New audio of Princess Diana claims Charles was disappointed at having boy, not girl, when Prince Harry was born
CNN
By Jennifer Hauser and Chris Lau, CNN
(CNN) — New audio has been released of Princess Diana talking about how Britain’s Prince Charles – now King Charles III – was disappointed that they were having a boy, not a girl, when Prince Harry was born.
The late princess recorded a series of audio tapes in the 1990s and had them secretly delivered to author Andrew Morton before her death in a high-speed car crash in 1997.
Some of the audio is being heard for the first time ahead of a documentary coming out next year called, “Diana: The Rest of Her Story.”
Thursday marked 26 years since Diana’s death.
ABC’s Good Morning America got an exclusive listen to the tapes in which Diana says her husband wouldn’t even talk to her stepmother Raine Spencer.
“Because at Harry’s Christening, Charles went up to mummy and said, ‘You know we were so disappointed, we thought it would be a girl,’” she said.
“And mummy snapped his head off and said, ‘You should realize how lucky you are to have a child that’s normal,’” she recalled.
Diana said ever since that day, “a shutter’s come down, and that’s what he does when he gets somebody answering back at him.”
Prince Harry and his wife Meghan announced in January, 2020 that they were stepping back from their roles as senior members of the British royal family and planned to split their time between the United Kingdom and North America, as they worked towards becoming financially independent.
In response, late Queen Elizabeth II said in a statement then that they would no longer be performing work duties and would cease receiving public funds for royal duties.
Since then, they have been featured in a Netflix docuseries critical of how the media and the royal family treated them, while Harry recounted his past in his memoir Spare.
In the newly released recordings, Diana also discusses the troubled relationship she had with her stepmother.
“And I said, ‘I hate you so much. If you only knew how much we all hated you for what you’ve done. You’ve ruined the house. You’ve spent Daddy’s money.’ I said everything I possibly could,” she said.
‘Pain, Raine?’
She recalled Spencer reacting by saying she had “no idea how much pain your mother put your father through.”
The late Princess responded: ‘Pain, Raine? That’s one word you don’t even know how to relate to. In my job and in my role, I see people suffer like you’ve never seen. And you call that pain? I said, you’ve got a lot to learn.’ I remember really going for her gullet.”
Her biographer Andrew Morton told ABC’s Good Morning America Friday that there is a real “poignancy” in hearing her voice and first-hand views of the monarchy.
“She never thought for a second that Camilla would become queen, so we have a very different perspective on unfolding history,” Morton said.
There are seven hours of tapes in total. When asked if he would release more audio, Morton said, “There is global interest, but we’ll have to see what happens.”
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