The Princess Royal’s famous no-nonsense attitude is admired by many, but it didn’t go down the best with Princess Diana’s brother at a royal dinner. In Earl Spencer’s new memoir, Swan Song, he describes the days leading up to Charles and Diana’s wedding, including this formal meal held at Buckingham Palace two nights before.
He knew he’d be on Princess Anne’s table and then discovered he was sitting next to her. The Earl recalls, “It transpired, to my alarm, that I was actually placed next to Anne, and when she turned my way, I asked, ‘And how did your daughter’s christening go today, Ma’am?'”
“I expected her to run away with the happy topic of her baby Zara’s baptism,” Charles alleged. “But instead, she stopped, looked at me witheringly, and asked, “Tell me, how’s a christening supposed to go?”
(Image credit: Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
According to Princess Diana’s brother, who was only 17 at the time, he blushed bright red and found he didn’t have a reply to this. He ended up comparing his awkward interaction with Anne to his brother-in-law Neil making “easy conversation” with the Crown Princess of Japan about rice cultivation on the other side of the room.
Earl Spencer wrote, “It was the luck of the draw that night, whether you were placed next to a royal who was happy to make you feel small, or one that had the grace and manners to look for common ground, wherever it might be found.”
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This is a rather damning depiction of Princess Anne and seems to be implying that her unwillingness to engage with christening small talk made him “feel small” that night. The Princess is someone who doesn’t beat around the bush or gush about things in the same way as other royals, particularly personal matters.
We’re now used to seeing the Princess of Wales and Duchess Sophie hugging people or shaking hands at engagements or taking selfies, but this wasn’t the old way of doing things and Princess Anne is more restrained when she’s out in public.
“We never shook hands. The theory was that you couldn’t shake hands with everybody, so don’t start. So I kind of stick with that, but I noticed others don’t,” she’s previously said about walkabouts. “It’s not for me to say that it’s wrong, but I think the initial concept was that it was patently absurd to start shaking hands.”
Perhaps Earl Spencer would’ve been on safer ground if he’d asked the Princess about her royal work or equestrianism, but he wasn’t to know at 17. Anne’s reaction has clearly stuck with him all these years but she’s hardly the only royal to be painted in a less than ideal light in Swan Song.
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The Palace has already issued a rare statement responding to Charles’s claim that he was told by the King “we’ll forget her soon enough”, referring to Princess Diana. They declared, “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 colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss.”
Despite this, in an interview with the BBC, Earl Spencer stood firm on the claims, declaring, “I can tell you here and now, those are exactly the words he said.”