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Updated 2 hours ago, September 20, 2026

Spencer’s father, the 8th Earl Spencer, died suddenly in March 1992. Days later, then-Prince Charles attended the funeral and joined mourners afterward at Althorp. In his memoir and in a CBS interview, Spencer says Charles told him: “you’re so lucky to have inherited so young.”

Spencer says he replied, “I’m so sorry, sir,” and that Charles repeated the line. He has called it “a very peculiar conversation” and a peculiar way to talk about a family loss, reading it as frustration that Charles was not yet king. Charles became king 30 years later, in 2022.

The claim appears in Spencer’s memoir “Swan Song: Diana, My Sister,” out September 22. In the same book he says Charles sounded “giddily elated, like a lottery winner” on a phone call after Diana died in 1997. The 1992 remark is Spencer’s account and has not been independently corroborated.

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