Rumours of a new royal rift sparked as Earl Charles Spencer fails to attend both his daughter’s recent weddings

Lady Amelia Spencer tied the knot with her long time partner earlier this week

Earl Charles Spencer, Lady Amelia Spencer, Lady Kitty Spencer and Lady Eliza Spencer
(Image credit: David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images for Perfect Magazine and Charley Gallay/Getty Images for The Spencer Family/Future)

Earl Charles Spencer, the younger brother of Princess Diana, has sparked rumours of a new royal rift as he was noticeably absent from not just his daughter Lady Amelia Spencer's wedding earlier this week, but also his eldest daughter Lady Kitty Spencer's wedding back in 2021.

  • Rumours of a Spencer family rift are brewing as Earl Charles Spencer failed to attend Lady Amelia Spencer and Lady Kitty Spencer's weddings both earlier this week and back in 2021.
  • The younger brother of Princess Diana shares both daughters with his first wife, Victoria, but their relationship has reportedly been 'deteriorating' since his marriage to his third wife Karen in 2011.
  • In other royal news, Charles Spencer shares hilarious response to Donald Trump’s Princess Diana claims.

Is a new Royal rift forming? Possibly. Earl Charles Spencer, the younger bother of Princess Diana, has sparked rumours of a family feud within the Spencer family after he seemingly failed to turn up at two of his daughters' weddings. 

The news comes as one of Charles' three daughters from his first marriage, Lady Amelia Spencer, shared the exciting news she had tied the knot with her long time partner Greg Mallett earlier this week. But her father was noticeably absent from the ceremony which took place in South Africa where Lady Amelia grew up.

On the reported day of the pair's wedding ceremony, The Earl tweeted a photo from his family's ancestral home in Northamptonshire, writing, "Early morning March light, at Althorp’s Round Oval lake."

He also shared a video showing animals on the lake, writing: "Duck, geese, swans - and, in the distance, coots and moorhens. Early morning life on the lake, at Althorp House."

Further fuelling the rumours, Lady Amelia and her twin sister Lady Eliza both shared a whole host of photos from the wedding celebrations, none of them even showing so much as a glimpse of Earl Spencer.

His absence may not have come as a surprise to his daughters. Charles also missed his eldest daughter Lady Kitty's wedding back in July 2021 when she got married in a lavish ceremony in Rome to retail millionaire Michael Lewis.

The poignant absences have understandably sparked rumours of a Spencer family rift, with speculation that tensions are growing between the father-of-seven and his four children from his first marriage; Kitty, 32, twins Eliza and Amelia, 30, and son Louis, 28.

This is not the first time hints of a family feud have raised their head. Following his absence from Kitty's wedding, a source told MailOnline at the time, "Kitty and Charles were very close when she was growing up, but their relationship has cooled and been more distant since his marriage to his third wife Karen in 2011.

"Charles recently suffered an injury and perhaps that will be the reason for him not travelling, but it is just easier for everyone that he is not there."

They added, "The four children are all close to their mother Victoria and get on well with their step siblings, and their Spencer aunts and have forged their own relationships with one another without needing Charles to bind them together."

Charles and Victoria married in 1989 just six after first meeting each other. The couple moved to Cape Town in South Africa to raise their brood but, following their divorce in 1997, the Earl left his children and moved back to the UK.

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Charlie Elizabeth Culverhouse
Royal News and Entertainment writer

Charlie Elizabeth Culverhouse is royal news and entertainment writer for Goodto.com. She began her freelance journalism career after graduating from Nottingham Trent University with an MA in Magazine Journalism, receiving an NCTJ diploma, and earning a First Class BA (Hons) in Journalism at the British and Irish Modern Music Institute. She has also worked with BBC Good Food and The Independent.