King Charles coronation: Thousands on guest list, but where is Princess Diana’s brother?

King Charles III's historic coronation will see over 2,000 people in attendance at London's Westminster Abbey on Saturday. But on the lengthy list of royal guests, one name remains nowhere to be seen- Earl Charles Spencer. According to The Independent, the monarch has snubbed Spencer, the brother of his ex-wife Princess Diana.

This has garnered sharp criticism, given the fact that even the King's estranged daughter-in-law Meghan Markle managed to receive an invitation, which she later turned down. Spencer's exclusion at the upcoming coronation will somehow break the promise he made 25 years ago at the very place where King Charles will be crowned. In 1997, he vowed in the royal church during Princess Diana's funeral that he would take care of her sons William and Harry as their uncle. At that time, it was assumed that he would remain part of the inner royal circle.

“On behalf of your mother and sisters, I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you planned," he said at the time. 

King Charles' coronation sidelines the Spencers

Fast forward to today, the Spencer family witnesses a bitter turn of events. Had Princess Diana been alive and married to King Charles, the coronation would see a different Queen being crowned altogether. Spencer's snub is likely to spur new tensions between the Diana and Camilla camps, with a close friend saying, “What’s galling is that Earl Spencer may well have turned down the invitation for obvious historic reasons, but this brutal exclusion left no option for any elegant diplomacy.”

“It is pretty brutal, even though it would have been tricky for him had he been invited. But that would have allowed him to decline rather than being dropped and snubbed," said another friend of Spencer's. Princess Diana's family sitting out the royal event possibly hints at a massive shift at Buckingham Palace as King Charles and Queen Consort Camilla get coronated. For years, the royals and the Spencers have remained on cordial terms, with both owning estates in Norfolk, and Earl being the late Queen Elizabeth's godson.