Buckingham Palace has responded to an allegation from Princess Diana's brother that King Charles once said the world would forget her "soon enough," just days after her death in 1997.

The claim comes from Charles Spencer's forthcoming book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, an excerpt of which ran in the Daily Mail on Wednesday. Spencer, the 9th Earl Spencer, writes that he had a heated phone call with the then-Prince Charles shortly after Diana died in a Paris car crash on August 31, 1997. According to Spencer's account, Charles let out a stream of anger, paused, and then said: "'Rest assured,' he hissed, 'we'll forget her soon enough!'" Spencer describes it as the sound of the King's "pent-up contempt" for Diana and his discomfort at how the public mourned her.

A palace spokesperson didn't deny the exchange happened. Instead, the statement leaned on the idea that memory bends under grief. "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 spokesperson told People and Page Six. It's a careful line. Not a denial, not a confirmation, just a reminder that Spencer was grieving too.

What sparked the argument

Spencer writes that the call turned heated over whether Diana's sons, William and 12-year-old Harry, would walk behind her coffin during the funeral procession. He says he was told days before the funeral that the boys wouldn't take part, and that he refused to accept it, telling the palace aide, "That's not going to happen." They did walk, alongside Spencer, Charles and the late Prince Philip.

What actually happened behind the scenes has been told differently by different people. In the 2017 BBC documentary Diana, 7 Days, William described it as a "collective family decision." Harry's own account, in his 2023 memoir Spare, put Spencer himself as the one raising objections, quoting his uncle as saying, "You can't make these boys walk behind their mother's coffin! It's barbaric." Nobody's story lines up perfectly, and Spencer's new book adds a third version to a debate that's nearly three decades old.

Page Six reported that Harry already knew what was coming. An insider told the outlet the claims "didn't come as a shock" to him, and that he'd discussed the book with Spencer directly when his uncle visited the family's Althorp estate in July, during a UK trip with Meghan Markle and their children.

Swan Song: Diana, My Sister hits shelves September 22. Whether the palace's carefully worded response holds up once the full book is out, with whatever else Spencer has to say about that marriage and its unraveling, is the part still to play out.