A forthcoming memoir by Earl Spencer, Diana, Princess of Wales's brother, alleges that King Charles (then Prince of Wales) told him days after Diana's 1997 death that "we'll forget her soon enough", during a heated phone call about funeral arrangements. The claim, part of a book due to be serialised in the Daily Mail, is likely to reopen old wounds over the couple's bitter divorce and could prove embarrassing for the Royal Family, coming shortly after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's return to the UK.

According to Earl Spencer's account in "Swan Song: Diana, My Sister", the row erupted over whether Princes William and Harry, then 15 and 12, should walk behind their mother's coffin in the funeral procession, a plan the Earl opposed as too traumatic for the boys. He says Charles insisted the precedent had been set by his own participation in Lord Mountbatten's funeral procession, and that after the Earl pointed out he had been 30 at the time, an enraged Charles allegedly made the "forget her" remark, which Spencer says betrayed "pent-up contempt" for Diana. Spencer, 62, says he wrote the book to correct "untruths" about his sister, whose death in a Paris car crash triggered global mourning and whose funeral he marked with a famously defiant eulogy watched by 2.5 billion people.