LONDON — Earl Charles Spencer, the younger brother of the late Princess Diana, makes a series of serious allegations about King Charles III in his forthcoming memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, including claims about Charles’ reaction to Diana’s death and the arrangements for her 1997 funeral.
The most explosive allegation is that the then-Prince of Wales told Spencer, “We’ll forget her soon enough,” during a heated telephone call about whether Princes William and Harry should walk behind their mother’s coffin in the funeral procession. Buckingham Palace has strongly disputed Spencer’s account, saying grief can “cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory.”
Spencer has publicly defended his version of events in a BBC interview, saying, “Those are exactly the words he said.” The disagreement has reopened one of the most emotionally charged chapters in modern royal history, nearly three decades after Diana died in a car crash in Paris at age 36.
The book is due to be published Sept. 22. Its claims have been published in extracts by the Daily Mail, and several of the strongest allegations have not been independently corroborated. The dispute is therefore best understood as a clash of competing accounts: Spencer’s personal recollections and Buckingham Palace’s forceful rejection of how he remembers the period after his sister’s death.
The book’s central claim
The main allegation concerns a phone call in the days after Diana’s death on Aug. 31, 1997.
Spencer writes that he objected to palace plans for Prince William, then 15, and Prince Harry, then 12, to walk behind Diana’s coffin during the funeral procession. According to the excerpts, he believed Diana would not have wanted her sons to endure the experience.
He says that the then-Prince Charles responded angrily during the call.
In Spencer’s account, Charles criticized the Spencer family for lacking a proper sense of duty. Spencer says he expected Charles to moderate his tone but instead heard him say: “We’ll forget her soon enough.”
Spencer has described the alleged comment as shocking.
In his BBC interview with Laura Kuenssberg, he said he was “hyper alert” to Charles’ words because he had spoken with him by telephone only twice in his life. “Those are precisely the words that he said and I promise that to you now,” Spencer said.
He said he told family and friends about the exchange at the time because he found the alleged remark so disturbing.
Spencer also said he ended the call after telling Charles that he could not believe what had been said.
The statement is central to the book’s argument that Charles retained deep resentment toward Diana even after her death, and that the royal family did not fully understand the scale of public grief over her loss.
Buckingham Palace’s response
Buckingham Palace has not offered a point-by-point account of the call. Instead, it issued an unusually strong statement questioning the reliability of Spencer’s recollection.
“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 colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss,” the palace said.
The wording was notable because royal households rarely respond directly to memoir claims, particularly claims involving private conversations from decades earlier.
The palace did not say precisely what Charles remembers saying during the call. It did not provide a transcript, witness account or alternative description of events. Its response focused instead on the effect that grief can have on memory and judgment.
Spencer rejected that response in his BBC interview.
“Is he furious? Is he furious or is he embarrassed?” he said, before repeating that his account was truthful.
The result is an unresolved historical dispute.
Spencer’s account is based on his personal memory of a private call. Buckingham Palace has denied the claim broadly but has not provided a detailed factual counter-narrative. No recording or independent contemporaneous documentation of the alleged conversation has been publicly released.
For readers, the responsible framing is clear: Spencer alleges the remark was made; Buckingham Palace disputes his account.
Funeral procession and William and Harry
The funeral procession remains one of the most enduring images from Diana’s death.
On Sept. 6, 1997, William and Harry walked behind their mother’s coffin alongside their father, Prince Charles; their grandfather, Prince Philip; and Earl Spencer. The image was watched around the world and has remained a focal point in debates about grief, public duty and how the royal family handled the aftermath of Diana’s death.
Spencer’s memoir argues that he initially opposed the boys’ participation.
He says he believed Diana would not have wanted them to face the pressure of the public procession. According to the published extracts, he told palace officials that it was “not going to happen” when he learned of the plan.
The decision has since been discussed by both brothers.
Prince Harry has said that no child “should be asked to do” what he did at age 12. But in a 2017 interview, he also said that, looking back, he was glad to have been part of the day, while declining to say whether the decision itself was right or wrong.
The complexity of Harry’s own comments reflects the wider problem of judging events from 1997. The funeral procession was both a public act of mourning and an intensely personal experience for two boys who had just lost their mother.
Spencer’s memoir presents it as evidence of a gap between the palace’s emphasis on duty and his family’s concern for William and Harry’s emotional welfare.
Claims about Charles’ reaction to Diana’s death
The new book contains broader allegations about Charles’ behavior after Diana died.
In another published extract, Spencer claims that Charles “sounded giddily elated, like a lottery winner” during a call immediately after the crash. Spencer contrasts that alleged tone with the shock and difficulty speaking he says he heard from other callers.
Spencer also suggests that some people inside Buckingham Palace were “relieved, indeed pleased” by Diana’s death, though this is presented as his belief or suspicion rather than a documented statement from palace officials.
These claims are among the most serious in the book because they go beyond disagreement over a funeral plan and attribute emotional motives to Charles and others within the palace.
Buckingham Palace’s response to the “we’ll forget her soon enough” allegation applies broadly to Spencer’s recollections but does not address each individual claim separately.
The allegations should therefore be treated with care. They are Spencer’s personal account of private conversations and his interpretation of the mood and motives of others at a traumatic moment. They have not been independently verified by public records or corroborating witnesses in the reporting available so far.
Claims about the marriage
The memoir also revisits the troubled marriage between Diana and Charles.
According to extracts published by the Daily Mail, Spencer writes that Diana believed Charles was entering their marriage with his heart elsewhere. He says she found a bracelet Charles had purchased for Camilla Parker Bowles and considered breaking off the engagement shortly before the 1981 wedding.
Spencer also writes that Diana told a friend Charles had said he was happy to marry her but was not in love with her. The book presents this as part of a longer history of emotional distance and unhappiness in their relationship.
Charles and Diana married in 1981, separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996. Their marital difficulties, Charles’ relationship with Camilla and Diana’s struggles inside the royal family were extensively documented during their lifetimes and have been the subject of books, interviews, biographies and dramatizations.
What is new in Spencer’s memoir is the brother’s perspective: he presents himself as a witness to Diana’s private distress and as someone who believes the royal family failed her emotionally.
The palace has not publicly responded in detail to the book’s claims about the marriage.
Other personal allegations
The published excerpts also include claims about Diana’s mental health and vulnerability.
Spencer writes that he believed Diana had ADHD and rejection-sensitive dysphoria, and he describes periods in which he says she struggled deeply with emotional distress. He alleges that she at times considered suicide but did not act because of her love for William and Harry.
These are sensitive claims about a deceased person’s private health and state of mind.
They are not diagnoses independently established in the reporting. Spencer’s statements reflect his interpretation of his sister’s experiences. They should not be treated as formal medical conclusions.
The memoir also discusses Diana’s eating disorder. Spencer suggests that comments Charles made about her body before the wedding contributed to her distress, including an alleged remark about her waist.
Diana herself publicly discussed bulimia in a 1995 BBC interview, describing it as a symptom of pressures and emotional pain within her marriage and royal life. That public history provides context for Spencer’s account, but it does not independently confirm every detail in the memoir.
Why the palace responded now
The palace’s decision to respond at all is unusual.
Royal households generally follow a “never complain, never explain” approach, particularly when confronted with memoirs, tabloid extracts or family disputes. By issuing a direct response, Buckingham Palace signaled that it viewed Spencer’s allegation as serious enough to challenge publicly.
The timing is also sensitive.
King Charles has spent recent years trying to stabilize the monarchy after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the departure of Prince Harry and Meghan from royal duties, public family tensions and his own health challenges. The release of a book that revisits Diana’s death and questions Charles’ character risks reviving public scrutiny of one of the monarchy’s most difficult periods.
Diana remains a uniquely powerful figure in Britain and internationally. Her death generated extraordinary public grief, and the royal family’s initial response was widely criticized as distant and out of touch.
The palace’s statement implicitly acknowledges the enduring emotional force of that moment while disputing Spencer’s conclusions.
The memoir may also affect public perceptions of Charles’ relationship with his sons. William and Harry were central figures in Diana’s funeral, and both have publicly spoken about the impact of losing her.
Neither prince has commented publicly on Spencer’s new book.
Spencer’s long-running conflict with the royals
Spencer has long been one of the royal family’s most vocal critics.
At Diana’s funeral, he delivered a eulogy that was widely interpreted as a rebuke to the royal family. He praised Diana’s “imaginative and loving” qualities and promised that her “blood family” would protect William and Harry and preserve her legacy.
The speech captured public anger at the time. Many people believed the palace had been slow to recognize the national outpouring of grief following Diana’s death.
The tensions between the Spencers and the royal household have continued in different forms ever since. They have been portrayed in films and television dramas, including The Queen and The Crown, and have remained part of the broader narrative around Diana’s life and death.
Spencer has said he wrote the book to correct what he considers “untruths” about his sister and to tell her story from a brother’s perspective.
Critics have questioned whether revisiting these claims publicly serves Diana’s memory or reopens painful family wounds. Supporters may argue that Spencer’s account adds a personal perspective to a history in which official royal narratives have often dominated.
What the book means for King Charles
The immediate effect is reputational, not legal.
Spencer’s book does not accuse Charles of a crime. It makes personal allegations about his private remarks, his emotional reaction to Diana’s death and his role in decisions surrounding her funeral.
The most damaging claim, that Charles said Diana would soon be forgotten, has been met with an unusually firm palace denial.
For Charles, the episode revives questions that the monarchy has spent years trying to move beyond: the failure of his marriage to Diana, the palace’s response to her death and the tension between institutional duty and personal grief.
For the royal family, the book may also intensify public interest in how Diana’s legacy continues to shape William and Harry’s lives. Both sons have repeatedly sought to honor their mother’s memory through charitable work, public speeches and family decisions.
The strongest political and cultural impact may come not from whether every claim can be proven, but from the fact that the book returns Diana to the center of Britain’s royal conversation.
The limits of what can be known
The central allegation concerns a private telephone call nearly 30 years ago.
There is no public recording. No neutral witness has been identified. There is no public transcript or diary entry from the time that definitively resolves what was said.
That does not mean Spencer’s account is necessarily false. It means that readers cannot independently verify it based on evidence currently available.
The same caution applies to claims about tone, motive and private reactions. A person’s perception of another person’s voice in a moment of trauma can be deeply sincere and still be difficult to prove or disprove decades later.
The accurate journalistic summary is:
- Spencer alleges Charles reacted angrily to disagreement over the funeral procession and said, “We’ll forget her soon enough.”
- Spencer also alleges Charles sounded elated when he learned of Diana’s death.
- Buckingham Palace has strongly rejected Spencer’s recollection, saying grief can affect memory and judgment.
- Spencer has publicly reaffirmed his claim.
- The full book is due Sept. 22, and the published extracts have been serialized by the Daily Mail.
The story is therefore not a settled historical finding. It is an active dispute between a prominent family member and the royal household over the memory of one of the most consequential moments in recent British history.