Lisa Mayoh: ‘Too little, too scared, too affected by mother’s death’ – why I have a soft spot for Harry

The softie in Lisa Mayoh has always felt sorry for Harry after the death of Diana – the other Royals too – but, well, Harry isn’t William.

Any 12-year-old who loses their mother in awful, life-altering circumstances out of their control and before their time, is going to go off the rails. Especially when the whole wide world is watching.

Wouldn’t you?

You’d hate the world for taking your mother away. And the cameras, for watching you cry. For the strangers who think they know why. For the dad that doesn’t know how to help, the big brother who probably tries but has his own unravelling to avoid. For two kids who had the world at their feet, Harry and William suffered a pretty harrowing start.

Even now, 28 years after Diana died, the day remains etched in our memories. I was at a shift at Red Rooster, one of my first jobs as an impressionable 15-year-old – the same age as William on the day he lost his mum.

And almost three decades on, I still think of them as kids struggling to make sense of it all – without their mum to explain it. To protect them. To wrap them up in a cuddle and tell them it’s all going to be OK.

Prince William, 15, and Prince Harry, 12, bow their heads as their mother's coffin is taken out of Westminster Abbey. Picture: Adam Butler/PA Images via Getty Images

So the softie in me has always felt sorry for Harry. For William. For Kate, for Meghan – even though she makes that difficult sometimes (if you’ve seen her Netflix show With Love, Meghan, you’ll know why.)

But William and Kate just seem to get the life they were meant to lead. They’re united. He’s polite. She’s gracious. Royal enough, yet strangely normal, even with a cheeky kid or three.

Prince Harry bakes at the Kananelo Centre in Maseru for the Deaf that works with Sentebale, an organisation he created with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho in 2006, during a visit in 2013. Prince Harry has quit as patron of the charity. Picture: Stephane de Sakutin/AFP

Prince Harry with his wife Meghan. Picture: Angela Weiss/AFP

Harry on the other hand … well, Harry isn’t William. He was too little, too scared, too affected by his mother’s death to become any version of a man the world may have wanted him to be. He had to leave. To try another life, another way – likely taking courage from the spirit of what his mother would have done.

Now he’s constantly forced to defend the wife he stands by because he’s got no one else in his corner. Even this week, the Duke of Sussex resigned from his own African AIDS charity Sentebale, which he set up in 2006 in memory of his mother, because of differences with the board chair. It hasn’t gone to plan. None of it really.

You have a family divided. History splintered. One brother left with the burden of his people, the other trying not to be a star in the Hollywood hills – but with a partner who seems to love the spotlight’s glare, no matter how unfavourable.

So, yes, I feel sorry for them all. I hope all the hurt can be washed away one day. Because now these grown men have kids who aren’t growing up as cousins. They should be brothers against the world, not against each other – and that’s as sad as what happened to their mum.

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