Earl Spencer Says the Royal Family Will ‘Try and Obliterate You’ If You Stand Up to Them

Charles Spencer has spent much of the past month defending his new memoir about Princess Diana. Now he has widened the argument beyond what King Charles allegedly said after Diana’s death or whether Prince William and Prince Harry should have walked behind their mother’s coffin.

According to Spencer, the real issue is power. “The British royal family is extremely powerful,” he said during an interview with Entertainment Tonight. “They’re not just these people who put on fancy clothes for state occasions.”

Spencer went further, arguing that the monarchy exercises significant influence over parts of the media and warning that anyone who publicly challenges it risks being destroyed.

“If you dare to stand up against them, as Diana did … they will try and obliterate you,” he said.

That is an extraordinary accusation. It is also worth examining against the documented relationship between the Royal Household and the press.

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The Palace Does Not Need to Control Every Headline

Royal media power does not require Buckingham Palace to telephone editors and dictate stories. Access itself has value. One of the clearest examples came from ABC anchor Amy Robach. In leaked 2019 footage, Robach complained that she had interviewed Virginia Giuffre years earlier about Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew, but ABC did not broadcast the interview. Robach said Buckingham Palace had applied pressure and that the network feared losing access to William and Kate Middleton. ABC later said the reporting had not met its standards at the time.

Nobody needs to prove that a palace official ordered ABC to kill a story. According to the network’s own anchor, anxiety about future royal access had become part of the editorial calculation. That is power. The same system becomes even more obvious when we look at what happens when the Palace chooses to intervene.

In July 2019, a cosmetic clinic suggested Kate Middleton had received “baby Botox.” Kensington Palace responded almost immediately, calling the claim “categorically not true.” The intervention was notable precisely because royal households rarely respond to personal gossip.  

So “never complain, never explain” has never been an absolute rule. The Palace can respond when it wants to. The more interesting question is who receives that protection.

Meghan Shows What Selective Protection Looks Like

Harry publicly complained about Meghan’s treatment before they were even married. In November 2016, Prince Harry issued an extraordinary statement through his communications secretary condemning the “racial undertones” of some press coverage and the racist and sexist abuse surrounding Meghan. Harry said a line had been crossed and that he feared for her safety. The statement remained on the Royal Family’s website for years before being removed in December 2023, despite being an official record of a prince condemning racist and abusive press treatment.

And that raises an obvious question: if the Palace had nothing to be uncomfortable about in Harry’s criticism of the press, why remove a statement documenting exactly what he said Meghan was facing?

Then came March 2021. Days before Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview, The Times published bullying allegations rooted in a 2018 complaint by Jason Knauf, then the Sussexes’ communications secretary. Meghan denied the claims, while Buckingham Palace quickly announced an investigation and said it was “very concerned.” Knauf was already connected to Meghan’s separate legal battle with Associated Newspapers, which she had begun in 2019 and largely won in February 2021.

Later that year, he went further, providing the Mail on Sunday publisher with a witness statement, emails and private messages for its appeal against her victory. The Court of Appeal ultimately found that new evidence of little assistance and upheld Meghan’s win

The timing immediately became part of the story. Sources close to Harry and Meghan argued that people within the royal orbit were trying to undermine Meghan before the interview. The Palace denied wrongdoing.

Whatever one believes about the original workplace allegations, the institutional advantage was obvious. The accusation received headlines around the world, while Buckingham Palace added the weight of an official investigation. But when the independent review into the Palace’s handling of the allegations and its HR procedures concluded, Buckingham Palace refused to publish its findings, citing confidentiality. Officials said HR policies had changed, yet declined to identify those changes, reveal the recommendations or confirm whether Meghan had even been interviewed. The accusation travelled around the world. The evidence gathered to test it did not.

Our view is that the episode helped cement a familiar stereotype around Meghan: the demanding, difficult woman who mistreats staff. That characterisation is hard to reconcile with the public record from her years before royal life. When the Palace allegations surfaced, former Suits colleagues and longtime friends publicly defended her, saying the bullying portrait did not match the woman they had known and worked with for years.

What is striking is how durable that narrative became. Years later, anonymous “Hollywood insiders” were still being used to portray Meghan as difficult, demanding or unpopular with executives. Vanity Fair and other outlets have carried anonymous accounts critical of her professional conduct, while other reporting and business relationships have presented a far more mixed picture.

We cannot prove Buckingham Palace created those later Hollywood stories. The Palace gave the original allegation institutional authority it would not otherwise have possessed. Once an institution announces a bullying investigation, the press does not need a final finding to keep recycling the archetype. The allegation itself becomes the story.

Diana Was Branded “Unstable” Too

The same tactic was used against Diana. For years, palace-friendly biographies and sections of the British press repeatedly framed her as emotionally unstable, difficult and unreliable.

Diana herself recognised what was happening. In her 1995 Panorama interview, she said that after suffering postnatal depression, people around the royal household began using it against her. “Diana’s unstable,” she recalled. “Diana’s mentally unbalanced.” She believed the label became a convenient way to dismiss what she was saying about her marriage.

That framing did not disappear after Diana’s death. In 2021, William himself said the BBC’s deceit around Panorama had contributed to his mother’s “fear, paranoia and isolation.” Piers Morgan has also repeatedly described Diana as vulnerable and suspicious, while tabloid coverage long treated her fears about surveillance as evidence that she was unstable.

Harry rejects that interpretation outright. In 2024 he said the press still liked to portray Diana as paranoid, but “she wasn’t paranoid” and had been right about much of what was happening around her. Charles Spencer has made the same broader point, arguing that his sister’s fears were repeatedly weaponised against her credibility.

That is why Buckingham Palace suggesting Spencer’s own grief had “clouded” his memory feels so familiar. He called it “classic gaslighting.”

Spencer Says He Is Watching the Same Machinery at Work

Spencer now believes the same system is being turned towards him. His memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, includes his claim that Charles told him “we’ll forget her soon enough” during their argument over whether William and Harry should walk behind Diana’s coffin.

There is precedent for questioning how aggressively royal interests have been protected through the media. In 2011, Jeffrey Epstein emailed a publicist urging them to investigate Virginia Giuffre and discredit her, writing, “I think Buckingham Palace would love it.” That sits alongside Amy Robach’s later claim that palace pressure and fear of losing William and Kate access affected ABC’s handling of her Giuffre interview.

Now Buckingham Palace has publicly challenged Spencer’s memory. Rather than produce a different account of the call, it said “fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgement and colour memory.”  

Spencer immediately recognised the tactic. “There was no denial,” he said, calling the response “classic gaslighting.” He later put it even more plainly: “They would see me as their enemy.”

That may be the clearest illustration of his argument. The weapon does not always have to be an explicit denial. Sometimes it is enough to make the person telling the story look unreliable.