Richard Kay Praises Charles Spencer, Then Uses Diana’s Legacy to Attack Harry and Meghan

Richard Kay’s response to Charles Spencer’s Swan Song begins with a strong endorsement of the book and its author. Kay calls the memoir “brilliant,” “explosive yet thoughtful,” and an account from “the ultimate insider.” He praises Spencer’s detailed notes and accepts that Princess Diana’s brother knew her in a way few others did.

Kay also provides contemporaneous evidence supporting part of Spencer’s account of King Charles’s conduct after Diana died.

According to notes Kay made during the week between Diana’s death and funeral, Spencer told him that he had endured a “furious row” with the then Prince of Wales about Prince William and Prince Harry. Spencer reportedly called Charles “utterly pathetic” and said he had been the only unhelpful person involved in the funeral arrangements.

These were not memories that first appeared nearly 30 years later. Kay recorded Spencer’s anger at the time. That should have been the focus of the article. Instead, Kay uses the second half to attack Harry and Meghan Sussex.

Kay’s Argument Suddenly Changes

Once Harry enters the article, Kay abandons the careful consideration he extends to Spencer. Harry becomes a “prodigal son” returning from “exile.” Kay accuses him of petulance and self-importance and claims he has tried to cloak himself in Diana’s legacy.

Meghan also gets dragged into a story about events that happened before she met Harry. Kay describes the Sussexes’ decision to move their children from a school as “theatrical,” despite providing no evidence that they acted for publicity.

The reported concern involved the daily journey and the level of exposure created when the family’s vehicle became stuck in traffic. Parents responding to security advice about two young children are not staging a performance.

Kay even turns a reported family visit to Althorp into something suspicious. Meghan taking Diana’s grandchildren to leave flowers at their grandmother’s grave becomes an act “freighted with symbolism.”

Of course, it carried symbolism. According to Kay, photographs Meghan posted appeared to show Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet carrying flowers for Diana’s grave. Kay offers no reason why that personal family gesture should become evidence against their parents. Meghan had nothing to do with Charles Spencer’s claims about King Charles. Her inclusion exposes the article’s wider purpose.

Harry Is Not The Prince Charles In This Story

Kay makes his most extraordinary argument when he claims Harry’s petulance and self-importance resemble the Prince of Wales described by Spencer more than they resemble Diana.

The comparison collapses under the slightest examination. Spencer describes Prince Charles as the person holding institutional power. Charles allegedly raged when Diana’s family challenged plans to make two grieving children walk behind their mother’s coffin. He reportedly invoked duty against a family trying to protect those children.

Harry is not using an institution to control other people. He is challenging that institution over what it did to his mother, his wife and his family.

One man stood at the centre of royal power. The other left after concluding that the system would not protect his family.

Harry served in the British Army for 10 years and completed two tours in Afghanistan. He founded the Invictus Games and has supported WellChild for nearly two decades. Leaving a working-royal role did not erase that service or amount to abandoning Britain.

Spencer’s account also supports central parts of Harry’s story. Spencer opposed the decision to make the young princes walk behind Diana’s coffin. Harry later described the experience as deeply damaging and said no child should have been asked to do it.

Kay treats Spencer’s broader portrait of royal coldness as credible, yet dismisses Harry when he describes similar institutional behaviour. Harry does not resemble the powerful Prince of Wales described in Swan Song. He resembles the child whom that system failed and the adult who decided not to let it consume another generation.

William And Kate Are Declared The Winners

Kay then announces that William and Kate are the “true inheritors” of Diana’s popularity and sense of duty.

But Harry, who has sought desperately to cloak himself in his mother’s legacy as an outsider and disruptor, has revived the conflict. He feels he has been undermined and traduced by the Royal Family, just as his mother felt. In his California absence, the admiration and respect for the other figure in this saga, Prince William, has deepened and blossomed. However much Harry may hate it, William and Kate are the true inheritors of Diana’s popularity and of her sense of duty.

Richard Kay, Daily Mail

Never mind that William is the current Prince of Wales; Kay provides no comparison to support that claim. He does not examine William and Kate’s charitable records beside Diana’s work. He does not compare how they confront powerful institutions, respond to marginalised people or challenge harmful traditions. Kay simply awards them Diana’s legacy.

Diana’s appeal came partly from her willingness to cross boundaries. She embraced people living with HIV when fear and misinformation remained widespread. She walked through a live minefield in Angola along a narrow route cleared for her by demining experts. She challenged royal expectations and spoke publicly about subjects the institution preferred to keep hidden.

Kay offers no evidence that William and Kate have inherited that disruptive courage. By contrast, Harry founded an international sporting movement for wounded veterans. He has confronted the tabloid press in court, spoken openly about grief and challenged the institution that shaped his childhood.

None of this makes William less Diana’s son. It does show the absurdity of presenting her legacy as a prize that newspapers can award to one brother while taking it from the other.

Both men are Diana’s sons. Her memory does not belong exclusively to the heir and his wife because they remained inside the institution.

The Same Instruments Of Humiliation Remain

Spencer writes that removing Diana’s HRH formed part of a “package of humiliation” after her divorce. The loss reportedly hurt her and sent a public message that her royal life was over.

That claim feels credible because royal titles and styles continue to be presented as instruments for disciplining or humiliating Harry and Meghan.

The Lord Chamberlain’s recent letter stressed that the Sussexes’ HRH styles remain in abeyance and described them as akin to private citizens with commercial and charitable interests.

Prince Michael and Princess Michael of Kent retain their HRH styles despite Prince Michael’s history of commercial consultancy work. Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie also retain theirs while pursuing private-sector careers. None of them lost an HRH merely because they held commercial employment.

The point is not that these royals should lose their styles. It is that commercial work only becomes a supposed constitutional emergency when Harry and Meghan do it.

Tabloid reports and royal commentators regularly speculate that William could take further action against the Sussexes when he becomes king, including restricting or removing royal styles and titles. These stories do not establish William’s intentions, but they keep the threat of future punishment in circulation.

If those reports reflect William’s intentions, he would not be protecting Diana’s legacy. He would be repeating the method Spencer says the institution used to humiliate her.

The Mail Cannot Have it both ways

Kay says the Daily Mail took Diana’s side during the “war of the Waleses.” Kay presents the Daily Mail as Diana’s loyal newspaper, yet Britain’s tabloid industry repeatedly invaded her private life. Prince Harry secured a formal apology from another major publisher, News Group Newspapers, for serious intrusion into his private life and into Diana’s private life. Meanwhile, the High Court found that the Mail on Sunday misused Meghan’s private information and infringed her copyright by publishing extracts from her letter to her father.

It praises Spencer for challenging King Charles, but attacks Harry for challenging the same institution. It accepts Diana’s accounts of cold treatment, but dismisses Meghan when she describes similar experiences. It recognises the damage inflicted on two grieving boys, then mocks one of those boys when he explains how that damage shaped his decisions.

Kay wants readers to accept that Spencer’s memoir rings true while rejecting the obvious parallels with Harry’s story.

That firewall fails. If Spencer’s account is credible, it does not prove Harry resembles his father. Instead, it highlights parallels with Diana: security vulnerabilities, sustained media hostility, bitter family conflicts, philanthropy and a powerful connection with the public.