Charles didn’t hug Prince Harry after revealing Diana died in car crash: Memoir

Prince Harry has revealed details of the heartbreaking moment he was told his mother had died, and his huge regret from the days that followed.

William and Harry bow their heads as their mother’s coffin passes by in 1997. Picture: Adam Butler/Pool/AFP

Prince Harry claims he didn’t receive a hug from his dad following the tragic death of his beloved mother, Princess Diana.

“Pa didn’t hug me. He wasn’t great at showing emotions under normal circumstances; how could he be expected to show them in such a crisis?” the Duke of Sussex, 38, writes in his new memoir, Spare, reports the New York Post.

“His hand did fall once more on my knee and he said, ‘It’s going to be OK.’ That was quite a lot for him. Fatherly, hopeful, kind. And so very untrue.”

Harry goes on to detail the conversation he had with the then-Prince Charles after his mother died in 1997. He was just 12 years old at the time of her death.

“[Dad] sat down on the edge of the bed. He put a hand on my knee. ‘Darling boy, Mummy’s been in a car crash,’” Harry recalls in the memoir.

“I remember thinking: Crash … OK. But she’s all right? Yes? I vividly remember that thought flashing through my mind. And I remember waiting patiently for Pa to confirm that indeed Mummy was all right. And I remember him not doing that.”

Harry explains that he then began to feel a “shift internally” when he knew what was coming next.

“I began silently pleading with Pa, or God, or both: No, no, no,” he writes.

The Duke of Sussex also details how King Charles, 74, told him at the time about the medical “complications” and a “head injury” that Princess Diana sustained in the car crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris.

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Diana with her two young sons. Picture: Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty Images

“‘Mummy was quite badly injured and taken to hospital, darling boy,’” Charles said, according to Harry. “He always called me ‘darling boy’ but he was saying it quite a lot now. His voice was soft. He was in shock, it seemed.”

Harry recounts still believing that doctors could somehow “fix her head,” and that he’d be able to see her “tonight at the latest”.

“‘They tried, darling boy. I’m afraid she didn’t make it,’” Harry remembers his father telling him. “These phrases remain in my mind like darts in a board. He did say it that way, I know that much for sure. She didn’t make it. And then everything seemed to come to a stop.”

Harry also remembers breaking down at his mother’s funeral at Westminster Abbey on September 6, 1997.

Prince William and Prince Harry bow their heads as their mother’s coffin leaves Westminster Abbey following her funeral in 1997. Picture: Adam Butler/Pool/AFP

A message saying ‘Mummy’ sits on the coffin of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. Picture: Joel Robine/AFP

“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 writes.

Despite attending the funeral and learning about the “official” events of the accident, Harry found himself convinced that his mother “staged an accident” to get out of her “miserable” life in the spotlight.

Harry was later asked to write a “final” letter to his mum. He says this is the moment when he truly understood that she was gone for good.

“I wished I’d dug deep, told my mother all the things weighing on my heart, especially my regret over the last time we’d spoken on the phone,” he writes. “She’d called early in the evening, the night of the crash, but I was running around with Willy and my cousins and didn’t want to stop playing.

“So I’d been short with her. Impatient to get back to my games, I’d rushed Mummy off the phone,” he continues. “I wished I’d apologised for it. I wished I’d searched for the words to describe how much I loved her. I didn’t know that search would take decades.”

In Spare, which hits Australian bookshelves on Wednesday, Harry also goes into extensive detail over his strained relationship with his brother, Prince William, living life as a “spare” to the “heir,” and Charles joking about who his “real” dad is, among many other stories.

This article originally appeared in the New York Post and was reproduced with permission