Diana’s huge regret about William and Harry that she admitted just before death
When Princess Diana died tragically young in a car accident, she had one major regret regarding her two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, an insider has claimed
Prince Harry has previously spoken of how he found out about his mother’s passing(Image: Princess Diana Archive, Getty Images)
The death of their mother changed the trajectory of Prince William and Prince Harry’s lives forever. Both of King Charles’s sons have been candid over the years about the massive impact their tragic loss had on them during their childhoods, with Harry admitting in his memoir Spare, that his grief followed him well into his adult life, bringing him issues with his mental health.
Harry revealed in the bombshell memoir that for many years he secretly hoped that his mother was really alive, but in hiding, before finally coming to terms with the brutal loss. Both William and Harry gave their daughters, Princess Charlotte and Princess Lilibet, the middle name Diana, in tribute to their late mother, and have proudly continued her legacy in many areas of their charitable work.
William’s project Homewards, which aims to find solutions to end homelessness for good, was directly impacted by his mother’s decision to introduce him to the cause when he was very young. For his part, Harry continued working with young people suffering from HIV/AIDs, continuing his mother’s championing of the cause, and a few years ago recreated a walk through a landmine field, echoing footsteps Diana took during her own life.
Heartbreakingly, the late Diana is said have harboured one massive regret about her two sons just before her untimely death in 1997. Her confession took place just 10 days before the car crash that claimed Diana’s life, her friend Rosa Monckton said. The two pals were on holiday in Greece when they began to discuss the now-controversial Panorama interview that Diana had taken part in two years previously, in 1995.
The interview saw Diana lob bombshell after bombshell at the Royal Family, in particular her husband Charles. She infamously uttered the words, “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” referring to her husband’s long-term affair with his now-wife, Queen Camilla, and opened up about the mental health issues she had suffered with, including an eating disorder.
The sit-down with Martin Bashir sent shockwaves across the nation when it aired, and it proved to be the final nail in the coffin of Charles and Diana’s marriage, with the late Queen Elizabeth ordering them to divorce. However, in recent years, new light has been cast on the interview, and in particular, the underhanded methods that Bashir used to obtain it, with an inquiry finding that he was “deceitful”.
Diana’s interview with Bashir(Image: PA)
Bashir used forged documents to win the trust of Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, so he would introduce the journalist to his sister, an inquiry found in 2021. Bashir denied that the fake documents played a role in convincing Diana, and a note from the princess herself seemed to indicate this too – but Bashir apologised for making them, and the BBC said they would never show the interview again.
Whilst on holiday in Greece with her close friend, Diana revealed that she had some regrets about taking part in the televised sit-down, with Monckton revealing to People magazine, “She told me she regretted doing it because of the harm she thought it had done to her boys.”
William was 15 at the time of Diana’s death, and Harry was just 12 years old. Monckton said about Bashir’s deception of Diana, ” She was frail, and that made her susceptible to Bashir,” adding that “He’d told her she couldn’t talk about it. She cut people out because of that.”
When the inquiry uncovered how the interview had been obtained, William said, in a scathing statement, “It is my view that the deceitful way the interview was obtained substantially influenced what my mother said.” He added that the interview worsened relations between his parents and “contributed significantly to” the “fear, paranoia, and isolation” he witnessed his mother suffer from.
