Diana told Charles Spencer that she was getting a divorce because Prince Charles was “in love with his valet.”
In Swan Song, Spencer writes that over lunch, Diana told him that she and Charles were going to get divorced.
“I was silent for a moment. I had known things were bad, but not this bad.
‘Well, Duch,’ I carefully replied, ‘you of course have my full support…I know you’ll have thought this through. But my main worry is the public. I fear they won’t forgive you. They’ve bought into a fairytale, and I reckon they may well – wrongly – blame you for destroying their fantasy.’
She looked up at me, nodded, and as her huge, sad eyes locked on to mine, she said in a quiet voice: ‘But, Carlos, my husband is in love with his valet.’
I gulped. ‘Well, I guess, in that case, you really don’t have a choice.’
She did not name the member of staff, and I never asked her who it was, or why she would believe such an improbable thing. It was not important: the end of her marriage, and of her dreams, was.”
Queen Elizabeth offered to reinstate Diana’s HRH title posthumously
After Princess Diana and Prince Charles divorced, Diana lost her title, something Spencer claims hurt his sister enormously. In Swan Song, he writes that Queen Elizabeth offered to reinstate it after Diana’s funeral, but Spencer declined because he believed Diana would see it as a kind of consolation prize rather than a meaningful restoration of what had been taken from her. He recalls being summoned by Queen Elizabeth’s private secretary while they were on the royal train heading to Althorp for Diana’s burial.
“What would Diana want?, I thought. She had been dreadfully hurt by the removal of that title as she exited her marriage. It had seemed so petty and vindictive. While she was no longer to be married to one future king, she would always be mother to another.