Discussion about Charles Spencer's book - Swan Song : Diana, my sister , Beautiful, Beloved, Hunted.

[BasiliskStare]

I know there is a thread about the theft of some pre publication editions of this book.
This thread is more by way of a book club discussion about the actual book , the text. Threads will go where they will , but my intention is this is more for me to give my opinion on the book and for others who read it or are interested in the book to join in. I have pre-ordered from Kindle (half price otherwise I may not have 😊) But is only available on September 22nd. So a holding place if you like.

But he has grown beyond it, which shows great character and resilience. Those are Kingly qualities.

Thank you very much, @LaMarschallin. Poor William.
So he's being trashed now, in 2026, for this dreadful, humiliating and distressing incident and then lashing out... when he was 13?
How cruel. I respect the fact that William is who he is now, after reading that.

Readers can google for themselves

Google isn't proof of anything. Google would probably tell me Elvis was working in my local chip shop if I used the right search terms.

It'll be 'ChatGPT says so' next.

What personal abuse, please?

Quite 🙄

Exactly….and many of us know exactly where these nuggets originate from…

Ingrid Seward is very much a royalist so I was surprised when I saw her interviewed quoting from Diana’s mother’s diary that the late Queen Elizabeth never wrote to her or even telephoned her to send her condolences after Diana’s death? She says she didn’t hear once from her. Just complete silence on the matter.

Wow. That’s cold.

Given that they were both grandmothers of W & H, and given that the late Queen had an army of staff who could write on her behalf if she didn’t want to write personally, that just seems extraordinarily and unnecessarily unpleasant to me.

One would hope that, even if you absolutely hated your “opposite” grandparent, that given they had lost a daughter at thirty-six years old, was the mother of your grandsons, and it was the second child they had lost no less, she would have been able to overcome her antipathy to express two lines of sympathy?

And they bang on about protocol?

Just this little snippet alone makes me think that QE2 was very much not the person we have been told she was. Or she was so loyal to Johnnie that she had a lot of internalised misogyny?

I know Andrew Lownie is writing a book about Prince Philip next and he mentions the fact that the late QE2 accepted that he was serially unfaithful. Of course there was an omerta over discussing it in the press.

And I suppose this might ultimately lie at the heart of the RF’s disdain of Diana? That she wasn’t prepared to shut up about Camilla and “go quietly”? Maybe the late Queen thought that as she had put up with it all of these years, then why couldn’t Diana do the same? Without considering that times had changed?

And of course Charles had the example of his father which presumably shaped how he proceeded?

My brother's wouldn't be seen in public on the bus with our mum when they were teens so I can only imagine the times Diana caused embarrassment. Does it matter now. William conducts himself publicly in the best manner possible and behind closed doors those who matter know and those who don't matter make it up to smear him.

@LaMarschallin I've never read that article by Lacey before. That's appalling, those poor boys - both of them. How selfish of Diana to do that to them.

If that's all William did then she's very lucky, she could have completely ruined her relationship with her eldest son. So damaging.

Just thinking about W "pushing her away" being so negatively spun. That reaction is a common trope used in dramatic scenes when someone is given bad news. They often push away, or "hit out" at the person giving them the bad news when they try to embrace them. Screenwriters need to know that's not a typical emotional response, but instead a sign of hulk like fury and a red flag.

The RF had no "disdain" for Diana. She was the PoW and mother of the heir. Such nonsense.

Those are also rounded adult qualities

We've all been there with teenagers! We embarrass them. However, Diana was cruel and thoughtless to do this to her sons.
Why on earth is she painted as a good mother? That's shocking.

"Teenager shouted at mother" is hardly "hold the front page" is it? I can recall shouting at mine, it's practically part of the job description of being a teenager.

Angle of the day is obviously William and his incandescence 💡

We should probably expect:
just like his father
just like his uncle
(definitely not just like his mother for those wondering)
no wonder he cheers so loudly at the football
no wonder Harry was forced to flee
no wonder Kate is so painfully thin
no wonder the Middletons’ business failed
no wonder the autocue packed up
no wonder Charles’s ears are so big
no wonder CS got the Piers Morgan dates wrong
no wonder the pen didn’t work

I’m guessing the imaginary affair might be next on the set list (just like his father / grandfather but NOT his mother fyi), maybe via laziness? 🤔

OR - no wonder he’s so angry, when Kate is so cold, just like QE2

Such nonsense 🥱

Yet William is vilified, 30+ years on

We know William and Catherine were hacked - this was the subject of a criminal trial and helped prompt the Leveson enquiry but no evidence has emerged of him verbally abusing other people or her being a victim of verbal and physical abuse.

The only other thing I could find on Googling, as was suggested in lieu of any links actually being provided, was a reference to a book by Chistopher Anderson (who seems to have produced a lot of books about the RF - I hadn't come across any of them).
AI tells me (and it's backed up elsewhere on the internet, AI is just handy to quote):

Royal author Christopher Andersen claimed in his book Kate! The Courage, Grace, and Power of the Woman Who Will be Queen that Prince William has a fierce temper and is capable of "great bellowing tantrums" that reportedly frighten King Charles.
According to Andersen and palace insiders, William's booming voice and shouting during disagreements have reportedly left King Charles shaken or "terrified".

Behavior with Others: Insiders note that William does not raise his voice at his wife, Catherine, their children, or royal staff, and is generally described as polite and considerate to the public.

However, it should be noted that Anderson was the author who suggested that King Charles "ripped a bathroom sink off a wall in a blind rage", which seemed unlikely.

It is weird when Harry has behaved so badly, punching people, using racist language, taking drugs, slapping the arses and tweaking the nipples of strangers, cheating, strip billiards in Vegas, dressing as a Nazi for a laugh, mocking disability, mistreating polo ponies, pushing pills on young women, betraying people’s privacy for money, it goes on and on. So much to comment on, yet people still prefer to go with “William is permanently incandescent” based on him pushing his mum away when she’d humiliated him, aged 13 🤷‍♀️

Yes, most peculiar!

Having a different opinion.

Yes, and I find it very unlikely that they'd row like this in front of anyone. Sounds like a tall tale.

The interview must have been dreadful for William at the time I agree. But he has spoken forcefully about Martin Bashir since. He will be aware now that Diana ultimately agreed to the interview to protect her custody of the boys.

Diana, remember, had been manipulated by Martin Bashir who had forged documents with the help of an unsuspecting graphic designer, that falsely showed bank accounts of people very close to her receiving regular payments, leading her to believe that they were spying on her on behalf of the security services. Just awful.

It’s not fair to mention the Panorama interview without mentioning Bashir and the circumstances in which it came about!

Bashir’s lies led Diana to shun her private secretary, Patrick Jephson, who in fact was the one person she could rely on and to be extremely paranoid that she was going to lose custody of the boys, as had her mother to Johnnie Spencer.

Jephson has indeed since confirmed that Princess Diana was deeply fearful of losing custody of her sons, around the time of the interview.

He recounts a pivotal meeting that took place seven days before the interview was filmed;

during this meeting—which Jephson described as akin to hearing someone dictate their "last will and testament"—Diana laid out a highly paranoid and fearful view of the world…

… Her profound anxiety about losing her boys was tied to several key factors fuelled by the situation such as that loyal staff were being paid to spy on her by security services, that her putting her side of things directly to the public was the only way she could leave the RF safely, with fair and proper custody rights to her sons.

It’s important to remember at the time that, gullible as we were back then, with no mobile phones or sm, no one knew for sure about Camilla. There were rumours of course but until Diana confirmed it in the interview that night, most of us just thought they were tittle tattle and didn’t believe it for one moment. Even I was a monarchist back then 😆 and believed in the fairy tale, as many people did!

The RF had presumably wanted Diana to carry on pretending that everything was fine in public, even when the boys were present, and play pretend happy families, or leave quietly without mentioning a mistress?

And as I said. William has since spoken very forcefully about Martin Bashir and the episode at the BBC so I am sure that he looks upon this episode with a little more fairness and objectivity than many posters are doing here.

According to Andersen and palace insiders, William's booming voice and shouting during disagreements have reportedly left King Charles shaken or "terrified".

Key word - 'reportedly.' And by what palace insiders and to who, exactly? let's have names and context instead of backstairs gossip.

So do I. Diana was a silly, silly woman.

It's a pity that whatever therapist PW used didn't treat Harry as well.