Diana's Brother Claims Charles Sounded 'Giddily Elated' After Her Death: 'Like A Lottery Winner'

King Charles reportedly sounded “like a lottery winner” in the immediate aftermath of Princess Diana’s death in 1997, according to explosive new extracts from a forthcoming memoir by her brother, published on Thursday.

Charles Spencer writes that the then-Prince Charles appeared “giddily elated” when he spoke to him shortly after Diana’s death was confirmed, suggesting this may have stemmed from a sense of newfound freedom to remarry.

“Unlike my other callers, who were stunned, barely able to articulate their condolences and offers of help, he sounded giddily elated – like a lottery winner, I remember thinking at the time,” Spencer wrote, according to passages carried by the Daily Mail.

He added: “Looking back now, I suspect the prince’s first

reaction must have been to think more of how this event might free him to marry the woman he loved, rather than appreciating the loss of one he did not.”

Buckingham Palace Issues Rare Response

Buckingham Palace addressed the row on Wednesday, after the first extracts from Spencer’s book emerged, though it has not directly responded to this latest set of claims.

A palace spokesperson said: “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.”

The newly released passages also touch on Diana’s private struggles, revealing that she had, in her later years, driven herself more than once to Beachy Head, a well-known clifftop on England’s south coast.

Spencer wrote that she had contemplated “ending it all” during these visits, but that her love for her sons, Princes William and Harry, “stopped her from going further.”

Diana died at the age of 36 in a car crash in Paris in 1997, alongside her partner Dodi al-Fayed, while attempting to evade pursuing paparazzi. She and Charles had separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996, a year after she gave her famous BBC interview referencing his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, whom he later married in 2005.

(With inputs from Reuters)