Her brother Charles Spencer, 62, has now claimed in his memoir Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, the future King sounded “giddily elated, like a lottery winner” after learning of her death – but it’s an account that has now been disputed by Buckingham Palace and also challenged by the likes of Diana biographer Tina Brown.
A royal source claimed: “The recollection from people around Charles at the time is not of somebody celebrating. It is of a man suddenly confronting the enormity of what had happened and terrified about what would follow.
“There was grief for Diana, tremendous concern for William and Harry, and also a realization that public anger could turn against him. Charles understood immediately that everything involving his mistress Camilla would now become vastly more difficult.”
Brown takes direct issue with Spencer’s portrayal of Charles in her assessment of his book.
She said: “Here I disagree. In my own reporting for The Diana Chronicles, friends and staffers remembered how Charles, in the days after Diana’s death, was almost out of his mind with guilt, grief, paternal anguish, and self-pity.”