King Charles Was ‘In Love’ with His Male Valet?

Princess Diana allegedly told her brother that her crumbling marriage to then-Prince Charles was headed for divorce because she believed her husband was “in love with his valet,” according to an explosive new memoir.

The startling claim comes from Charles Spencer’s upcoming book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, which is due to be released in the United States on September 22.

Spencer says the deeply personal book tells Diana’s story from the perspective of the brother who grew up alongside her and remained one of her closest confidants. Publisher Penguin Random House describes it as the first time Spencer has spoken at length about his famous sister and the dramatic final week of her life.

One of the book’s most eye-catching passages reportedly centers on a private lunch between the siblings at San Lorenzo restaurant in London.

According to Spencer’s account, Diana told him she planned to divorce Charles.

Spencer recalled being stunned by the news and warning his sister that the public had embraced their marriage as a royal fairytale and might blame her if it fell apart.

Diana then allegedly gave him a startling explanation.

She told him that her husband was “in love with his valet,” according to excerpts from the memoir reported by People and other outlets.

Spencer does not identify the valet in that passage.

That distinction is important because some reports have linked the comment to Michael Fawcett, a longtime member of Charles’ household who became one of his most trusted aides. There is no established evidence, however, that Charles and Fawcett had a romantic relationship.

Fawcett’s name became caught up in a very different royal controversy in 2003, when he obtained an injunction aimed at stopping publication of allegations involving himself and a senior member of the royal family.

The Guardian later successfully challenged restrictions preventing it from identifying Fawcett as the man who had sought the injunction. Court reporting at the time revealed that the underlying story involved an alleged sexual incident, but the newspaper expressly noted there was no evidence establishing the allegation as true.

Charles’ office took the unusual step of publicly pushing back against the rumors.

His private secretary at the time, Sir Michael Peat, called the unspecified allegation “totally untrue” and said it was “without a shred of substance.”

The episode generated enormous tabloid speculation but never produced proof of an affair between Charles and Fawcett.

Spencer’s new account is therefore best understood as a claim about what Diana allegedly believed and told her brother, not evidence that such a relationship actually existed.

The memoir arrives as old wounds surrounding Charles and Diana’s troubled marriage are once again being reopened.

Their separation was formally announced in December 1992. The Royal Family’s own historical account says the couple continued living separately before divorcing on August 28, 1996.

By then, their marital problems were very much public.

Charles acknowledged adultery during a televised interview in 1994, saying the relationship occurred after the marriage had become “irretrievably broken down.” His office subsequently confirmed that he was referring to Camilla Parker Bowles, now Queen Camilla.

Diana delivered her own seismic television moment during her November 1995 Panorama interview, famously referring to the presence of another person in the marriage while discussing Charles’ relationship with Camilla. The interview intensified an already extraordinary public breakdown of the royal marriage.

The new valet claim is only one of several allegations in Spencer’s book that have put Buckingham Palace on the defensive.

Spencer also alleges that Charles made a deeply insensitive remark shortly after Diana’s August 1997 death while the two men argued over arrangements for her funeral.

Buckingham Palace has taken the unusual step of responding.

“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,” a palace spokesman said this week.

The statement was directed at Spencer’s recollections surrounding Diana’s death and funeral rather than serving as a specific denial of the newly reported valet conversation.

Spencer, meanwhile, is standing by his memories.

In an interview published Friday, September 18, he said he was telling the truth about his recollection of a contentious conversation with Charles after Diana’s death and rejected the suggestion that grief had distorted his memory.

Nearly three decades after Diana died in Paris at age 36, the intensely scrutinized collapse of her marriage continues to generate new claims, old disputes and questions that may never be definitively answered.

What Spencer’s book does provide is something different: his account of what Diana was telling her own family as her royal marriage unraveled.

Whether her belief about Charles and a valet reflected reality, suspicion or the extraordinary tensions surrounding the couple remains unproven.