The news of Princess Diana’s passing shocked everyone. The “People’s Princess” was mourned by millions of people throughout the world, and her funeral became the most watched broadcast in history. Many people believed they had lost a relative. But for some people, it was the case.
When their mother passed away when they were still young, Prince William and Prince Harry made a legendary trek behind her casket as she was laid to rest. The accident happened when the brothers were at Balmoral, and what happened the next day was nothing short of a major shock.
Princess Diana’s automobile collided in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, France, at around 12.23 in the morning on August 31, 1997. She was accompanied by a driver and bodyguard as she left the Ritz Hotel in a car with her boyfriend, the film mogul Dodi Fayed, who was of Egyptian descent. They collided in the Paris tunnel at a high rate of speed while being followed by paparazzi photographers.
Diana was taken in for an X-ray when she arrived at the hospital, which showed she had sustained serious internal wounds. She consequently had a blood transfusion right away. Diana experienced a second heart arrest only fifteen minutes after arriving. The princess underwent a medical surgery, but the injuries were too severe. Surgeon MonSef Dahman. Her heart refused to beat again.
“The thought that you have lost an important person, for whom you cared personally, marks you for life,” he told the British news outlet.
Diana’s survival was battled for by Dahman and his medical staff. However, in the end, they were helpless. The Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, he said, was one of France’s top facilities for these kinds of emergencies, and saving those who were brought in made him “happy and proud.”
In Diana’s instance, he initially experienced hope. But in the end, they were unable to save her. Princess Diana’s two children, Prince William and Prince Harry, stayed with their father, King Charles, and their grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, as doctors battled to save their mother’s life in Paris.
How William and Harry found out about Diana’s passing
Harry was born two years before William, but both boys had happy childhoods. Their mother understood how crucial their future was. She was aware that they weren’t like other kids, but she also realised that they needed to have a childhood that was as similar to normal as possible. Later in life, Prince William and his wife, Kate, would include it into the raising of their children.
Of course, the royal family was shocked when Princess Diana passed away. Despite the fact that Diana and Charles had split up less than a year ago, William, the eldest son, would one day become King, and Harry was expected to play a crucial part in the monarchy.
William, then 15 years old, and Harry, then 12 years old, were asleep when the news first broke. When the two princes came to, Queen Elizabeth II understood how crucial it was to keep them safe.
Before directing them to conceal all of the TVs and radios in the Castle, she gave her staff at Balmoral the order to let the little lads sleep in. Then, Her Majesty forbade everyone from bringing up Diana’s passing when they went to church the next morning.
Harry claimed in his book Spare that his father “didn’t hug him” after Diana’s death. The two children were, of course, in shock and were devastated. Speaking in the documentary Diana, 7 Days, William recalled how he felt “completely numb,” “disorientated,” and “dizzy” when the tragic news arrived.
“You feel very, very confused. And you keep asking yourself, ‘Why me?’ All the time, ‘Why? What have I done? Why? Why has this happened to us?’” William said.
“There’s nothing like it in the world,” he explained in the documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy. “There really isn’t. It’s like an earthquake has just run through the house and through your life and everything. Your mind is completely split. And it took me a while for it to actually sink in.”
“It was very difficult to communicate”
Family members attempted to discuss what had occurred with William and Harry. It was difficult for the two to process what had transpired after losing their cherished mother.
“The family came together, and Harry and I tried to talk as best we could about it,” he said in Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy. “But being so small at that age, it was very difficult to communicate or understand your feelings. It’s… very complicated.”
Princess Diana was laid to rest on September 6, 1997. An estimated 2.5 billion people watched the funeral, and they observed how William and Harry, who were just two years old, followed their mother’s casket in the cortege.
“My mother had just died, and I had to walk a long way behind her coffin, surrounded by thousands of people watching me while millions more did on television,” Harry told Newsweek. “I don’t think any child should be asked to do that under any circumstances. I don’t think it would happen today.”
Princess Diana was laid to rest at the Althorp mansion, which is located on a little island in the Oval Lake. Naturally, it was difficult to go on. Even so, they made an effort to keep a positive attitude and put on a brave face in front of the public.
“Slowly, you try and rebuild your life, and you try and understand what’s happened, and I kept saying to myself that, you know, my mother would not want me to be upset,” William said. “She’d not want me to be down. She’d not want me to be like this. I kept myself busy as well—which is good and bad sometimes—but allows you to kind of get through that initial shock phase.”
Regardless of whether she was a princess or not, Princess Diana put her children before anything else. Diana did her best to keep them safe, but she worried that if she and Charles were divorced, she may lose them.
William and Harry’s last-ever phone call to Diana
Howard Hodgson, a biographer and the author of Charles: The Man Who Will Be King in 2007, claims that Diana felt that Queen Elizabeth and Charles intended to keep her apart from her children.
“She was well aware that the Queen had the constitutional right and authority under common law to take control of both boys’ care and education,” Hodgson wrote, as quoted by Express.
“As such she could become the boys’ guardian or even appoint one: this would probably be their father and that might lead to Diana’s exclusion if she finally burned all her bridges with the Royal Family.”
Hodgson added that Queen Elizabeth never intended to separate Diana from her sons. But Diana believed the Queen and Charles “had already hatched such a plot and were only waiting for the right moment to execute it.”
Whether Diana was near her house or somewhere in the world, William, Harry, and her always stayed in touch. The evening of August 30, 1997, when she called her kids from Paris, was the same.
William and Harry revealed more about their last conversation with their mother in the documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, however Harry claimed he couldn’t recall what they discussed.
“But all I do remember is regretting for the rest of my life how short the phone call was. If I’d known that that was the last time I was going to speak to my mother, the things I would have said to her,” the now-estranged Duke of Sussex said.
“Can I go off?”
“Looking back at it now — it’s incredibly hard. I have to deal with that for the rest of my life: not knowing that it was the last time I’d speak to my mum, how differently that conversation would have panned out if I’d had even the slightest inkling that her life was going to be taken that night.”
Prince William remembered the call’s details with a little more clarity. And he won’t ever forget his mother’s final, sad words to him.
“The very last memory I have is a phone call from Balmoral. At the time, Harry and I were running around, minding our own business, playing with our cousins, and having a very good time,” William said. “Harry and I were in a desperate rush to say, ‘Goodbye, see you later, can I go off?’ If I’d known what was going to happen, I wouldn’t have been quite so blasé about it. That phone call sticks in my mind quite heavily.”
William and Harry grew up to be respectable men with the help and love of their family, despite the terrible car accident that killed their mother. They will carry on honouring their mother’s legacy even today and perhaps forever.
Prince William and Prince Harry attended the installation of a new bronze statue of their mother in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace on July 1, 2021, which would have been Diana’s 60th birthday.
“Today, on what would have been our Mother’s 60th birthday, we remember her love, strength and character – qualities that made her a force for good around the world, changing countless lives for the better,” the brothers said in a shared statement.
“Every day, we wish she were still with us, and our hope is that this statue will be seen forever as a symbol of her life and her legacy.”
Rest in peace, Princess Diana. Please share this article on Facebook with friends and family to honor her!