Charles Spencer has, perhaps unwittingly, lived much of his life in the limelight. Known for his close relationship with his older sister, Princess Diana, Charles Spencer infamously condemned the royal family while giving a eulogy at the late princess’ funeral in 1997, thereby becoming a tabloid fixture.

 But it wasn’t just his admonishments of the Windsors that led to him being clouded by bad publicity. The earl’s complicated love life has also generated significant intrigue, with Spencer having gone through two failed marriages.

But when Spencer wed Canadian philanthropist Karen Gordon in 2011, it appeared his luck was changing. In a joint interview with The Times in 2020, Gordon said that she was acutely aware of preconceptions that arose out of her being the earl’s third wife. But she wouldn’t want it any other way. “I’ve been a first wife and a third and — trust me on this — you really want to be the third because men are so motivated at this point … The most appealing thing about Charles for me was how willing he was to work on himself, and continue to do so,” she said.

However, the two announced their shock divorce in June 2024, with Spencer ironically hiring the same lawyer who represented King Charles III when he divorced Diana. Considering some of the major warning signs in the couple’s relationship, this announcement may not have been such a big surprise after all. Here are all the red flags in Charles Spencer and Karen Gordon’s relationship.

Charles Spencer is no stranger to divorce, with his first two marriages ending acrimoniously. He wed his first wife, Victoria Lockwood, in 1989. Their marriage was anything but happy; Spencer allegedly cheated on Lockwood multiple times, starting just six months after the birth of the couple’s daughter Lady Kitty.

 “It turned me overnight from a deeply contented, first-time mother to a hurt, scared and devastated woman,” Lockwood said, per the Irish Independent. Despite this, the couple stayed together, had three more children, and moved to South Africa in the hopes of mending their damaged relationship. However, Spencer allegedly continued to be unfaithful to Lockwood — potentially cheating over a dozen times — and the two divorced in 1997.

In 2001, he married his second wife, Caroline Freud, but this union lasted just six years. When Freud filed for divorce on the grounds of “unreasonable behavior,” she hinted that Spencer may have been unfaithful, telling the judge that the earl was continuing with his bad habits.

Due to his traumatic childhood, Spencer is the first to acknowledge that he wasn’t exactly emotionally mature during his early relationships. “Put it this way,” he told The Guardian, “I don’t think I developed emotionally in those early years as would have been the case in a loving home with actively loving adults.” Though there is no evidence to suggest that Spencer also cheated on his third wife, Karen Gordon, his numerous past infidelities are undoubtedly a red flag.

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