Princess Diana’s Brother Says King Charles Sounded ‘Like a Man Who Had Won the Lottery’ After Her Death

King Charles III has once again come under fire from Princess Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, the Earl Spencer. As his revealing memoir is published, Buckingham Palace is bracing for further accounts shedding light on the life of the British royal family.

In a new excerpt from the book, Spencer claims that immediately after Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997, the then-Prince Charles spoke “as though he were in a state of elation” and sounded “like a man who had won the lottery.” At the time, just one year had passed since Charles and Diana’s divorce had been officially finalized.

Spencer, whose aristocratic family has been closely connected to the British royal family for generations, writes that he was at his home in South Africa with his children when his sister, Jane Fellowes, told him that Diana had been involved in a car accident. Later, after an agonizing wait and mounting fear, he learned that she had died.

“The telephone rang continuously. Prince Charles caught me as I was crossing the landing upstairs. Unlike the other callers, who were stunned and barely able to get out words of condolence and offers of help, he sounded extraordinarily upbeat — like a man who had won the lottery, I thought at the time,” Spencer recalls.

According to Spencer, during the phone call Charles told him that he had already informed Princes William and Harry — who were 15 and 12 at the time, respectively — of their mother’s death.

“Looking back, I now suspect that the prince’s first reaction must have been to think that this event would allow him to marry the woman he loved, rather than to register the loss of the woman he did not love. After a painful divorce, it can be difficult to feel much sympathy for an ex-spouse or for those who deeply care about them,” he added.

In his memoir, Spencer also gives a detailed account of how, he claims, royal protocol effectively excluded Diana’s family from having a say in the arrangements for her funeral. He alleges that royal officials rejected a request to include music Diana loved — Mozart’s Requiem — in the ceremony.

“In the eyes of Buckingham Palace, Diana remained their property even after death. Her family, despite the divorce, was simply expected to comply with whatever decisions the royal family made,” Spencer wrote.

In 1997, Charles Spencer himself walked behind his sister’s coffin alongside his nephews, Princes William and Harry.

These are not the first such claims made by Spencer. Earlier this week, he alleged that just days after Diana’s death, Charles told him that she would soon be forgotten.

Buckingham Palace issued an unusually forceful statement rejecting Spencer’s claims and suggesting that the grief he experienced following his sister’s death may have affected his recollections.

In an interview with the BBC, Spencer rejected the palace’s position, saying: “I can tell you here and now: those are exactly the words he said.”