, and I do feel the second half of it is relevant here:

Diana's death was bloody awful for the royal family whichever way you look at it.

She'd been criticised for a long time that past year by the press for all sorts of things, been called a bad mother, you name it. When she died, the press (in their guilt) instantly u-turned by plastering that "queen of hearts" stuff all over the front pages and pointing fingers at Buckingham Palace in order to divert attention away from their own abhorrent behaviour, knowing of course that the palace could not retaliate. Diana would forever be remembered as a young, beautiful, saintly, wronged, tragic figure. If she'd lived, aged, made mistakes, shown herself as human and fallible, public opinion today would be quite different I'm sure.

People also seem to have retconned her as hating the monarchy, which is nonsense. She was a monarchist, and had a very close and affectionate relationship with Prince Philip in particular, whom she called "Dearest Pa". Frankly it makes no sense for Prince Charles or any of the rest of the family to be glad when she died. She and Charles were on very good terms by 1997 and were successfully coparenting. Charles would certainly have needed the Queen's consent to marry Camilla, but Diana's death didn't really change the likelihood of that. If anything, it probably set it back a few years because it would have been seen as insensitive to marry too soon afterwards.

Most important, though, the absolute devastation it brought the two young boys to lose their mother - look, you don't have to like Charlie. Plenty of people don't. But he's not a psychopath... he, like anyone else, would have done absolutely anything to spare his sons that kind of pain.

"Giddy" like he'd "won the lottery"? Oh do bugger off you horrid little man.

Did Prince Charles say, "Whatever love means" or "Whatever in love means"?

I once started a thread here to ask what pps think being in love means but there weren't many answers. Maybe it's difficult to define.

The "theft" of books from the back of that delivery truck was possibly just warm-up publicity for the publication of these excerpts & subsequent book release. He must really be struggling for cash.

@HPFA Charles has got such a hard time over the years for that comment but Diana reacted first to the question and her response ‘yes of course’ wasn’t very convincing. Charles’ strange comment may have been a nervous response.