Royal Expert Says William and Harry Must Be Furious at Charles Spencer: Brothers Still Searching for the Inaccurate Part
Palace insiders insist the princes are horrified. Nobody appears to have told the princes.
Royal fury has been confirmed by everyone except the two people whose fury it allegedly is.
LONDON — Britain has been rocked by reports that Princes William and Harry are furious, horrified, devastated, wounded, alarmed and incandescent over their uncle Charles Spencer's new memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, and are presumably hurling commemorative china across several time zones as we speak.
There is only one mildly irritating problem with this story.
Neither brother has actually said it.
The Royal Arithmetic Behind the Fury Reports
Royal biographer Ingrid Seward told reporters she believes the brothers would be "absolutely horrified and furious" that Spencer's book attacks their father. That's a perfectly reasonable guess. But when journalists put the question directly to William and Harry, both declined to comment. And in royal journalism, declining to comment doesn't mean declining to comment. It means the investigators may now begin selecting adjectives.
William says nothing. Harry says nothing. Therefore: fury, divided by horror, multiplied by an unnamed palace source, equals an exclusive. It's a tidy piece of royal new maths, and it is now taught in journalism schools right alongside shorthand and the timeless craft of writing "royal rift deepens" without ever leaving the office.
Seward's theory is that the brothers would naturally object to somebody speaking harshly about their father. Fair enough. But there's a second possibility nobody in this story appears to have entertained: maybe William and Harry already know their father. That idea alone seems to have startled the entire British press pack.
The Awkward Problem With Actually Being There
Spencer's book makes serious allegations about King Charles's behaviour and attitude around Diana's death, including a claim that the then-Prince Charles told him "we'll forget her soon enough" shortly after the funeral. Buckingham Palace has firmly disputed the account, saying grief can affect memory; Spencer has stood by every word and, when the Palace pushed back, simply asked the BBC whether the King was "furious or embarrassed."
Satire can't settle that argument. It doesn't need to, because the far funnier part is this: William and Harry weren't readers of the Diana story. They were characters in it. They were physically present. Harry was twelve when his mother died. William was fifteen. Both walked behind her coffin down the Mall while the rest of the country watched on television.
So try, for a moment, shocking them with a description of their own childhoods. "Sir, we've uncovered disturbing new information about 1997." "Yes?" "You were there." "Good God." "We also have photographic evidence." "Of me?" "Standing beside you." "Someone alert Scotland Yard."
Harry Has Already Written the Customer Review
Then there's the small matter of Spare. Harry published 416 pages about growing up inside the House of Windsor, and it was not, as it happens, a royal cookbook. He wrote about grief, about his father, about his brother, about Camilla, about the press and about the funeral procession itself, including his own objections to being made to walk in it as a boy.
So the theory that Harry might now clutch his pearls because Uncle Charles has started sharing family memories requires the British public to pretend Spare was an agricultural manual. Harry knows exactly what a memoir is. He's operated one, at length, in hardback and audiobook. Being frightened by his uncle's book would be a bit like a chainsaw dealer flinching at the sound of a chainsaw.
"Somebody is publishing family secrets!" "Yes." "In a book!" "Yes." "Harry, are you all right?" "I have an audiobook version of mine."
Spencer's Accidental Invention of the World's Strangest Family Group Chat
Spencer has said he told William, Harry and Diana's sisters about the book ahead of publication rather than ambushing them, and that he deliberately left out material to protect the princes' privacy. By his own account, Harry's main concern when he heard about it was whether anything embarrassing about himself had made the cut.
That is, frankly, a magnificent reaction. Uncle Charles: "I've written a book with extraordinary allegations about your father." Harry: "Right." "And the royal establishment." "Sure." "And the circumstances around your mother's funeral." "Fine." "And several decades of family unhappiness." "Okay." "But nothing embarrassing about you." "Brilliant. Send two copies." If that's fury, then Montecito has developed an unusually relaxed strain of it.
Maybe "Mostly True" Is the Actual Problem
Here is the comic heart of the entire affair. If Spencer's book were pure invention, denial would be easy. Charles secretly invented disco. Charles personally sank the Titanic. Charles keeps three zebras under Highgrove that answer only to "Your Grace." William and Harry could bat that away in a single sentence.
But Spencer is writing about a family history both princes actually lived through, and even where they might dispute his wording, his motives or his memory of a specific conversation, they can't wave off the whole era as something their uncle dreamed up after a heavy Stilton. The marriage really did collapse. Diana really did become one of the most photographed women alive. The relationship really was troubled. The boys really did walk behind that coffin. None of that is a Spencer invention; it's simply history, and history is a much harder thing to deny than an unnamed source's adjective.
Britain's New Royal Denial Scale
The satire desk would like to propose a formal measuring system for royal reactions. If Buckingham Palace calls something "categorically untrue," that's a denial. If a spokesman says "recollections may vary," put the kettle on. If unnamed friends say somebody is devastated, wait. If a royal expert says a prince must be furious, keep waiting. And if the princes themselves stay silent after being asked directly? That tells us exactly one confirmed fact: they stayed silent. Everything built on top of that is Britain's oldest renewable-energy industry, tea leaves turned into breaking news.
As one Fleet Street veteran turned Prat contributor, Roper Penberthy, put it this way: "We used to need two sources for a story. Now we need zero sources and one royal expert with a strong opinion about how other people must be feeling." His colleague Vivienne Pratfall added that the only thing more predictable than a royal family row is a royal correspondent's ability to find one in an empty room.
What the Coverage Actually Shows, Once You Strip the Adjectives Out
Strip away the drama and what's left is oddly thin. Both princes were asked directly about Spencer's book and chose not to comment, and in ordinary life that would simply mean silence; in royal journalism it means the search for the right adjective can begin. Somewhere along the way, "Harry has not commented" quietly became "Harry is privately devastated," which is the media equivalent of turning potatoes into vodka through sheer editorial willpower.
There's also a simpler explanation on offer, which is that the brothers aren't furious because their uncle hasn't told them anything they didn't already know; Spencer himself has said his claims about the funeral period would hardly surprise either of them. Expecting William to publicly rebut every unflattering story about his parents would require him to launch his own television channel, and expecting Harry to be shocked by a family memoir is, at this point, roughly like warning a professional chef that somebody swore near a saucepan.
And there's the small detail that Diana herself is the one thing everyone across this entire row still agrees on: unforgettable. Britain has managed to enter the rare historical moment where the fight isn't about whether Diana mattered, but about who allegedly, decades ago, predicted that she wouldn't.
The likeliest scene, honestly, is far less operatic than the headlines suggest. William and Harry read the supposedly explosive passages, exchanged the weary look available only to two grown men who've spent their entire lives inside the world's most televised family argument, and got on with their day. "Bit dramatic." "Mostly recognisable, though." "Tea?" "Tea." And somewhere in London, a royal correspondent filed a story headlined BROTHERS UNITED IN SECRET RAGE.
This piece is satirical journalism built around one documented fact: William and Harry have not publicly supplied the furious reaction being attributed to them by royal commentators. Spencer's allegations remain disputed, and Buckingham Palace has directly challenged at least one central claim in the book. Everything else here is comic deduction, delivered in the fine British satire tradition practised daily over at The London Prat, whose staff take royal fury reporting about as seriously as the princes apparently do.
For the reporting behind the satire, see the Associated Press account of Spencer's allegations and the Palace's rare rebuttal and the People report on William and Harry declining to answer questions about the book.
Sources
- Associated Press, via Michigan Public: "New book by Princess Diana's brother prompts war of words with King Charles III"
- People.com: "Prince William, Prince Harry Avoid Questions About Charles Spencer's Book About Princess Diana"
For the American take on royal families behaving like every other family, only with more staff, see our sister desk at Bohiney.com.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo! https://prat.uk/why-arent-william-and-harry-furious/
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