Royal row between King Charles and Earl Spencer 2

[Viviennemary]

Buckingham Palace have said they won't be commenting further on the book. But I expect plenty of others will be and it's not even published yet so I started this second thread. I really liked Diana and thought she got treated shabbily by Charles. But really writing a book of gripes 30 years later is not on imho. I noticed on the news Harry declined to comment on it. Sensible decision for once.

Okay so maybe his father exaggerated his story to his son or it was before he was equery.

But this is what the royalists always do. Comb through a book critical of the royal family and try and find tiny discrepancies.

But this is a huge discrepancy for a supposed detailed historical writer.

It is literally one sentence where he relays what his father told him,
Most of the book is what he personally witnessed.

The same could be said about anti-royalists (I’m not actually a royalist for the record - my thing is history). Why go from correcting my point so sharply to pretending it doesn’t matter? If you’re going to write a book and say that it’s factual then it needs to be factual.

That’s nothing to do with being a royalist or not.

You can’t expect to write a book, brand as the truth finally coming out and then expect people to ignore factual inaccuracies in it.

And stating incorrect things as facts naturally makes people more wary of believing other facts you come out with.

I think Charles would only be human to have a moment where he was at least relieved the main problem to his marriage to Camila had now disappeared, that said in the next few days I think the palace, indeed most of the world were shocked about the outpouring of affection for Diana from the country, so while Diana’s death had removed the obstacle to the marriage, Camila was put back into the background for a while, when she had been beginning to be presented more as his partner.

Given the things you’ve posted erroneously on these boards, I can now understand why you rate CS as an accurate historian

I think he should have said my father told me...
Maybe he did in the sentence beforehand?

Have you had sight of the stolen Dutch copies? How can you state what “most” of the book is when it is not yet published?

But he didn’t. He stated it as a fact. Therefore it’s perfectly acceptable for people to point out this particular fact is not possible.

He is the one who is promoting his book as a truth fact-driven book.

What you on about? These quotations are from the sections of the book that has been chosen by Spencer and the Mail to promote the book and serialise it. These are precisely the bits of the book that Spencer wants the public to focus on.

It could very well be that the rest of the book is less aggressive and more sympathetic. But, if Spencer is so determined to tell the world this story about how his father was going to marry the Queen but the Mountbattens stopped it without even bothering to check how accurate it is - and it's a story that immediately raises scepticism - then I'm not particularly confident that accuracy will be a major concern in the rest of the book.

Claiming that we almost had the Windsor-Spencer dynasty but the Mountbattens manoeuvred to stop it is hardly a trivial discrepancy. And you don't have to be a "royalist" to call someone out for bullshit.

Yeah this is horrible. If I make a mistake I own it.
Meanwhile there are some posters here who continually post misinformation or comments with errors and never ever own up to it.
I try to be accurate and engage honestly.
You just make personal attacks, like this one.

Or (as we doctors call it) expose lies and defend the truth.

i mean , who gives a damn if it’s true as long as it fits your favoured narrative?🙄

But you haven’t.

You sharply told me I was wrong, and then said that maybe his father exaggerated. That’s not the same as saying you were wrong.

And then accused anyone picking up the error as being a royalist who picks as one sentence…

The bit about Charles being in love with his valet doesn’t seem to have got much attention. Did Diana really mean his valet or was this code for something else ? If she was claiming her husband was secretly gay/bisexual, I would have thought that would be a bigger story. At the time it would have been a very big deal, so I’m surprised Diana didn’t leak it at the time.

And that’s the problem - he’s got no evidence or other witnesses to back up the thing he’s written about in the excerpts we’ve seen so far.

And one of the interesting things he wrote — that Elizabeth had a serious enough alternative suitor to Philip that he had to be warned off by Mountbatten - which we have never heard before and totally contradicts the most well known story about Elizabeth that she fell for Philip at 13 and could not be persuaded otherwise.

But they way he’s written that ‘fact’ makes it completely bogus.

Conveniently all the people who would be able to confirm or deny are dead.

I do think it’s very significant that he’s brought out this book with all the rest of his claims about KC’s demeanor after his brother in law has died because he was right there working very closely with the royal family at that time and would presumably have his own memories.

King Charlie gets his money no questions asked….at least earl whateverhisname writes a book!

It was said that Diana recorded tapes of George smith talking about this while in rehab. I don’t think that was long before Diana died though, so perhaps that’s the reason they never leaked out.

The story was then seen as unreliable as Smith offered to retract the story and write an apology when offered money by a newspaper.

[Edited by MNHQ at poster's request]

This was in the tabloids at the time. I think a lot of older people are simply shrug I already knew that.

This is today's headline in one of the UK's tabloids.

'Giddily elated' is a different emotion to 'relieved', and I think any relief would have been dwarfed by the horror of what had happened to his sons.

Also, he had already divorced Diana, so she wasn't a technical obstacle to his marriage to Camilla (if he were a commoner), but her death didn't solve the theological problem that Charles and Camilla were divorcees, Andrew Parker Bowles was obviously very much alive, and Charles was the future head of the C of E.

Even if KC was giddy with excitement on her death, which I seriously doubt, he would not have showed that to her brother. He is not stupid. Also, Diana was mother to his children, whatever you think of him he does love them.
Earl Spencer is an odious creep grifting off his dead sister.

They were on good, jokey terms by her last years.

I think CS is projecting. As if Charles would have so openly displayed pleasure at her death. As a pp said, he’s not that stupid.

Watching everything unfold, I’m really starting to see strong similarities between Harry and his uncle, Charles Spencer. They both appear quite hot-headed, inflexible, and struggle to forgive, holding onto grudges for years. There also seems to be a shared sense of paranoia regarding the media and outsiders. I wonder if these are Spencer specific traits or just a coincidence....

🙄