Royal biographer Tom Bower has said King Charles was "deeply shocked" and "deep in grief" when he learned of Princess Diana's death in August 1997. Bower said he had spoken to three people who were at Balmoral with the Royal Family at the time.
He was speaking to The Royals Uncensored podcast after Earl Charles Spencer's controversial book about his sister made headlines for a string of allegations against the monarch.
Claims in Earl Spencer's book
The earl claims in his book that the King, then the Prince of Wales, said about Diana, "we'll forget her soon enough" during an argument over whether Prince William and Prince Harry should walk behind their mother's coffin in her funeral procession. The memoir also alleges the King "sounded giddily elated – like a lottery winner" when he spoke to the earl after Diana's death.
Asked if he believed the King would have reacted in that way, Bower said: "I don't believe it for a moment. I spoke to three people who were at Balmoral that weekend... And there were all unanimous, even now in recollection, that Charles was deep in grief and deeply shocked."
Biographer's assessment
The royal biographer added that the King is a "very flawed individual" who he has been critical of, but one of his endearing qualities is that he is very supportive of people who have experienced bereavement. Bower told The Royals Uncensored: "The idea that at that moment that he should have been other than mortified by her death is just completely out of character."
Asked why Earl Spencer would seek to criticise the King, Bower said the two Charleses just never got on, and there was some envy on the Earl's part. Bower said that Earl Spencer was a good historian, but he had sabotaged his own credibility in his book.
Palace response and context
The Earl's allegations led Buckingham Palace to issue a strongly worded response which said the King was "mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgement and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss".
Earl Spencer has long clashed with the royals over their treatment of his older sister. In a scathing eulogy at his sister's funeral, Earl Spencer vowed her "blood family" would carry on her "imaginative and loving" legacy in raising her two sons. The speech was widely considered a swipe at the Royal Family.
At the time, many in Britain and beyond felt Queen Elizabeth II and the royals were too slow to acknowledge the global outpouring of grief over Diana's death and that the monarchy was deeply out of touch with the public mood. The royals have spent decades putting that period of crisis behind them. The warmer, more personable approach of William and Harry — and, in recent years, the king — is a legacy of that time.
Some critics have questioned why Spencer felt the need to revisit the pain and trauma 30 years on. The aristocrat said he wanted to write down his own thoughts and memories about Diana, "once and for all, rather than having the discomfort of again reading the opinions of others, many of which are based on untruths".
