King Charles, Earl Spencer reignite Diana feud as new book surfaces allegations

Buckingham Palace issued a carefully worded rebuttal on Wednesday evening to allegations surfacing in a forthcoming memoir by Earl Spencer, Princess Diana's brother, that King Charles III spoke with callous indifference in the days following her death nearly three decades ago. The dispute arrives as the king prepares for a high-profile engagement in Scotland on Thursday, where he will convene executives from major artificial intelligence companies to discuss the ethical trajectory of their work.

Spencer's new book, "Swan Song: Diana, My Sister," serializing in the Daily Mail ahead of its full publication next week, contains an account of a late-night phone conversation between the two men shortly after Diana died in a Paris car crash at age 36 in 1997. According to Spencer's recollection, Charles responded to his objections about the funeral arrangements—specifically his concern that Diana's young sons, Princes William and Harry, then 15 and 12, should not be forced to walk in the massive public procession—with what Spencer characterizes as a torrent of suppressed resentment. Spencer writes that Charles told him, "Rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough," delivered with what Spencer describes as a hiss.

The palace's response, issued through an official spokesperson, sidestepped direct engagement with the specific claim. Instead, it offered a clinical observation about the nature of grief itself: that the pain of losing a sibling can distort memory, cloud judgment, and reshape how events are recalled, sometimes for decades. The statement notably avoided either confirming or denying Charles's alleged words, instead suggesting that Spencer's recollection might be colored by emotional trauma.

The tension between Spencer and the royal family has roots extending well before Diana's death. Charles and Diana had endured a bitter separation before the fatal accident, and relations between the two men had already deteriorated to their lowest point. The feud has persisted as a fixture of British tabloid coverage and popular culture—most recently dramatized in Netflix's "The Crown"—with Spencer emerging as a consistent and vocal critic of his former brother-in-law across the intervening years.

Diana's sudden death in 1997 triggered an unprecedented wave of public mourning across Britain and internationally. The princess, known for her striking appearance, her relative informality by royal standards, and her visible commitment to charitable work, had captured public affection in ways that complicated the monarchy's traditional image. The royal family faced sustained criticism for what many perceived as an inadequate public response to her death, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.

The timing of Spencer's book creates an awkward backdrop for Charles's Thursday appearance at Dumfries House in Ayrshire, where he and Queen Consort Camilla will host leaders from companies including Nvidia, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic. The king intends to emphasize the responsibility these executives bear in shaping technological development for future generations, urging them to ensure that artificial intelligence remains "firmly in the service of humanity, community and the natural world." Britain's newly appointed Minister for Artificial Intelligence, Kanishka Narayan, will attend, as will Paolo Benanti, an adviser to Pope Leo XIV who has taken a vocal interest in AI governance.

The Spencer-Windsor dispute, now reignited by the publication of Spencer's memoir, threatens to dominate coverage of an event the palace clearly views as substantive and forward-looking. Whether the allegations will fade once the book's full text becomes public, or whether they will sustain as a point of contention, remains to be seen—but the pattern of decades suggests that this particular family wound has proven remarkably resistant to closure.