Buckingham Palace issued a rare public statement pushing back on Charles Spencer's memoir allegation that King Charles dismissed Princess Diana's death with contempt, a claim the palace stopped short of directly denying.
Spencer, the 9th Earl of Spencer and Diana's younger brother, alleged in an excerpt from his upcoming book "Swan Song: Diana, My Sister" that then-Prince Charles unleashed a bitter tirade during a phone call shortly after Diana died in August 1997. The excerpt, published by the Daily Mail, included what Spencer described as Charles's parting words during the heated exchange.
The alleged quote, "Rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough", landed nearly three decades after Diana's fatal car crash in Paris's Pont de l'Alma tunnel, and it drew one of the most unusual responses from the palace in recent memory. Buckingham Palace almost never responds to book claims. This time, it did.
A Buckingham Palace spokesperson, speaking on behalf of King Charles, offered a carefully worded reply that acknowledged Spencer's loss but questioned his reliability as a narrator. Fox News Digital reported the statement, which People magazine first published:
"While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and color memory in ways others do not recognize, even many years after such a loss."
That single sentence carried two distinct messages. The palace acknowledged it was breaking its own stated policy of not commenting on books. And it framed Spencer's recollection as grief-distorted memory rather than fact, without ever saying the words "this didn't happen."
The palace did not deny the phone call took place. It did not deny that the conversation grew heated. It did not address the specific quote Spencer attributed to Charles. What it offered instead was a psychological explanation for why Spencer might remember events differently than they occurred.
For a family that has spent decades managing scandal through silence, even that much was extraordinary.
In the Daily Mail excerpt, Spencer painted a vivid picture of the conversation. The dispute, he wrote, centered on the decision to have Prince William, then 15, and Prince Harry, then 12, walk behind their mother's casket during the funeral procession. Spencer described Charles as furious:
"Prince Charles continued his stream of anger, without me interrupting. Then he stopped. I assumed the pause signaled an effort to bring himself under control, but then he unleashed down the phone what I have always taken to be his pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death."
Spencer wrote that Charles then "hissed" the line about forgetting Diana "soon enough." The word choice, "hissed," "contempt," "horror", frames the moment as deliberate cruelty, not a flash of grief. Whether that framing reflects what happened or what Spencer believes happened is the question the palace statement was designed to raise.
The book, scheduled for release September 22, will arrive into a royal family that has already weathered years of public feuding. Harry and Meghan Markle recently reunited with King Charles in what was described as their first family visit in four years, a fragile step that another round of Diana-era accusations could easily undo.
The funeral procession decision has been relitigated publicly for years. Spencer himself told BBC Radio 4's Today program in 2017 that the walk was the worst moment of that day, worse even than delivering his famous eulogy:
"It was the most horrifying half an hour of my life. It was just ghastly. And it was far worse than having to deliver a speech at the end of it. It was the worst part of the day by a considerable margin, walking behind, well, my sister's body, with two boys who were obviously massively grieving their mother."
Spencer described a "crashing tidal wave of grief" hitting the procession and said he still has nightmares about it. He told the BBC he found the requirement that they look straight ahead "bizarre and cruel."
Prince Harry corroborated at least part of that account in his own 2023 memoir, "Spare." Harry wrote that "several adults were aghast" at the decision and that "mummy's brother, Uncle Charles, raised h***." Harry attributed a specific protest to Spencer: "You can't make these boys walk behind their mother's coffin! It's barbaric."
Who ultimately made the decision, and on what rationale, remains unclear from the available accounts. Both Spencer and Harry describe opposition to it, but neither identifies the person or body that overruled those objections. The tensions between the brothers over their mother's legacy have continued to simmer. William has reportedly grown exasperated with Harry over a series of public disputes that have strained the family further.
Spencer's book is the latest in a line of royal memoirs that have turned private grief into public spectacle. Harry's "Spare" created global headlines in 2023. Now Spencer, who has been a vocal defender of Diana's memory for nearly 30 years, is adding his own account to the record.
Diana married Charles in July 1981. They announced their separation in December 1992 and finalized their divorce in August 1996. She died just one year later, on August 31, 1997, at age 36, in the Paris crash that also killed her partner Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul.
Spencer's claim about the phone call is, by its nature, unverifiable by anyone outside the conversation. Only two people were on the line. One of them now wears the crown. The other is selling a book. The palace's response, carefully avoiding a flat denial while casting doubt on Spencer's memory, suggests Buckingham Palace calculated that a non-denial was less damaging than silence, and that a direct denial would only elevate the allegation further.
That calculation tells you something about how seriously the palace took the charge. A family that built its modern brand on stoic discretion does not break its own rules over claims it considers trivial.
Whether Spencer's account is accurate, grief-warped, or something in between, the palace's decision to respond publicly guaranteed the quote would travel further than any excerpt alone. The royals wanted the last word. They may have ensured they won't get it.