Harry is watching as Earl Spencer reopens his father’s oldest wounds

What motivated Earl Spencer to level accusations at an elderly King Charles, nearly 30 years after the tragic death of Princess Diana? This is a tale of retaliation and resentment which has simmered through the decades. But it is also one with a strategy behind its timing – and that involves another nemesis duo in the strange odyssey of the modern monarchy: Harry and Meghan. Taken together, their bumpy arrival in the UK and now Spencer’s outpourings in his memoir of Diana, Swan Song, pile pressure on the King in the areas where his life story is most neuralgic and sad – his relationship with his late wife and his broken connection to his younger son. The news of what Spencer’s book entailed “did not come as news to the duke”, as a source close to Harry puts it. In other words, for some time – and certainly since their visit to Althorp on returning to the UK this summer – Harry was well aware that his maternal uncle was about to launch a rhetorical cannonball at his father. So, why did Spencer do it? The usual reasons for a tell-all saga apply. For Spencer, money is useful after a series of divorces and relationship turmoil which culminated in him being ordered to pay the legal costs associated with his current partner Cat Jarman’s case against his ex-wife. He is also driven by a sense that he too is entitled to have a final say on the Diana story – her grave is, after all, on his Althorp estate, and they grew up together in a scattered and fractured family. The Earl also pledged, in a searing speech at Diana’s funeral, to protect her sons from intrusion and, by implication, from some of the pressures of royal life. For his part, William, as heir to the throne, will loathe his uncle’s account and distrust its motives – he has had little to do with the Earl down the years and will now desire even less. Harry – and by extension Meghan – is in a different position, because the Sussexes and Spencers are strategically aligned in one shared purpose: namely to ensure that they are not, as they see it, steamrollered by a powerful Palace and its ruthlessly effective communications machine into having their accounts of controversial incidents sidelined or ignored. By going full tilt at the King’s response to Diana’s death – including the extraordinary claim that Charles sounded “giddily elated” in a call afterwards and said the country would “forget her soon enough” – Spencer knows that he is reopening wounds that run deep, nearly three decades on. Indeed, their power lies in the fact that they can elicit such a strong response even now. And from Harry’s point of view, as he seeks to establish his place in British public life while remaining outside the ranks of working royals, this is a reminder of something he wants to keep in our minds. The one thing that cannot be denied, even by those who think him shallow or self-serving, is that he is Diana’s beloved son and that, aged 12, he suffered the terrible trauma of walking behind her coffin at her funeral. To that extent, both Spencer and his nephew and wife have the same default setting – that Charles has behaved in an unfeeling way. To some degree, the Palace has regrettably substantiated this impression with a too-clever-by-half response: “The pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory.” It sounded arch and even arrogant. It was too obviously a reprise of the playbook used against criticism: the far pithier “recollections may vary” response issued on behalf of the late Queen after Harry and Meghan’s allegations about racism within the Royal Family. It would have been more sensible for the King, via his team, simply to deny Spencer’s version of events flat out. Perhaps he does misremember the “giddy” part and, anyway, royals are also human beings who can sound and behave oddly after a traumatic shock. But accusing Spencer of misremembering events and invoking “fraternal grief” to question his account lands badly and sounds presumptuous. It will probably reap another whirlwind response too. Plainly, relations between the Earl and the Palace have never fully healed in the many years since Diana’s passing. In writing such an excoriating account, Spencer hits a place where he knows King Charles remains most vulnerable – the legacy of his family dealings and the bittersweet memories of Diana and a failed marriage. To some extent, that is also useful to the Sussexes, because it aligns with some of their observations about the chilly nature of the Palace hierarchy today. Having Harry and Meghan visit as soon as they arrived back in the UK allowed Spencer to send a warning shot across the bows of the Windsors. Here are two sets of people who each believe they have a place in a famous family history – and the right to tell it in their own way. The result is a messy memoir and more hurt and rancour – a hissing Swan Song. Spencer has always believed that he has a claim to represent Diana’s legacy because he is “blood family”. What is left now is a feud, reopened in the late life of a King – with an unhappy second son watching in the wings. Anne McElvoy is executive editor at Politico and co-host of the Politics at Sam and Anne’s podcast