Prince William and Harry speak about the last time they saw their mum before her death

WHEN Princess Diana tragically died in Paris, it had been weeks since she’d seen her boys. This is what they did the last time they were together.

WHEN Princess Diana died in August, 1997, the entire world was thrown into a dark period of mourning.

Her funeral at Westminster Abbey was watched or listened to by an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide and around one million people lined the streets of London to pay their last respects. But that pain the rest of the world was feeling was nothing compared to her two sons, a then 15-year-old Prince William and 12-year-old Prince Harry.

Prince William and Harry at their mother’s funeral. Picture: Adam Butler

Since the divorce of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, the princes’ relationship with their parents had been a difficult one.

Now, in the new documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy due to air on Seven’s Sunday Night this week, the boys have spoken about the heartbreak they still feel about losing their mother 20 years ago and how they rarely had the chance to see her.

Princess Diana, whose high-profile charity work and fleeting romance with Dodi al Fayed kept her quite busy, hadn’t seen her boys for over a month.

Prince Harry touches on this in the new documentary, telling an anti-landmine activist, “You saw my mother more recently that I did”.

The last time the boys saw their mother was in the south of France when they were guests of Mohammed al Fayed, an Egyptian business magnate and the father of Diana’s lover Dodi.

Princess Diana on holiday with Dodi in St Tropez on August 22, 1997. Picture: Patrick Bar

Photos reveal the family spent time at al Fayed’s St Tropez villa and cruised the Mediterranean on the family’s superyacht before they flew to Balmoral to keep up the royal tradition of spending their summer at the Scottish estate with their grandmother Queen Elizabeth II.

Castle St Therese, the luxurious 30-room French villa the family stayed in, was built in the 1860s and was on sale for $A115 million in 2015.

Princess Diana was invited there by Mohammed and she stayed in the guesthouse with her two boys which also had a security lodge and tennis court.

Princess Diana with sons Harry and William in the south of France a month before she died. Picture: Splash

Mohammed al Fayed bought the yacht specifically to entertain the British royals. Picture: Splash News

While Diana rarely had the chance to see her sons, she did keep in regular contact with them.

Hours before Princess Diana’s car crashed in Paris’ Pont de l’Alma road tunnel, she had called her two sons to talk to them in Balmoral.

The boys, in the middle of playing with their cousins, weren’t entirely interested in talking to their mother and rushed her off the call. A few hours later, Diana died.

The divorce of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, finalised on August 28, 1996, also made her relationship with her sons difficult.

The royal couple’s marriage troubles were reported as early as 1985 when Prince Harry was barely one-year-old.

Their separation and eventual divorce was a bitter one and it clearly had an impact on their two sons.

Prince Harry with his mum. Picture: Kensington Palace

Speaking of the divorce in Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, Prince Harry admitted they were “bounced around” a lot between their two parents.

“The two of us were bouncing between the two of them and we never saw our mother enough or we never saw our father enough,” he said.

“There was a lot of travelling and a lot of fights on the back seat with my brother, which I would win. I don’t pretend we’re the only people to have to deal with that. But it was an interesting way of growing up,” he added.

After the boys spent part of their summer with their mother, Princess Diana continued on with Dodi, cruising around the European coast on his father’s superyacht before heading to Bosnia to campaign against landmines and eventually flying to Paris on August 30.

While the princes’ last time spent with their mother was undoubtably a pleasant one, their final, quick phone call will always be the thing that is stuck in their minds.

“Harry and I were in a desperate rush to say goodbye, you know, ‘see you later’. If I’d known now obviously what was going to happen I wouldn’t have been so blasé about it and everything else. But that phone call sticks in my mind, quite heavily,” Prince William said.

And Prince Harry, who was 12 at the time, said he struggles to even remember what the call was about.

“I never enjoyed speaking to my parents on the phone. We spent far too much time on the phone rather than speaking to each other (in person). It was her speaking from Paris. I can’t really necessarily remember what I said, but all I do remember is probably regretting for the rest of my life how short the phone call was,” he said.

“Looking back on it now it’s incredibly hard. I’ll have to sort of deal with that for the rest of my life. Not knowing that was the last time I was going to speak to my mum, how differently that conversation would have panned out if I’d had even the slightest inkling her life was going to be taken that night,” he added.

The princes walk behind Princess Diana’s coffin at her funeral. Picture: Jeff Mitchell

Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy will air on Seven’s Sunday Night this Sunday on July 30 at 7pm

Originally published as Prince William and Harry speak about the last time they saw their mum before her death