Diana, William, and Harry: The Heartbreaking Story of a Princess and Mother

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It’s understandable that her sons have a less nuanced view of Diana. If your beautiful 36-year-old mother dies in a car crash and is mourned—canonized, even—by the whole world, an unblemished picture is frozen that erases everything else. William, 15, and Harry, 12, believed—and still believe—that their mother was martyred by the paparazzi. She would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys William and Harry from a similar fate and I do this here, Diana, on your behalf," Earl Spencer said at Diana's funeral at Westminster Abbey on Sept. 6, 1997. "We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair.

Kensington Palace said: “The figure of Diana, Princess of Wales is surrounded by three children who represent the universality and generational impact of The Princess’ work.

Prince William and Prince Harry: Kensington Palace, Eton, St Andrews

The Telegraph has reported that their aunt Lady Jane Fellowes, one of Princess Diana's two sisters, was among the first people to visit Harry and Meghan Markle following the birth of their son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, on May 6—meaning, she met Master Archie (as the title-less little chap will be known for now) before William and Kate Middleton were able to get there.

In front of the statue is a paving stone engraved with an extract inspired by the poem The Measure Of A Man: “These are the units to measure the worth of this woman as a woman regardless of birth. Not ‘What was her station?’ but ‘Had she a heart? How did she play her God-given part?”’ The highly anticipated engagement was the first time the brothers have been seen together publicly since the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral in April. William and Harry lived at Kensington Palace with their mother before she died in a car crash in 1997.

The statue – which was originally commissioned in 2017 on the 20th anniversary of her death – was revealed at an afternoon ceremony on what would have been Diana’s 60th birthday. And the Spencer support system has never wavered for the boys. Whether or not they ever felt torn between their mother and father's families, William and Harry have of course never said a word about it. But it would be 10 years—not till an invitation-only, 10th-anniversary memorial service for Diana that William and Harry oversaw in 2007—before the two families were all together again.

Several days later, on September 6, both of Diana’s sons famously had to walk behind her coffin during her funeral in front of a crowd of thousands of people.

Princess Diana: Kensington Palace

William understood Diana more but idealized her less. He was privy to her volatile love life. He knew the tabloids made her life hell, but he also knew she colluded with them. By his early teens, he was his mother’s most trusted confidant. She used to describe him as “my little wise old man.” William and Harry, we all care desperately for you today. We are all chewed up with sadness at the loss of a woman who was not even our mother. How great your suffering is we cannot even imagine." Diana was killed in a car crash on Aug. 31, 1997; her funeral took place on Sept. 6; and then the school term started. Lady Sarah went to visit Harry at Ludgrove for his 13th birthday, on Sept. 15, bringing him the PlayStation that Diana had already bought for him in Paris, and she would continue to visit both boys at their respective schools. (Harry joined William at Eton in 1998.)

We wanted to capture her warmth and humanity while showcasing the impact she had across generations. I hope that people will enjoy visiting the statue and the Sunken Garden, and taking a moment to remember the princess.” Throughout the first three episodes of The Crown season six, there's a sense of foreboding. Even if you're not a royal fan, all viewers know that the death of Princess Diana is looming—and the specter of the tragic accident looms over these scenes. Nowhere does it feel as painful as the scene when Princess Diana speaks to her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, on August 30, 1997. Even after her tragic death, the strength of her love for her sons remains an enduring inspiration, not only for the two princes, but for the entire world. The first half follows Diana's life from meeting Charles to her death, and I will say that the chapters covering her death and funeral were touching. The second half looks at William and Harry's lives since Diana's death including their education, gap year activities, military careers, romantic relationships, and eventual marriages and children. James Patterson tends to publish one or two non-fiction books, and truth be told, I don’t usually read them. However, this year I have broken new ground. I not only read his own personal memoirs – “The Stories of My Life” – during the summer, but I have just finished his take on the story of Princess Diana and her two sons, William, and Henry.She was the best mother in the world,” said Princes William and Harry at Diana’s 10-year memorial. “Entertaining and persuasive,” ( Publishers Weekly ) this is the first big book about the private Diana, the mother of two princes. In 2019, however, Pasternak made a startling disclosure in the Daily Mail that Diana had encouraged, indeed urged, Hewitt to cooperate with the writing of the book to get ahead of a more salacious version of their affair coming in another book by Andrew Morton. Pasternak told me that she and Hewitt “met halfway between Devon and London in a field, and he said, ‘Diana wants the story told but with two conditions. One, it has to come out before Morton’s second book, and two, it has to be a love story.’ ” To oblige her, Pasternak says she crashed it out in five weeks. Diana, who has been vacationing with Dodi Al Fayed in the South of France, has just stopped in Paris on her way home to London. The princes were due to return from their vacation at Balmoral on August 31, and spend time with her. Diana calls them at Balmoral, and they have a brief discussion about her returning home, her time with Dodi—they ask her if she's going to marry him, to which she empathetically says "no"—and how she's excited to see them. My mother had just died, and I had to walk a long way behind her coffin, surrounded by thousands of people watching me while millions more did on television,” said Harry in an interview with Newsweek. “I don’t think any child should be asked to do that, under any circumstances. I don’t think it would happen today.” Her sons express their lasting contempt for the press in different ways: William with a grim, steely obsession with control; Harry with tortured, vocal, frequently ill-judged condemnation, a never-ending flurry of lawsuits, and, finally, a burn-it-all-down gesture that his mother—who, despite her yearning to be free, held tight to her diadem—might have well understood. But neither of them has yet been heard to reflect on how much Diana loved to dance with danger.