Charles reportedly won’t attend Diana statue unveiling

Prince Charles reportedly won’t attend the unveiling of Diana’s statue this week in a bid to avoid dredging up the past.

Prince Charles won’t be at the unveiling of a statue of his late former wife Princess Diana because the event could dredge up the painful past, according to a new report.

While Prince William, 39, and Prince Harry, 36, are set to attend Thursday’s event honouring their late mother, an insider told the UK Times that Charles, 72, is skipping the ceremony.

“He does find it terribly difficult,” the insider said. “These moments have the potential to resurface old wounds, and it brings back memories for him; happy, sad, regretful. Since Diana’s death, he has felt it’s best to keep those memories to himself and leave his sons to it.”

Diana and Charles separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996. She died a year later in a car crash in Paris. Picture: Jayne Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images

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The statue is being unveiled at Kensington Palace on Thursday on what would have been Diana’s 60th birthday.

Charles and Diana separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996, a year before her death in a Paris car crash.

It was previously reported that William and Harry have “insisted” on giving separate speeches at the statue unveiling amid their reported ongoing feud.

Diana’s go-to biographer recently said she would have been upset by her sons’ rift after Harry and wife Meghan Markle decided last year to quit their senior royal duties and move to the United States.

Harry and William will unveil their mother’s statue this Thursday in London. Picture: Alastair Grant/various sources/AFP

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“Diana said to me quite clearly on several occasions that she saw Harry as the wingman for William in what would be a very solitary, sombre job as future king,” Andrew Morton, who secretly collaborated with Diana on his 1992 book Diana: Her True Story, said last week.

“She would have been very upset at the way these two have split apart.”

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