Prince Harry is recalling one of the most painful times in his life: the death of his mother Princess Diana.
As you know, the beloved royal was killed in a car accident in Paris in 1997 when the Duke of Sussex was only 12 years old. And in an excerpt from his memoir Spare, published by Us Weekly on Thursday, Harry recalled the moment King Charles III came to his room to reveal what happened to his mom. He wrote:
“[Charles] sat down on the edge of the bed. He put a hand on my knee. Darling boy, Mummy’s been in a car crash. 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.”
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At the time, the prince struggled to understand that his mom had died, believing the doctors would “fix” her head wounds and he would see her “tonight at the latest.” However, that sadly wasn’t the case. Harry explained he soon felt a “shift internally” when he realized Diana did not survive the medical “complications” and “head injury” she suffered from the accident:
“I began silently pleading with Pa, or God, or both: No, no, no.”
Harry then shared what Charles said to him:
“Mummy was quite badly injured and taken to hospital, darling boy.”
While the Archewell founder doesn’t remember some details from the rest of the conversation, including if Charles brought up the fact Diana was chased by paparazzi, he said certain words still “remain in my heart like darts in a board.” His dad continued to tell Harry:
“They tried, darling boy. I’m afraid she didn’t make it. And then everything seemed to come to a stop.”
So, so sad.
But what makes this moment even more heartbreaking? Throughout the entire difficult conversation, Harry claimed the monarch never took a moment to “hug” him:
“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? But 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.”
Oof. Elsewhere in the memoir, Harry opened up about how he tried to move on from the tragedy in dangerous ways. Years later, the BetterUP CIO said he returned to the Pont de l’Alma tunnel where Diana died and drove through it at a fast speed:
“Off we went, weaving through traffic, cruising past the Ritz, where Mummy had her last meal, with her boyfriend, that August night. Then we came to the mouth of the tunnel. We zipped ahead, went over the lip at the tunnel’s entrance, the bump that supposedly sent Mummy’s Mercedes veering off course. But the lip was nothing. We barely felt it.”
Losing a parent is never easy — especially when he and Prince William were so young. Reactions, Perezcious readers? Let us know in the comments below.
[Image via MEGA/WENN, Ward/WENN]
