Royal commentator AN Wilson has been in rare form in recent days. Wilson is a columnist for the Mail, but he also has his own Substack. He’s 75 years old and he has a very long memory because he was actually there. Hilariously, it looks like he has nothing but disgust for King Charles, and Wilson is pretty clearly saying that all of Charles Spencer’s stories about Diana and then-Prince Charles are unquestionably accurate. The Mail published Wilson’s lengthy defense of the Earl Spencer, some of which Wilson previewed in a shockingly scandalous Substack post. First, let’s get to the Mail column.

The king’s campaign against Charles Spencer: This is the line being peddled by the so-called ‘friends of the King’, who have been briefing so vigorously against Charles Spencer, hurling every possible insult against him, deriding him for his own failed marriages, and even suggesting his motives for writing Swan Song were a twisted mixture of malice and the need to pay the alimony to his third ex. All these reactions are understandable, but they also mysteriously miss the point. It seems to me blindingly obvious that Charles Spencer was right to publish his book, and right to do so now.

Spencer is telling the truth: First, because what he has said and written is true. The King has expostulated, but he has not denied the substantial truth of Spencer’s recollections. I am 100 per cent certain that Spencer’s recollections are true. It is quite unthinkable that he has invented, for example, the by-now notorious telephone call which concluded with the then Prince of Wales saying: ‘We’ll forget her soon enough.’

The king is self-absorbed: Equally true – Charles Spencer himself told me this anecdote years ago, not that long after his father’s death – is his memory of Prince Charles, on the day of John Spencer’s funeral, saying to the young, grief-stricken earl: ‘You’re so lucky!’ Although the prince was attending the funeral of his father-in-law, the day was seen, entirely, through Charles Windsor’s own eyes. It was all about him – yet another reason for everyone to feel sorry for Prince Charles. As far as he saw things, Spencer was ‘lucky’ to inherit his father’s title, whereas poor old Prince Charles was still waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for his mother to die.

Center stage: Charles Windsor has been longing all his life to be centre stage. He could not wait to be King, but his mother made him wait until she was 96. His parents neglected him, and then, after 15 years of adulthood and a series of unsuitable partners, he was married off, against his will in what was essentially an arranged marriage, to his 20-year-old bride, Diana Spencer. Diana immediately wowed the crowds on a prodigious scale. Having played second fiddle to his mother for 30 years, Prince Charles visibly sulked and pouted while the world fell in love with his wife. And, with appalling cruelty and clumsiness, he told her that he did not love her on the night before their wedding and continued to go on seeing Mrs Parker Bowles – the only sensible person in his life apart from his sister, Anne. No wonder Diana was shattered by her husband’s adultery, and no wonder her brother continues to feel her pain.

A self-obsessed king: Poor King Charles is prodigiously self-obsessed. His outbursts of self-protective rage (demonstrated on the very day of his accession when the fountain pen spluttered ink as he spluttered with fury) are well known among everyone who has ever known him. He was the worst possible husband for her, and she was the worst possible choice of wife for him…So, the whole thing is a tragedy. A true tragedy, in that probably all those concerned, flawed and imperfect as they were and are – the grannies who dreamed up the marriage, the bride and groom so ill-matched, their flawed, damaged sons – set out with the hope that they would do good. As it was, this disastrous marriage very nearly brought the monarchy to an end. And its consequences – two traumatised sons, who are still living with the consequences and making the rest of us live with those consequences, could yet finish off the monarchy itself.

At least Spencer didn’t wait for the king to die: Although it might sound strange, it is more tactful for Spencer to do so now, while the King is still alive, rather than to wait for Charles III to die. Then it would seem like dancing on his grave. We need to be reminded of how appallingly not only Charles Windsor, but all the Royal Family, behaved towards Diana. That is why the nation turned against all of them. It was not just the Press and the paparazzi who drove her to her desperate end, it was the callousness of the Windsors. I salute Charles Spencer for his bravery in saying all this.

[From The Mail]

I can’t believe I’m agreeing wholeheartedly with a Mail columnist, but here we are. Wilson is correct about all of it. I especially agree with this point: “We need to be reminded of how appallingly not only Charles Windsor, but all the Royal Family, behaved towards Diana. That is why the nation turned against all of them. It was not just the Press and the paparazzi who drove her to her desperate end, it was the callousness of the Windsors.” Exactly! And we also need Spencer’s book because the Windsors have spent 30 years trying to rewrite every single thing about Diana and who she really was. King Charles is still seething with jealousy over a ghost who overshadows him. KC3 is still actively covering up his own behavior towards Diana. As for Wilson’s bonkers Substack, he highlighted Spencer’s recollection of Diana saying “my husband is in love with his valet.” Here’s that section:

The extraordinary charisma of Diana, and the comparative charmlessness of Charles was always going to make it a difficult ride, and we can all see, with as much compassion as we can muster, that these two people, who, presumably, were intending to do their best – by the marriage, by the coutry, by their children, when they came long – were overwhelmed by the sheer impossibility of it all.

But this claim – that Charles Windsor’s bisexuality had moved in a more clearly gay direction – is a detail in the story which is simply dismissed by the great Arthur Edwards.

The gay, thing, though, the bi thing. …Maybe in some marriages, it would not have mattered. It is an obvious feature of Charles Windsor that he is a bisexual, mainly gay, and in his second marriage he has obviously found someone who understands him, cherishes him, and has been a wonderful wife. You can’t blame the much younger Diana, who was little more than a teenager when she met him, feeling absolutely bereft when the strange truths emerged.

… [Charles Spencer] is also a grieving brother, whose extraordinary, starry sister was, by any standards, treated so cruelly, so insensitively, so absolutely appallingly, by the Windsors. They were all , the royals, too emotionally stupid to know how to deal with Diana or with the Dinana phenomenon. The subsequent troubles, the scars and wounds inflicted on Princes William and Harry, the whole ghastly story, all stem from the fact that the Royal Family forced Charles Windsor to marry and chose a bride for him solely on the grounds that she was a young virgin, the child of a courtier, a person they thought they could mould and control and dominate. This was an arranged marriage just as fiercely orchestrated as the most old-fashioned child-marriage forced upon an Afghan village girls by the Taliban. But they chose the wrong victim. They chose Diana, and three decades after her death, she is not going to be silenced or forgotten. ‘We’ll forget her soon enough’, said Charles Windsor, not long after her death. We won’t. Three cheers for Charles Spencer, say I.

[From AN Wilson’s Substack]

Wow. Right? We’re now discussing this quite openly, I guess.

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