Prince Harry reveals he felt ‘ashamed for crying at Princess Diana’s funeral
Prince Harry has described the visions he had of his late mother Princess Diana as he reveals what final image she was holding in the coffin.
Royals
Don't miss out on the headlines from Royals. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Prince Harry has described how he “felt ashamed of violating the family ethos” when he began sobbing as his mother’s coffin was being lowered into the ground at the Spencer family estate in Althorp.
He said he understood Diana‘s hands had been folded across her chest and between them was placed a photo of him and his brother William, “possibly the only two men who ever truly loved her”.
“For all eternity we’d be smiling at her in the darkness, and maybe it was this image, as the flag came off and the coffin descended to the bottom of the hole, that finally broke me.
“My body convulsed and my chin fell and I began to sob uncontrollably into my hands.
“I felt ashamed of violating the family ethos, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer.”
He said he reassured himself that it was okay to cry because there weren’t any cameras about.
He also told himself that it wasn’t actually true and that his mother wasn’t really in the coffin.
“I was crying at the mere idea,” he wrote. “It would just be so unbearably tragic, I thought, if it was actually true.”
Prince Harry was also haunted by memories of his mother’s funeral on his brother’s wedding which was held at the same venue, Westminster Abbey.
He said while he was happy for his brother and new wife Kate, he wrote in his new book Spare, it was “another farewell under this horrid roof”.
He said while weddings were meant to be joyful occasions, people tended to disappear.
He said the same had happened when his Pa, King Charles, had married Camilla Parker Bowles.
“In the Camilla era, as I’d predicted, I saw him less and less,” Harry said.
He also revealed, that while he was officially the best man, standing by William’s side at the altar, unofficially he was downgraded to compere by his brother and William’s two true best friends made speeches on the night.
As compere, Harry mentioned their mother, saying how she would have loved to have been there,would have loved Kate and would have loved seeing the love they had found together.
“As I spoke the words I didn’t look up,” Harry wrote.
“I didn’t want to risk making eye contact with Pa or Camilla - and above all Willy.
“I hadn’t cried since Mummy’s funeral and I wasn’t going to break that streak now.
“I also didn’t want to see anyone else’s face but Mummy’s.”
Harry also spoke of his love for Kate, who was more “sister than in-law, the sister I’d never had and always wanted”.
MEGHAN WARNED HARRY HE NEEDS ‘THERAPY’
Meghan Markle told Harry to go back to therapy after their first big fight, leading to the Prince having visions of his late mother, the memoir Spare reveals.
In a very candid section of the book, Harry says he “snapped” at his then girlfriend during a night at Nott Cott, speaking to her “harshly and cruelly”.
“Meg said something I took the wrong way. It was partly a cultural difference, partly a language barrier, but I was also just over-sensitive that night. I thought: why’s she having a go at me?,” Harry writes.
After an explosive confrontation, Ms Markle tells Harry she would “never stand for being spoken to like that” and she “wasn’t going to tolerate that kind of partner”. She wants to know where his explosive anger comes from.
Harry tells her he had tried therapy previously, but it hadn’t been successful, to which she replies “No… try again”.
The Prince later details his therapy sessions, which start with him asking his therapist to “Please help me cry”. Later, he writes, the memories of his mother start returning - prompted in one session by the use of her signature perfume, First by Van Clef & Arpels.
He even has visions of her.
“Some days I would open my eyes to find Mummy … standing before me,” he writes.
The memories are sometimes joyful, with Harry recalling his mother sneaking him sweets inside his school socks, and lobbing water balloons at press photographers. But they can also be painful; in another section he recounts an episode in which Diana is hounded in her car by the paparazzi, with William and Harry as passengers. The memory ends with a defeated Diana crying at the wheel as the press ignores her pleas to leave her boys alone.
The therapy sessions come as the press intrusion into Ms Markle’s life deepens, impacting her family.
Harry writes of his frustration with his father, and palace officials, who seem blasé about the cruel coverage in the UK press, much of which is suffused with racism.
The Kensington Palace communications manager Jason was “very smart but a tad too cool about this unfolding crisis for my liking,” Harry writes.
“I felt wild with rage. And guilt. I’d infected Meg, and her mother, with my contagion, otherwise known as my life. I’d promised her that I’d keep her safe, and I’d already dropped her into the middle of this danger,” Harry writes.
He also recounts Meghan’s first meeting with William, which includes another disastrous hugging attempt on her part, as well as Charles and Camilla, which proceeds more smoothly.
As the tea with Charles and Camilla comes to an end, Harry writes that Meg “leaned towards” his father, causing him some anxiety.
“I flinched; like Willy, Pa wasn’t a hugger. Thankfully, she gave him a standard British cheek-to-cheek, which he actually seemed to enjoy,” Harry recalls.
‘I HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOU’: HARRY’S SHOCK OVER DIANA RELIC
The Duke of Sussex has told how his aunt, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, presented him with a small blue box containing a lock of his mother’s golden hair years after her death saying, “I finally realised she was gone.”
After years of convincing himself Princess Diana had faked her death to escape her miserable life, Prince Harry has told in his memoir Spare, read by News Corp a day ahead of its official publication: “Whenever it happened some years later it happened like this: ‘William? Harry? I have something for you boys’, said Lady Sarah McCorquodale, holding two blue tiny boxes.
“‘Open it’,” he said she encouraged them at the time.
“I lifted off the top of my blue box, inside was her hair,” he writes.
Harry writes it was “Mummy’s sisters, Aunt Sarah and Aunt Jane” who went to Paris after the crash.
“She explained that while in Paris she clipped two locks from mummy’s head. It was proof she’s really gone.
“And then immediately came the reassuring doubt, the lifesaving uncertainty.
“No, this could be anybody’s hair. Mummy, beautiful blonde hair intact, was out there somewhere. Both were just as full of love for her as ever.”
In the 557-page memoir dedicated to “Meg and Archie and Lili … And, of course, my mother,” Prince Harry has told how the King would perform headstands in his underwear to fix his neck and shoulder pain, a relic from years of playing polo, and how his father sat him down to reassure him he was not the son of Major Hewitt amid rumours the press was trying to obtain his DNA to prove otherwise.
In a heartbreaking admission in his book, ghostwritten by Pulitzer Prize winning author J. R. Moehringer, Harry reveals he has been plagued with false reports Charles sat him down to dispel persistent rumours he was the son of his mother’s ex-lover Major James Hewitt.
“One cause of the rumour was Major Hewitt’s red hair, but another was sadism,” he writes,
“Never mind that my mother didn’t meet Major Hewitt until long after I was born, the story was simply too good not to rehash. The press rehashed it, embroidered it and there was even talk that some reporters were seeking the DNA in my dear need to prove it, my first intimation that, after torturing my mother and sending her into hiding, they would soon be coming for me.
“To this day nearly every biography of me, every longish profile in a paper or magazine, touches on Major Hewitt, treats the prospect of his paternity with some seriousness, including a description of the moment Pa finally set me down to a proper heart to heart, reassuring me that Major Hewitt wasn’t my real father. Vivid scene, poignant, moving, and totally made up.”
He also reveals before serving in the military, he was asked to choose where he’d like to be buried and opted for the royal cemetery at Frogmore in Windsor, near the tombs of his great uncle King Edward VIII and wife Wallis Simpson, an American socialite and divorcee, whose life parallels that of his own wife, the Duchess of Sussex.
Edward abdicated the throne on December 10, 1936 before the ceremony could take place so he could marry the twice divorced Wallis Simpson (at the time members of the Royal Family were not permitted to marry a divorced person).
Harry, whose exit from the royal family has been compared to his own exit from the firm along with his Los Angeles-born wife Meghan Markle writes, “After giving up the throne for Wallis and leaving Britain with her, the two began to worry about their eventual return and became obsessed with being buried [in the Royal Burial Ground].
“After Edward gave up his throne for Wallace, after they fled Britain, both of them fretted about the ultimate return – both obsessed about being buried right here.
“The Queen, my grandmother, granted that plea. But she placed them at a distance from everyone else. One last finger wag perhaps. One final exile maybe. I wondered how Wallace and Edward felt now about all the fretting. Did any of it matter in the end? Were they floating in some airy realm, still mulling their choices. Or did it all mean nothing? I wondered if they was standing next to me, eavesdropping on my thoughts. And if so … My mother is too?”
He adds, “I missed my mother every day, I found myself longing for her.
“I miss my mother every day and how she loved my brother and me. Obsessively, she once confessed to an interviewer. Well mummy … Vice versa.”
Addressing the conversation he overheard his father tell his mother some time after his birth - that she had given him ‘an heir and a spare … my work is done’, Harry writes: “Balmoral had 50 bedrooms, one of which have been divided for me and Willy. Adults called it the nursery.
“We had the larger half with a double bed, a good sized basin, a cupboard with mirrored doors, a beautiful window looking down on the courtyard. My half of the room was smaller, less luxurious. I never asked why. I didn’t care.
“But also didn’t need to ask. Two years older than me, Willy was the heir, whereas I was the spare.
“This was shorthand often used by Pa, and mummy and grandpa. And even granny.
“There was no judgment about it but also no ambiguity. I was the shadow, the support, the Plan B, I was brought into the world in case something happened to Willy. I was summoned to provide backup, distraction and, if necessary, a spare part. A kidney part. Blood transfusion. Speck of bone marrow. This is all made explicitly clear to me from the start of life’s journey and regularly reinforced after.”
More Coverage
Originally published as Prince Harry reveals he felt ‘ashamed for crying at Princess Diana’s funeral
Join the conversation
Charles to ‘stay out’ of Republic debate
The King has issued a surprising response to a question about Australia’s future ahead of his five-day tour to the country later this week.
Read more
Charles won’t stop Australia axing monarchy
As King Charles gets set to fly to Australia, a royal spokesman has claimed he won’t stand in the way of Australia dropping the monarchy despite his “deep love and affection” for the country.
Read more