Buckingham Palace Rejects Claim Charles Said Diana Would Be Forgotten

Buckingham Palace has pushed back forcefully against an allegation made by Charles Spencer, the brother of Princess Diana, that King Charles III once said she would soon be forgotten after her death.

In a new book, "Swan Song: Diana, My Sister," Spencer describes the days following Diana's death in a car crash in Paris in 1997, when she was 36. He writes that he clashed with the then-Prince Charles, Diana's estranged husband, over plans for Prince William and Prince Harry to walk behind her coffin during the funeral procession.

Spencer says he told Charles that Diana would not have wanted her sons, then 15 and 12, to go through that experience. According to Spencer's account, Charles replied: "rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough." Spencer also accuses Charles of holding "contempt" for his former wife.

The palace responded late Wednesday with a statement that was notably blunt by the standards of the royal household.

"While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and color memory in ways others do not recognize, even many years after such a loss," the statement said.

The strained relations between the palace and Diana's aristocratic Spencer relatives after her death have been widely discussed and were dramatized in the film "The Queen" and the television series "The Crown."

Many observers felt the palace was slow to acknowledge the global outpouring of grief that followed Diana's death, a response that forced the royal family to confront how her common touch had connected with the public in ways that eluded the rest of the monarchy. The more emotionally open approach later adopted by Prince William and Prince Harry, and in recent years by the king, is seen as part of that legacy.

"Swan Song: Diana, My Sister" is due to be published next week. The Daily Mail published the first in a series of extracts late Wednesday.