When Princess Diana died on August 31, 1997, she left behind two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. William and Harry were 15 and 12 respectively at the time and were finishing their summer with their grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II – who died on September 8, 2022 at the age of 96 – at Balmoral Castle in Scotland when they learned of the tragic News. On the 20th anniversary of her death, William said he still felt the shock the tragedy.
“The shock is the biggest thing,” he said in a BBC documentary. “I’m still in shock. You know, 20 years later. People say ‘shock can’t last that long’ but he does. you never get over it It’s such an incredibly big moment in your life that it never leaves you, you just learn to deal with it.”
In 2017, William and Harry erected a memorial at Buckingham Palace to honor their mother’s 20th anniversary. They selected most of the items for the exhibit, including a pair of Diana’s beloved ballet slippers, a personalized school bag, her vintage Kensington Palace desk and a box full of her cassette tapes of Diana Ross, Elton John and George Michael albums. William and Harry also shared a handful of sweet photos from Diana’s personal photo album, featured in her documentary for ITV and HBO, Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy.
Now, 25 years later, the memories of Diana still linger, although he doesn’t have many “early memories” of her, according to Harry’s Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan. “Most of my memories are swamped by paparazzi,” he says in the docuseries. “We rarely have a holiday without someone jumping out of a bush with a camera. Within the family is the system, the advice is always, ‘Don’t react, don’t feed in.’”
Harry also honored his mother by saying that her spirit still influences him today. “[The] Difference between decisions made with the head or the heart. My mother certainly made most, if not all, of her decisions from the heart,” Harry adds in the documentary. “And I am my mother’s son.”