CNN –
A new audio recording has been released of Princess Diana talking about how Britain’s Prince Charles – now King Charles III. – was disappointed that when Prince Harry was born they had a boy and not a girl.
The late princess recorded a series of tapes in the 1990s and had them secretly delivered to author Andrew Morton before she died in a high-speed car crash in 1997.
Some of the audio recordings will be heard for the first time ahead of the release of a documentary called Diana: The Rest of Her Story next year.
Thursday marked the 26th anniversary of Diana’s death.
ABC’s Good Morning America was able to exclusively listen to the tapes in which Diana says her husband won’t even speak to her stepmother Raine Spencer.
“Because at Harry’s christening, Charles went to mom and said, ‘You know, we were so disappointed, we thought it was a girl,'” she said.
“And Mom ripped his head off and said, ‘You should realize how lucky you are to have a normal child,'” she remembers.
Since that day, Diana said, “A shutter has come down, and this is what he does when someone answers 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 to work toward financial independence.
In response, the late Queen Elizabeth II said in a statement at the time that she would no longer carry out her professional duties and would no longer receive public funds for royal duties.
They have since appeared in a Netflix documentary criticizing how the media and the royal family have treated them, while Harry opened up about his past in his memoir Spare.
In the newly released recordings, Diana also talks about the problematic relationship she had with her stepmother.
“And I said, ‘I hate you so much. If only you knew how much we all hate you for what you’ve done. You ruined the house. “You spent daddy’s money. I said everything I could,” she said.
She recalled that Spencer responded by saying she had “no idea how much pain your mother caused your father.”
The deceased princess replied: “Pain, Raine? That’s a word you can’t even relate to. In my job and in my role I see people suffering like you have never seen before. And you call that pain? I said you still have a lot to learn.’ I remember actually reaching for her esophagus.”
Her biographer Andrew Morton told ABC’s Good Morning America on Friday that it was truly “poignant” to hear her voice and her views on the monarchy firsthand.
“She never thought for a second that Camilla would become queen, so we have a very different perspective on how the story unfolds,” Morton said.
In total there are seven hours of tape. Asked if he would release more audio recordings, Morton said: “There is interest worldwide, but we’ll have to see what happens.”