{ "archive_path": "archive/1790039709.315755", "base_url": "www.mercurynews.com/2026/09/17/king-charles-valet-rumor-sexual-past/amp", "basename": "", "bookmarked_date": "2026-09-22 01:15", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/www.mercurynews.com/2026/09/17/king-charles-valet-rumor-sexual-past/amp", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.mercurynews.com", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "www.mercurynews.com/2026/09/17/king-charles-valet-rumor-sexual-past/amp/index.html" }, "domain": "www.mercurynews.com", "extension": "", "hash": "8S0EME40X98MTMH8V7B6", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.mercurynews.com" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-22T04:15:12.156290+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790039709.315755", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-22T04:15:11.477512+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/09/17/king-charles-valet-rumor-sexual-past/amp/" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-22T04:15:12.902102+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790039709.315755", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-22T04:15:12.165175+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/09/17/king-charles-valet-rumor-sexual-past/amp/" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-09-22T04:15:21.917698+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790039709.315755", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-22T04:15:18.248685+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmp0c3bulyw", "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/09/17/king-charles-valet-rumor-sexual-past/amp/" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-09-22T04:15:18.235557+00:00", "index_texts": [ "Prince Charles and the Princess of Wales (1961 \u2013 1997, later Diana, Princess of Wales) at Westminster Abbey, London, for a centenary service for the Royal College Of Music, 28th February 1982. (Photo by Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)\n\n\t\t\t\tThe latest excerpt of Charles Spencer\u2019s book about his sister, the late Princess Diana, makes a shocking claim about her reasons for getting a divorce from the future king: She had discovered the existence of a love affair between Charles and his valet.\nIn this excerpt from \u201cSwan Song: Diana, My Sister,\u201d published by Daily Mail, the 9th Earl of Spencer almost breezes by this stunning allegation with a couple sentences, whereas he focuses much more on the alleged tense conversations he had with the then-Prince of Wales in the aftermath of his sister\u2019s 1997 death.\nBut earlier in the excerpt, Spencer briefly describes an occasion in the 1990s when he joined his older sister for lunch at a posh London restaurant. That\u2019s when she told him she would seek a divorce and her reasons for doing so, he wrote.\nEarl Charles Spencer (left), younger brother of the late Princess Diana (right, in 1983). (Getty)\u00a0Getty\n\u201cI was silent for a moment. I had known things were bad, but not this bad,\u201d Spencer wrote. When he expressed his concern that the British public would turn against her because they had bought \u201cinto the fairytale\u201d of her marriage to the future king, she replied, \u201cBut my husband is in love with his valet.\u201d\nIn the excerpt, Spencer does not name the valet, but journalist Tom Sykes explains who he is and refers back to a \u201ctoxic\u201d rumor going around royal circles in the early 2000s. The unfounded rumor is that Charles had a sexual relationship with someone who worked for him. But according to a 2003 report in The Guardian, police investigated what was referred to as alleged misconduct in the royal household and found it unsubstantiated. Charles\u2019 spokesperson at the time also denounced the allegation as \u201ctotally ludicrous and, indeed, risible.\u201d\n\nDuring Charles\u2019 marriage to and divorce from Diana, his valet was Michael Fawcett. At one point, the future king regarded Fawcett as his closest confident, and had him famously squeeze his toothpaste for him after his arm was broken playing polo, as Sykes explained in a post on his The Royalist Substack.\nFawcett joined the royal household as a footman to Queen Elizabeth in 1981 and rose through the ranks to become Charles\u2019 valet and then head of The Prince\u2019s Foundation, a nonprofit that funds his favorite charitable causes. But in more recent years, Fawcett has become best known for his disgrace in the \u201ccash-for-honors\u201d scandal in 2021.\nThat year, the Mail on Sunday reported on a letter in which Fawcett offered to help a Saudi billionaire secure British citizenship and a knighthood if he donated large sums of money to causes of particular interest to Charles. The Metropolitan Police launched an investigation but no one was arrested or charged in the scandal.\nNow, Fawcett finds himself at the center of a potential new scandal, though it remains to be seen how seriously it will be taken by the public.\nLONDON - APRIL 09: Michael Fawcett (back left) and Prince Charles former bodyguard Colin Trimming (back right) attend the Service of Prayer and Dedication following the marriage of TRH Prince Charles and The Duchess Of Cornwall, Camilla Parker Bowles at The Guildhall, at Windsor Castle on April 9, 2005 in Berkshire, England. (Photo by Dave Hogan/Getty Images)\u00a0\nSykes said the affair rumor originated with George Smith, another valet in the prince\u2019s household. In 1996, Smith alleged, while in the throes of a mental breakdown, that he had been raped by a senior aide to the prince and, separately, that he had witnessed an incident involving a member of the royal family and a servant, Sykes reported. Diana got involved in the case by supposedly recording Smith\u2019s account and keeping the tape in a locked \u201cmahogany box\u201d in her apartment.\nDiana\u2019s butler Paul Burrell made this claim about the tape in the mahogany box during his 2002 criminal trial on charges of stealing more than 300 items from Diana\u2019s estate, according to Sykes. Burrell claims he had seen the box in her\u00a0 apartment, but that its contents vanished after her death.\nWhatever happened to the tape, Burrell\u2019s trial fell apart and the charges were dropped when it became known that the butler had told the late Queen Elizabeth II that he was keeping some of Diana\u2019s possessions.\nAccording to Sykes and other reports, Smith\u2019s allegations about a sexual relationship between Charles and Fawcett became part of a separate legal case involving Smith\u2019s misconduct allegations.\nFawcett went to court in 2003 to stop a publication from naming him in a report about the alleged misconduct, according to Sykes. Fawcett called the rumors about him \u201cfalse and damaging,\u201d while Charles representatives issued a rare public condemnation.\nHis spokesperson at the time, Sir Michael Peat, said the person making the claims was a man suffering from mental health problems, The Guardian reported. Without detailing the nature of the allegations, Peat also said he knew the allegations were untrue because Charles \u201ctold me it is untrue and I believe him implicitly.\u201d Peat also said: \u201cAnyone who knows the Prince of Wales at all would appreciate that the allegation is totally ludicrous and, indeed, risible.\u201d\n\u201cThis\u00a0allegation is becoming common currency, it is the subject of much speculation and innuendo, and I just want to make it entirely clear, even though I can\u2019t refer to the specifics of the allegation, that it is totally untrue and without a shred of substance,\u201d Peat also said, according to The Guardian. Peat noted that Prince William and Prince Harry also were made aware of the allegations.\nTwenty-three years later, Buckingham Palace issued what\u2019s seen as a broad repudiation of Spencer\u2019s book. In a statement, it warned that grief can \u201ccloud reason\u201d and \u201ccolor memory.\u201d Sykes said he doubted that the palace will issue another statement about Spencer\u2019s book, including a statement in response to Spencer bringing up the old valet rumor.\nBroadcaster Piers Morgan was among those who were shocked that Spencer would make such a claim.\n\u201cMy god \u2026 Hard to imagine more incendiary claims, or ones more deliberately aimed to harm King Charles\u2019 reputation,\u201d Morgan said on X.\nSome of Morgan\u2019s followers agreed with what Peat said in 2003 \u2014 that Spencer\u2019s claims about the valet sound \u201cridiculous.\u201d They assert that Spencer is trying to cash in by publishing a sensational book about his sister and the royal family. They wonder why Spencer waited 30 years to address the valet rumor when he\u2019s had plenty of opportunities to do so in past interviews or in other books he\u2019s written.\n\u201cI don\u2019t believe a word of this book anymore, and I\u2019m pretty sure the public is going to dismiss it as well,\u201d another person said.\u00a0\nMeanwhile, the excerpt published Thursday offered new context to Spencer\u2019s allegations about his tense interactions with Charles following Diana\u2019s death. He wrote that Charles sounded \u201cgiddily elated\u201d when he first called about the news that Diana had been involved in the fatal car crash in Paris.\nThe excerpt also goes into detail about Spencer\u2019s view of the men\u2019s dispute over having William and Harry, then 15 and 12, walk behind their mother\u2019s coffin in her funeral procession. During that dispute, Spencer controversially alleged that Charles voiced \u201cpent-up contempt\u201d for his ex-wife, and \u201chissed,\u201d \u201cRest assured, we\u2019ll forget her soon enough!\u201d\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\tView more on\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tThe Mercury News" ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790039709.315755", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-22T04:15:16.148323+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/09/17/king-charles-valet-rumor-sexual-past/amp/" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-22T04:15:16.140607+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "Who was King Charles' valet? 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