Queen Offered Diana Her HRH Back After Death as Palace Controlled Funeral Plans

Charles Spencer’s first serialisation from Swan Song: Diana, My Sister is brutal for King Charles, and one of the most striking passages concerns the first time the two men spoke after Princess Diana’s death. Spencer was in Cape Town when the news came through. By the time Charles called, Spencer had already spent hours taking calls from people struggling to process what had happened.

The phone rang constantly. Prince Charles caught me as I crossed the landing upstairs.

Unlike my other callers, who were stunned, barely able to articulate their condolences and offers of help, he sounded giddily elated – like a lottery winner, I remember thinking at the time.

He let me know he had informed William and Harry of their mother’s death, first thing that morning, in their bedrooms at Balmoral. It all sounded strangely matter-of-fact, given the enormity of the disaster.

Looking back now, I suspect the prince’s first reaction must have been to think more of how this event might free him to marry the woman he loved, rather than appreciating the loss of one he did not. It can be hard to feel too much sympathy for an ex-spouse, or those who care for them profoundly, after bitter divorce.

Charles Spencer, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, Part One, serialised in the Daily Mail

That is quite a recollection to sit on for nearly three decades. The important distinction is that Spencer’s theory about what Charles may have been thinking is exactly that: his theory. He cannot know what was going through Charles’s mind. But he can describe how the conversation sounded to him, and “giddily elated” is not the description of a man Spencer remembers as shocked or overwhelmed by grief.

What happened afterwards makes the account even more interesting. Spencer says Diana’s family initially had to accept that the scale of public mourning required something far larger than a private family funeral. Once that happened, however, he says Buckingham Palace and Charles’s household began taking the lead, despite Diana having divorced Charles the previous year.

That contradiction clearly still bothers him. According to Spencer, his sisters told him Diana had wanted Mozart’s Requiem played at her funeral. When he passed that request along, he says he was told that no part of a requiem could be played at a Church of England funeral. Spencer later discovered that explanation was wrong and now describes it as the first of several untruths he believes officials told him during the funeral arrangements.

That detail may not generate the same headlines as the “lottery winner” remark, but it says quite a lot. Diana had spent the final year of her life divorced from Charles and operating outside the working Royal Family. Yet when she died, Spencer says the institution immediately behaved as though it still had the final word over how she would be mourned.

They could distance themselves from Diana when she was alive, but apparently not relinquish control once she was gone.

Spencer goes even further, writing that he already knew there were people inside the Palace who were relieved, even pleased, by Diana’s death. He does not identify those people in this section of the serialisation, so there is no way to independently test that allegation from what he has published so far.

Still, the overall picture he paints is remarkably bleak: Diana dead, her family grieving, two competing royal households manoeuvring behind the scenes, and the Palace taking control of a funeral for a woman it had spent years struggling to contain.

Buckingham Palace has already responded unusually quickly to Spencer’s earlier claims about Charles, suggesting that grief can affect judgment and colour memory. That may be the Palace line throughout this serialisation.

But it is worth remembering what Spencer is actually doing here. He is not claiming to have uncovered secret intelligence or repeating gossip from anonymous courtiers. He is writing about conversations he says he personally had and decisions he says he personally encountered while arranging his sister’s funeral.

People can decide for themselves how much weight to give memories recorded nearly 30 years later. What the Palace cannot change is that Diana’s brother has now put his version of those days into the historical record. And his version is not flattering.

The Palace Still Wanted the Final Say Over Diana

Spencer’s account of the funeral has become even more striking with a new revelation from the serialisation. He says that after Diana’s funeral, Queen Elizabeth offered to restore the HRH title Diana had lost following her divorce. According to Spencer, the offer came through the Queen’s private secretary Robert Fellowes while they travelled to Althorp for Diana’s burial. Spencer rejected it, reasoning that the gesture came too late. He later wrote that the title should never have been removed while Diana was alive in the first place.

That detail fits neatly with Spencer’s broader complaint about the funeral arrangements. Diana had spent the final year of her life outside the working Royal Family, stripped of her HRH and formally divorced from Charles. Yet after her death, Spencer says the Palace still took charge of major decisions surrounding her funeral, including rejecting the family’s request for Mozart’s Requiem. Then, once the ceremony was over, the Queen apparently offered back a royal style Diana could no longer use.

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Was the HRH Offer Also Crisis PR?

The symbolism is hard to miss. Diana lost her HRH while she was alive, yet according to Spencer, the Queen offered to restore it only after Diana’s death, when the monarchy was facing intense criticism over its response. Alastair Campbell’s diaries also show that Palace officials feared the public would turn on Charles during the funeral. In that context, the offer may have been heartfelt, but it also looks like the kind of symbolic gesture an institution in crisis would make to show respect for a woman the public felt it had failed.

That is what makes Spencer’s reaction so sharp. The Palace had removed Diana’s royal style in life, taken a leading role in her funeral after death, and then reportedly offered the title back when it could no longer benefit her. Given the wider concern about public anger that week, it is reasonable to ask whether the gesture was also part of the monarchy’s crisis PR.

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