It’s Charles vs. Charles.
A vicious duel between Britain’s King Charles and Princess Diana’s brother has emerged over the scathing contents of memoir “Swan Song: Diana, My Sister,” ahead of its publication next week.
British Earl Charles Spencer, 62, has unleashed a series of unprecedented broadsides against the UK monarch, calling the 77-year-old king a “bellowing buffoon” while accusing his ex-brother-in law of proclaiming, “Rest assured…we’ll forget her soon enough!” immediately following Diana’s death in a Paris car wreck in August 1997.
Buckingham Palace has already issued a remarkable statement after Spencer also claimed Charles sounded like a “lottery winner” when they spoke after Diana’s tragic passing.
“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,” the statement read.
The book, published Sept. 22, comes just weeks after another of Charles’ detractors — wayward son Prince Harry, author of royal-bashing autobiography “Spare,” and his wife Meghan Markle — returned to the UK.
Charles’ statement to Earl Spencer echoes the now-iconic memo issued by the late Queen Elizabeth II after Harry and Meghan sat down with Oprah Winfrey in 2021 to accuse the royal family of racism and abuse.
“Whilst some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately,” that statement read.
Spencer’s “Swan Song” — the first time he has ever publicly spoken about the loss of his sister — dregs up many details cancer-stricken Charles would surely rather forget.
Leaked passages from the book reveal Spencer claims palace courtiers “forced” Princes William and Harry, then 15 and 12, to walk behind their mother’s coffin through central London en route to her funeral so Charles would not be booed. Spencer also walked behind the coffin that day.
He also confirms how Diana, whom he nicknamed “Duch,” short for Duchess, was so miserable she drove to Beachy Head, the highest chalk sea cliff in England, “more than once” and contemplated throwing herself from the ledge to her death. It was only the thought of her beloved boys being left alone that stopped her, he claimed.
Charles and Diana married in a fairytale wedding at St Paul’s Cathedral in London in 1981, before separating by 1992 and finalizing their divorce in August 1996.
The final years of their marriage were dogged by tales of infidelity.
Charles cheated on Diana with Camilla Parker Bowles — now his wife, Queen Camilla — while Diana turned to lovers including Major James Hewitt for comfort.
Following the horror car wreck which killed Diana and her new love Dodi Fayed, the world was in shock, then mourning.
Earl Spencer claims in his book, as reported by the Daily Mail, Charles “sounded giddily elated” after hearing his ex-wife had died.
According to Spencer, Charles informed him he had told William and Harry, about their mother’s death, “first thing that morning, in their bedrooms at Balmoral.”
He felt Charles’ alleged reaction “sounded strangely matter-of-fact, given the enormity of the disaster.”
“Looking back now, I suspect the prince’s first reaction must have been to think more of how this event might free him to marry the woman he loved, rather than appreciating the loss of one he did not,” Spencer continued, referring to Camilla, whom Charles eventually wed in 2005.
“Unlike my other callers, who were stunned, barely able to articulate their condolences and offers of help, he sounded giddily elated — like a lottery winner, I remember thinking at the time.
He added, “It can be hard to feel too much sympathy for an ex-spouse, or those who care for them profoundly, after bitter divorce.”
Spencer, who says he wrote the book to dismantle decades of “untruths” that have “become accepted over time” about Diana writes that he was at his home in Cape Town, South Africa, when he heard of her death.
His sister, Lady Jane Fellowes, rang in the middle of the night to report Diana had been in an accident. Spencer thought perhaps she had broken her leg.
While on the phone with Jane, her could hear her husband, Robert Fellowes — then the Queen’s Private Secretary — in the background.
Spencer recalls hearing him exclaim: “Oh, no!” which he “half bellowed, half sighed in disbelief,” in the book.
“And Jane, witnessing the completeness of his shock, relayed to me, in a soft voice: ‘That’s it… it’s curtains… Duch is dead.”
Spencer then became his family’s conduit with the palace. When told of the plans for the young princes to walk in the funeral procession, he immediately said it was not what Diana would have wanted. But, he said, “it was a decision made out of fear that, if Prince Charles walked alone, members of the public might shout abuse at him.
“The committee realized that if they could persuade William and Harry to be there too, that would surely guarantee against insults flying.”
When Spencer did speak to Charles about the “barbaric” plans for the boys to follow behind the car, he said Charles “hissed” of Diana, “Rest assured… we’ll forget her soon enough!” prompting him to hang up the phone.
Elsewhere in the book, Charles talks about Diana’s dramatic and sudden transition from a 19-year-old nursery assistant to being the most photographed woman in the world with her whirlwind engagement to Charles.
Spencer claims Charles told Diana a few days before their wedding he was “happy” to marry her but not in love with her, leading her to try and get out of the wedding. However, she was told that would be impossible by her father, Earl Johnny Spencer.
Spencer also writes of his sister’s much-documented eating disorder and says, “I am convinced now that Diana had ADHD [Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder], and that as part of that condition she suffered from Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (as do I).
“This is an intense emotional pain in the face of others’ rejection or criticism, which amplified her wounded response to her husband’s suggestions.”
In another bizarre incident described in the book, Diana invited her brother to her favorite London eatery, San Lorenzo, to tell him she was ending her marriage.
During their meeting, he writes that she made a bizarre proclamation saying, “my husband is in love with his valet.”
“I gulped. ‘Well, I guess, in that case, you really don’t have a choice,’” he remembers as his response.
“She did not name the member of staff, and I never asked her who it was, or why she would believe such an improbable thing,” he writes.
“It was not important: the end of her marriage, and of her dreams, was.”
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