William’s new battle as Charles Spencer and Harry tell their ‘Diana Truth’

The unedifying spectacle of two uber-privileged Charleses slugging it out over Britain’s incontestable 20th-century icon is grimly predictable. Diana, that mercurial beacon of light, the personification of love and loss and unpredictability, was constantly let down by men – fleshpots and moneypots, princes and earls, husbands and brothers.

Cue this week’s serving of hot rage and red-tinged revenge from Earl Spencer, Diana’s little brother, the longed-for only son and fourth child of the eighth Earl. Plus ca change. The man who is constantly re-penning his own past to feather the Althorp nest (Spencer scion, boarding school abuse victim, aristocratic wordsmith, family historian and three-time divorcee) has decided to recast his sister Diana’s life and death in a bombshell book, Swan Song. To maximise impact and personal gain, he has detonated the best (worst?) bits in the Daily Mail – the very newspaper his nephew unsuccessfully tried to sue.

Now everyone can feast their eyes on a zero-sum game in which it is hard to discern any potential winners. On Thursday, The King was cast as a callow ex-husband and widower, a pantomime villain who hissed at his former brother-in-law that he could be “rest assured” we would forget Diana soon enough. The next day he was reframed as the smirking future King, “giddily elated – like a lottery winner” over news of his ex-wife’s death. Much heat has been expended over the extent of Spencer’s assault. Disgust is clear, but clarity is there none. The rushed royal rebuttal (to be repented at leisure) served to further cloud the view. Accusations of “fraternal grief” were a bit rich coming from the father of the world’s most famous feuding brothers; meanwhile, the King’s extended version of the late Queen’s ‘recollections may vary’ provided a neat reminder that less is always more.

As the King hosted an AI conference in Dumfries House, in light of the Spencer truth-bomb, someone might have thought to rewrite Charles’ script: instead, our monarch told a room of tech-bros: “We will not lose control of our destiny, or our souls”. Perhaps not, but the King appeared to be losing control of his family’s narrative. At the time of writing, further florid allegations in Spencer’s book underscore Diana’s suicidal vulnerability and her husband’s verbal clumsiness in relation to the onset of the princess’s bulimia.

I am an oral historian who spends much of the time recording the past through individual memories, and, for those in search of the truth, I can confirm that recollections always vary. When it comes to second recollections, we tend to favour our own version of events. I have no doubt that both men firmly believe that their truth is the truth. The inconsistency lies with the King’s decision to denounce Spencer’s accusations, having said nothing about the contents of his son’s book – a move that leaves the monarch looking self-interested and one which, if we follow the logic, lends credibility to Harry’s testimony in Spare. Otherwise, wouldn’t he have said something?

Of course two wrongs don’t make a right. The King’s heavy-handed rebuke should not detract from Charles Spencer’s grotesque misjudgement. Twenty-nine years ago, in the wake of Diana’s shocking death, the future king could be forgiven for sounding at once adrenalised and “matter-of-fact”. Responses to grief are nothing but unpredictable, and he had just informed his two sons they were without a mother.

It is possible that the extent of Spencer’s bile will also confuse even the monarch’s naysayers. The author, after all, is the same man who refused his big sister sanctuary in one of Althorp’s many properties in Diana’s hour of need – his excuse: “security issues”. Ouch. Not to mention the pointed letter that apparently reduced the princess to tears; in a 1996 missive, her touchy younger brother called out his sister as a “fickle friend”. History suggests Diana was an increasingly discerning one for leaving him well alone.

Charles Spencer has never had any scruples when it comes to weaponising the family assets; his Periclean “hunted” address delivered at Diana’s outsized funeral left the royals forever haunted and Spencer forever attuned to the power of his own words. And their value. Later, the same speech could reportedly be found in the Althorp gift shop, wrapped in ribbon, a snip at £25. The exhibition was Diana, A Celebration. The entry fee was likewise hefty for a house that the princess rejected as a teenager and that subsequently rejected her twenty years later.

Being Earl Spencer is spectacularly expensive. Althorp is a vast ancestral estate that costs a fortune to maintain; Spencer also has seven children from three marriages and, since this year, a fourth wife. Unlike the King, who still enjoys the wealth and exemptions of a plutocrat, since the Second World War Britain’s remaining aristocrats have had to slum it, taxation is high and perks are fewer and further between. Jealousy should not be discounted as a motivation behind this book – these days the beloved King is just a little too well remunerated and happily married.

The poor old Spencers – a dynasty that tracks back to Tudor times – have been bested by German imports

But Charles Spencer is not alone. His capacity to hold a grudge and capitalise on Diana’s death is straight out of Prince Harry’s playbook and it is common knowledge that uncle and nephew have been in contact. In search of allies and always questing for his mother, the Duke took his own little family to Althorp on a pilgrimage this summer. Charles Spencer threw open the doors; a man about to go into battle, he needed all the support he could get.

Unusually given their shared aristocratic heft and entitlement, it is the pair’s identification as disadvantaged victims that sets them apart from their peers. Both are known to resort to litigation, and both insist on comparing themselves to the only aristocratic family that has avoided defenestration over the last 80 years – the House of Windsor. The poor old Spencers – a dynasty that tracks back to Tudor times – have been bested by German imports. The cruel class system was never fair; Earl Spencer, aged 27, inherited his estate over three older sisters, but he doesn’t even have a seat in the Lords, leaving him uniquely well placed to sell half-truths about his sister instead. He even runs a book festival on the Althorp estate.

As for Harry, that other spurned aristocrat, the timing of Charles Spencer’s latest expose will give the Duke a clear path to memorialise his mother next year. Some suggest that this is the main reason for Harry’s return to Blighty. It is the 30th anniversary of Diana’s death in August 2027, when her youngest son will apparently take ownership of the narrative.

Meanwhile, big brother William is notable for his absence amid the current furore. Be in no doubt, the Prince of Wales is “furious” and definitely not in camp Spencer. Yes, he also lost his mother three decades ago, but older and wiser than 12-year-old Harry, teenage William had the chance to see Diana more clearly. Crucially, she parented him in adolescence.

For a 2017 Diana documentary, he recalled his mother surprising him as a teenager with a clutch of Cindy Crawford-class supermodels casually draped across KP. Ditto a flurry of suitably embarrassing cards. A young mum, Diana always knew how to have fun.

But for all the highs, there were also lows. Towards the end of her life, assailed on every side, the thwarted princess presented as an increasingly problematic, paranoid mother and, like nobody else, 13-year-old William felt the full force of her Panorama expose. Subsequently, the Dyson investigation into Martin Bashir’s BBC interview exposed deception at the highest levels, with the prince speaking openly about the isolating impact on his vulnerable mother, and the damaging legacy of a “false narrative”.

If, once upon a time, he referred to her death as an “earthquake” that had “run through the house” and still posts on Mother’s Day about the parent he remembers “today and every day”, William is not in the market for a public Diana regurgitation. Like his father, he does not need the money, and as the future king he is not inclined to sanctify a woman who undermined the very throne he is due to inherit.

In stark contrast, little brother Harold, still in search of gainful employment and a mother he only ever knew as a young boy, is unlikely to hold back when it comes to his “Diana truth”; a manifestation that will only serve to exacerbate the Cold War between the two princes.

It is ironic that 29 years ago their uncle, Charles Spencer, pledged to look after both boys, and made history when he reminded us that the “girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age”.

Today, thanks to the very same Charles Spencer, his sister still can’t rest in peace.

Tessa Dunlop is the author of the award-winning book now out in paperback: ‘Lest We Forget, 100 Stories of Love, Loss and Heroism’