The day Diana was buried, someone offered her a title that was no longer of any use.
According to the new book by Charles Spencer, the princess’s brother, Queen Elizabeth II decided to restore her title of ‘Her Royal Highness’ on the very day of the funeral in 1997. They had taken that title away from her a year earlier, after her divorce from Charles, as a protocolary punishment. Diana described the original removal as ‘petty and vindictive,’ and says that her sister was deeply hurt by that decision of the Crown.
What the book reveals is even more uncomfortable. He rejected the queen’s gesture, calling it a mere “consolation prize”. Spencer recalls a conversation with Elizabeth II’s private secretary in which he himself is said to have asked, with bitter irony, “what sense that honor made now that Diana was dead”. Buckingham Palace responded with a statement implying that Spencer’s grief “clouds his judgment” and distorts his memories, without directly denying the content.
