Charles Spencer was seemingly left stunned by his former brother-in-law on more than one occasion but there was one which let slip the then-Prince Charles’s true feelings about succession.
Princess Diana’s brother claimed that King Charles’s comments during the funeral of the eighth Earl Spencer, who passed away in 1992, aged 68, left him “surprised”.
Spencer, who was 27 at the time, shared that he had a “very peculiar conversation” noting that his father had suddenly died a few days ago. The funeral service was held at a church in Northamptonshire. Diana was also present.
“I shared that I had found it so moving to see my father’s coffin being borne into the church by his six longest-serving male members of staff that I had started to cry,” Spencer wrote.
“And I just was so surprised, because Prince Charles, as he was then, said to me, ‘You’re so lucky.’ And I said, ‘I’m so sorry, sir.’ And he said, ‘You are so lucky to have inherited so young’.”
King Charles, who was an heir in waiting for over five decades, ascended to the throne in 2022 at 73, following the death of his mother Elizabeth II, the longest reigning monarch.
While there has been no latest statement from the Palace but when the first excerpt from Diana’s memoir dropped, in an unprecedented statement, a spokesperson said that “pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss”.
2026-09-20 10:06:00
