Palace Rebuts Earl Spencer
Diana’s brother and the palace traded claims over King Charles’s alleged funeral remark.
9
Articles
8
Sources
Coverage mix
What happened
Buckingham Palace issued a rare and forceful statement rejecting Earl Charles Spencer’s claims about King Charles’s remarks after Princess Diana’s death. Spencer says then-Prince Charles told him, “We’ll forget her soon enough,” while the palace says the king did not speak that way. The dispute centers on a phone call shortly after Diana died in 1997, when Spencer says he objected to Prince William and Prince Harry walking in the funeral procession. His memoir, “Swan Song: Diana, My Sister,” is due next week and is being serialized by the Daily Mail. The palace said Spencer’s grief may have clouded his judgment and memory. More excerpts are expected before publication.
Both sides
From the left
Coverage framed the excerpts as reviving the darkest judgments of Charles’s response to Diana’s death. HuffPost emphasized Charles Spencer’s claim that Charles seemed “elated” after learning Diana had died, while CNN treated the uproar as a fresh royal scandal that disrupted the king’s agenda. The Daily Beast also focused on the palace’s unusually forceful rebuttal, casting it as an argument that Spencer’s grief and bitterness may have distorted his memory.
From the right
Coverage focused on Buckingham Palace’s rare public pushback against damaging claims about King Charles and Diana. Western Journal framed the allegations through the palace’s argument that Charles Spencer’s grief could cloud reason, affect judgment, and color memory. It also quoted Julian Payne saying the alleged remark was “just not language that I recognize,” emphasizing establishment pushback and the palace’s strong feeling.
Coverage•9 articles — 5 left, 3 center, 1 right
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