Nearly three decades after Princess Diana’s death, the events of the first terrible hours after the Paris crash are once again at the center of a royal controversy.
This time, the allegations come from Diana’s younger brother, Charles Spencer.
In excerpts from his forthcoming memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, Spencer makes an extraordinary claim about a telephone conversation he says he had with the then-Prince Charles shortly after Diana died on August 31, 1997. According to Spencer, Charles sounded “giddily elated — like a lottery winner.” (Reuters)
It is Spencer’s recollection and interpretation of a conversation almost 30 years ago — not an independently established fact about Charles’s emotions.
And Buckingham Palace has now pushed back publicly and unusually forcefully, suggesting grief can affect judgment and memory. (AP News)
The Claim Begins With a Phone Call on the Morning Diana Died
Diana was 36 when she died from injuries sustained in the car crash in Paris.
She and Charles had divorced the previous year.
Spencer was in South Africa when he learned that his sister had died. In his new account, he describes receiving a stream of telephone calls from people struggling to comprehend what had happened.
One of those calls, he says, came from Charles.
According to an excerpt of Spencer’s memoir reported by ABC, Charles told him that he had already informed 15-year-old William and 12-year-old Harry of their mother’s death at Balmoral. (ABC News)
But it was Charles’s tone that Spencer says stunned him.
He remembers the conversation very differently from the other calls he received that morning, describing Charles as sounding unusually upbeat.
That recollection has now produced one of the most serious public disputes between Diana’s family and Buckingham Palace in years.
Spencer Says Charles Sounded ‘Like a Lottery Winner’
The language Spencer uses is startling.
He writes that Charles sounded “giddily elated — like a lottery winner.” (ABC News)
Spencer goes further, interpreting Charles’s demeanor as possible relief that the turbulent chapter surrounding his marriage and divorce from Diana had abruptly ended. PEOPLE reports that Spencer speculates in the memoir about whether Diana’s death might also have removed an obstacle to Charles eventually marrying Camilla Parker Bowles. (People.com)
That latter point is Spencer’s interpretation, not a documented statement of Charles’s thinking.
Charles and Camilla eventually married in 2005, almost eight years after Diana’s death.
Buckingham Palace strongly disputes Spencer’s broader characterization of the King.
The Palace Did Something It Rarely Does
Royal memoirs routinely produce uncomfortable headlines.
Buckingham Palace frequently declines to engage.
Not this time.
The palace responded to Spencer’s allegations with a statement questioning the reliability of memories formed amid intense bereavement, saying the pain of grief can “cloud reason, affect judgment and color memory.” (The Washington Post)
It was a pointed response.
Rather than merely saying it would not comment on a private conversation from 1997, the palace challenged Spencer’s recollection.
That has now prompted Spencer to push back again.
Spencer Says He Knows Exactly What He Heard
Spencer has rejected the suggestion that grief distorted his memory.
According to The Guardian, he says he discussed Charles’s alleged words with friends and relatives at the time, which he presents as a reason he remains confident in his recollection almost three decades later. (The Guardian)
The dispute therefore hinges on memories of private conversations for which the public has no recording.
Spencer says the exchanges happened as he remembers them.
The palace disputes the portrayal and questions whether grief has influenced his recollection.
There is no independent way to establish Charles’s emotional state from Spencer’s description of his voice alone.
But the “elated” allegation isn’t even the most incendiary line in the memoir.
Another Alleged Sentence Has Caused an Even Bigger Storm
Spencer describes another argument with Charles while the families were making arrangements for Diana’s funeral.
The subject was William and Harry.
Spencer says he strongly objected to the idea of Diana’s two sons walking behind their mother’s coffin through London.
Harry was only 12.
William was 15.
According to Spencer, he believed putting the boys in that position would be extraordinarily difficult for them.
During the disagreement, Spencer alleges that Charles told him:
“Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough.”
Buckingham Palace disputes Spencer’s account. (Reuters)
Because the conversation was private and is being recounted decades later, the line should be understood as Spencer’s allegation rather than an established quotation from Charles.
The Argument Was About William and Harry Walking Behind the Coffin
That funeral procession became one of the defining images of Diana’s death.
On September 6, 1997, William and Harry walked behind their mother’s coffin.
Alongside them were their father Charles, grandfather Prince Philip and uncle Charles Spencer.
Millions watched.
Spencer now says he opposed the plan.
He alleges that palace officials believed having William, Harry and Spencer in the procession would help shield Charles from possible hostility from members of the public. (The Guardian)
That is Spencer’s account of the discussions.
What is indisputable is how young Diana’s sons were as they made that walk — and how enduring the image became.
William Has Since Spoken About How Difficult That Day Was
Years later, Prince William described the experience of walking behind his mother’s coffin as one of the hardest things he had ever done.
Harry has been even more explicit about his discomfort with what happened.
The brothers’ later recollections don’t independently establish Spencer’s claims about the argument with Charles, but they do show why the decision remains controversial almost 30 years later.
The procession was conceived as part of a national moment of mourning.
For William and Harry, it was something much more private.
They were children following their mother’s coffin while the world watched.
Charles Was There Beside His Sons
The current controversy risks flattening an enormously complicated historical moment into a single alleged telephone call.
Contemporary photographs show Charles walking alongside William and Harry at the funeral.
He had also traveled to Paris with Diana’s sisters after her death to accompany her coffin back to Britain.
At the time, the royal family was facing extraordinary public anger over its response to Diana’s death.
Flowers accumulated outside royal residences.
Crowds gathered.
And pressure mounted for the monarchy to acknowledge publicly the scale of the grief.
Britain’s Reaction to Diana’s Death Was Unlike Almost Anything the Monarchy Had Seen
Diana’s death triggered an extraordinary national response.
Huge quantities of flowers were placed outside Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace.
Members of the public openly criticized the royal family for remaining at Balmoral and initially keeping the flag at Buckingham Palace unchanged.
Eventually, Queen Elizabeth II returned to London and delivered an unprecedented live television address about her former daughter-in-law.
She spoke as both Queen and grandmother.
The funeral was watched around the world.
Diana had been divorced from Charles for only about a year, yet her connection to the monarchy remained enormous.
And that tension — Diana simultaneously outside the institution and permanently connected to it through William and Harry — shaped almost every decision made that week.
The Queen Apparently Considered Restoring Diana’s HRH
Spencer’s memoir contains another fascinating revelation from the days after Diana died.
According to his account, Queen Elizabeth II offered to restore Diana’s Her Royal Highness style posthumously. (People.com)
Diana had lost the HRH designation following her 1996 divorce from Charles, although she remained Diana, Princess of Wales.
Spencer says the Queen’s private secretary, Robert Fellowes — who was also married to Diana’s sister Jane — communicated the offer.
Spencer declined.
At the time, he believed restoring the title after Diana had died would be meaningless and felt that removing it in the first place had been petty.
Years later, he says he has wondered whether William and Harry might have appreciated their mother having the title restored. (People.com)
It is a quieter revelation than the allegations involving Charles, but perhaps one of the memoir’s most revealing.
Diana and Charles Had Already Lived Through a Painful Public Breakdown
The bitterness surrounding 1997 didn’t begin with Diana’s death.
By then, the collapse of the Wales marriage had played out before an enormous global audience.
Charles and Diana married in 1981.
Their first son, William, arrived in 1982, followed by Harry in 1984.
But the marriage deteriorated.
Both eventually spoke publicly about its difficulties and extramarital relationships.
They separated in 1992.
Their divorce became final in August 1996.
Diana died almost exactly one year later.
Spencer’s Book Reopens the Marriage Too
Swan Song isn’t confined to the events surrounding Diana’s funeral.
Spencer also revisits his sister’s account of her marriage.
ITV reports that the memoir includes Diana’s claim that Charles told her before their wedding that he was not in love with her. (ITVX)
Again, this is a recollection relayed through Spencer and should be distinguished from independently documented events.
The broader difficulties within the Wales marriage, however, are extensively documented.
Both Charles and Diana publicly acknowledged infidelity during the 1990s.
Diana’s famous 1995 Panorama interview included her remark that there were “three of us” in the marriage — a reference to Camilla Parker Bowles.
Charles had acknowledged adultery the previous year in a television interview.
Camilla Eventually Became Queen
Charles married Camilla in a civil ceremony in 2005.
When Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022 and Charles became King, Camilla became Queen Consort and was crowned alongside him in May 2023.
Diana never became Queen.
But public fascination with her never disappeared.
And that makes Spencer’s allegations especially potent.
Nearly three decades after her death, new claims about how members of the royal family privately reacted to it can still generate international headlines within hours.
Diana Is Suddenly Everywhere Again
The timing is particularly striking.
This week, Diana’s famous black “revenge dress” went on display at Sotheby’s ahead of an expected auction later this year.
She wore the off-the-shoulder Christina Stambolian dress in June 1994 — the same evening Charles publicly acknowledged marital infidelity in a television interview.
More than 30 years later, the dress remains one of the most recognizable outfits in modern royal history.
Reuters noted that its reappearance has coincided with Spencer’s explosive allegations and another period of intense public discussion about Diana’s relationship with the monarchy. (Reuters)
Diana died at 36.
She would have turned 65 this year.
Yet the cultural fascination surrounding her sometimes seems almost untouched by time.
Spencer Says His Book Is About His Sister, Not Revenge
The obvious question surrounding such explosive allegations is why Spencer is publishing them now.
He says his purpose is to tell Diana’s story from the perspective of the family that knew her before she became a royal figure.
Speaking to CBS News, Spencer said he felt it was his duty to put what he considers the true story of Diana into a single book. (CBS News)
Critics have questioned the wisdom of reopening painful private disputes so many years later.
Spencer argues that leaving them untold would create an incomplete picture of his sister’s life.
That disagreement is unlikely to disappear when the memoir is published.
And Buckingham Palace Clearly Disagrees With His Version
The palace response is important because the viral headline can easily make Spencer’s account sound settled.
It isn’t.
Spencer says Charles sounded “giddily elated.”
Buckingham Palace rejects that characterization and has suggested Spencer’s grief affected his recollection. (The Washington Post)
Spencer says Charles made an extraordinarily dismissive remark about Diana during an argument.
The palace disputes his account. (The Guardian)
What neither side can offer the public is a recording of those private conversations.
That leaves an unusual situation: a deeply consequential disagreement about events almost three decades old, involving people who were experiencing one of the most emotionally extreme moments imaginable.
One Detail From the Viral Graphic Needs Correcting
The graphic says King Charles has “finally” dropped an unforeseen line amid claims he was elated about Diana’s death.
That’s slightly misleading.
Charles himself has not publicly delivered a new personal statement explaining his emotions on the night Diana died.
The response has come from Buckingham Palace on the King’s behalf, and it challenges Spencer’s recollections rather than providing Charles’s own detailed account of the conversations. (Reuters)
That distinction matters.
The headline-making claim belongs to Charles Spencer.
The denial belongs to Buckingham Palace.
Neither should be presented as independently proven simply because the dispute is dramatic.
Almost 30 Years Later, One Week in 1997 Still Haunts the Royal Family
Diana’s death did something few events had managed before it.
It exposed an enormous gap between the emotional expectations of the public and the traditions of the monarchy.
For William and Harry, however, the historic significance came second.
They had lost their mother.
For Spencer, he had lost his sister.
And for Charles, his former wife — and the mother of his two sons — had died suddenly at 36.
Nearly three decades later, those people remember that week through very different lenses.
Spencer has now placed his recollection into the public record.
Buckingham Palace has taken the unusual step of challenging it.
And with the 30th anniversary of Diana’s death approaching in 2027, the argument demonstrates something that has been true almost since the night she died:
Britain may have buried Diana in 1997, but the questions surrounding her life, marriage and relationship with the monarchy never really went away. (Reuters)
For more fascinating celebrity stories, discover how Maureen McCormick met her husband at the lowest point of her life, or check out Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas’ daughter Stella making a rare red carpet appearance. You might also enjoy the wild story behind Tom Cruise’s unbuttoned shirt photoshoot.
