Diana, princess, wife, and mother. >> Everything revolved around William and Harry. A role that was both her destiny and her greatest achievement. >> Diana completely changed royal motherhood. Completely turned it on its head. >> But Diana was from a broken home. >> Diana was brought up in a very unhappy household. It was cold.
It was miserable. >> And the odds were stacked against this shy nanny. Right from the start, married into a family firm shackled by tradition with a husband ill-prepared for fatherhood, Charles was basically brought up by nannies, a princess who was never afraid to break royal protocol. >> She was setting the standards for her children, >> desperately trying to provide a normal childhood to two extraordinary boys.
Diana always wanted them to have as normal as upbringing as possible. >> As her marriage unraveled on the world stage, she fought to protect her children from the press. >> I hope you can find it in your hearts to understand and to give me the time and space that has been lacking in recent years. How did Diana create a revolution in royal motherhood? We examine the secrets behind her unique parenting style and ask how her sons have learned to live with the tragedy of her loss.
She adored her boys. She’d come in the door and she’d say, “Where are my boys? What are my boys doing? >> Princes William and Harry were the center of their mother’s world. >> Her approach to motherhood was completely different to anything we’d ever seen before. She put motherhood first and foremost. >> Motherhood for Diana was her principal purpose on earth.
I mean, she considered raising William and Harry as her number one task. Being the Princess of Wales was a secondary option. >> Today, her boys have followed in their mother’s footsteps, becoming devoted, hands-on parents. >> Diana was an earth mother, really. And from the start, she was determined to keep them as close as she possibly could to her, and she wanted to show that they were loved.
I mean, she said, “I’m going to shower them with love and cuddles and hugs because I didn’t get that when I was a child.” one of the reasons why she has been criticized in recent years, you know, for the for the idea that she perhaps suffocated them with love. Well, I don’t recall William and Harry ever complaining about it.
If anything, you know, they they miss it hugely. Uh, still to this day, the kind of love that she enveloped them with. >> But the devotion that Diana displayed to William and Harry was in stark contrast to her own childhood. Diana felt age six that she was unloved and unwanted and those are feelings that she took into her adult life and feelings that I think never left her.
Diana was from a very aristocratic family, the Spencers, but her parents had a very acrimonious divorce. One of Diana’s most vivid memories was hearing her mother crunching across the gravel outside their home, getting into her car, and driving out of her life. She was profoundly affected by that memory. She wanted uh to ensure that she and Charles gave William and Harry the kind of upbringing that she felt she was deprived of by not having a mother around for such a large chunk of her life.
She herself had not felt loved in the very peculiar circumstances in which she was brought up with Rain Spencer, the new wife of Earl Spencer, who whom she described as acid rain, and a whole lot of nannies who were very unsympathetic. >> I mean, Diana’s upbringing was fractured in many ways by what happened to her own parents.
Her parents divorced, split up when Diana was quite young. She missed her mother hugely and um it defined her in many ways because as she grew up she often told the nannies who her father brought in to look after her and her sisters and brother that she would never divorce. I mean terribly haunting words. >> Diana’s late teenage years followed the path of many girls of her social status and background.
Dino was a quintessential Sloan Ranger. The kind of girls who wore flat shoes and long skirts. They came from a certain class and had a certain style. And she was a perfect example of that. >> It was no surprise that one of Diana’s first jobs was working as a nanny for an American family in London. >> I think girls like Diana are programmed to become mothers.
She she went to a boarding school that was not particularly academic. Girls were not expected to have great careers. I don’t think she was at the forefront of the feminist movement. >> By 1980, she had her first full-time job as a nursery teachers assistant in Pima. >> I wanted to teach children. They said, “Why not come along?” So, I first started off doing afternoons and then I took over the mornings and did whole days.
Can I ask you if it was your own child in particular? One. >> Oh, yes. Did that prompt you into wanting to do it? >> Just love children. >> She was always happy and outgoing. She showed a great sense of humor >> and was very relaxed with the children. From the minute she walked in, you could tell that she had a really genuine love for young children, particularly the very small ones.
And anyone who arrives with the baby, you could guarantee that she would be there to feel the baby. Then that summer, she attended a polo match and caught the eye of a future king of England. >> When Charles first met Diana, she had seemed to be absolutely perfect. She seemed to love the countryside. She was a funny, easy, carefree girl who seemed to love Charles, love everything that he loved and just be simple, uncomplicated.
>> Their romance blossomed over sailing weekends at cows and a visit to Balmoral. Prince Charles had to find someone who was eligible, a virgin of aristocratic background that will provide him with bloodstock. >> On the 24th of February 1981, the couple announced their engagement to the world’s press. >> Yesterday, you were a nanny looking after children.
Um, now you’re about to uh marry the Prince of Wales and and one day you would all in all likelihood be queen. It’s a tremendous change for someone, if I may say, of 19 to make all of a sudden the transition. >> It is, but I’ve had a small run out to it all in the last 6 months. And next to Brit, it’s Charles and I can’t go wrong. He’s there with me.
>> You’ll miss miss looking after the child. >> Nice. >> Well, they certainly miss you, wouldn’t they? I >> hope so. And I I I’m amazed that she’s been brave enough to take me on. >> And I suppose in love, of >> course, whatever in love mean. >> On the 29th of July 1981, Charles and Diana married, the most iconic wedding of the 20th century.
Prince Charles and his bride, the new Princess of Wales, acknowledged the roars of delight from the huge crowds from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. When I asked Diana about the wedding, she told me that she felt that she was a sacrificial virgin lamb, sacrificed on the altar of monarchy. Her prince in shining armor did arrive and carry her off, but not to a fairy tale really.
She became a broodmare. >> Just over 3 months later, Diana was officially pregnant. The princess was for once rather koi with the photographers. That your royal highnesses are to be blessed with a child. >> As soon as Diana became pregnant, she really did come into her own because she always wanted to be a mother.
And as soon as her baby arrived, that was it. She was setting the standards for her children. The arrival of Diana’s first child would breach royal protocol for direct heirs to the throne. How are you? >> Diana was the first to give birth in a hospital. That was unusual at the time, but this was the beginning of change within the royal family.
Um I mean Diana from the start was doing things in her own way and that was a different way. >> The queen, it was the moment the crowd were waiting for. He smiled and waved to them. They cheered back. The queen had given birth at Buckingham Palace and that was considered the norm in those days. This was a surprise for the royal family when the royal surgeon was told that he wasn’t to deliver the baby and someone else would.
One nil to Diana. >> Diana had broken the rules and won. But she was soon to discover that being a royal mother would become a series of battles. On the night of the 21st of June 1982, Buckingham Palace announced that Princess Diana had given birth to a boy. >> Her number one job was to produce an heir to the throne and if if possible, a boy. And that’s precisely what she did.
>> It’s a boy. It’s a boy. It’s a boy. >> They were both very very happy when their son was born. You know, that was a real a real boost. Charles could not have been happier. >> Charles and Diana’s new baby was now second in line to this throne. >> They have been singing well done Charlie.
Let’s have another one on the program of events. >> Bloody hell. Give us a chance. >> Have you thought of a name yet, sir? Have you thought of a name yet? >> Have you thought of one or two? is the princess. Well, >> bit of an argument about his >> Charles’s choice for names for William were Arthur or Albert or something quite old-fashioned.
Without Diana, I don’t think we would have William. Diana may have won the battle to choose William’s name, but 6 weeks later at his christristening, she was to feel powerless. >> Royal christenings are formal occasions. This is a moment of history that’s going to be replayed for for decades. And so, it’s important to get things right.
William was baptized in the music room at Buckingham Palace, but Diana wasn’t consulted about what time would work best for her baby, and the morning didn’t go well. It was feeding time for William, and it wasn’t a great time for having their photographs taken where she had to control a young baby who who was getting restless.
>> He was grizzly. He was crying. And she was, I think, mortified by this. It was difficult for Diana. It looks excruciatingly embarrassing. She’s really flushed. >> And Diana and Charles are just trying to make William stop crying. So, it didn’t look a very relaxed occasion, I must say. >> She famously put her finger in his mouth to stop him crying.
I mean, it was a it was a a brilliant piece of uh enterprise by Diana. Um but yes, later she she claimed that she felt a sort of an extra from that whole scene that it was much more about the royal family and presenting an image to the world than the welfare of William. I mean the royals are are marvelous at many things and um and they do things in their own particular way.
Diana found that there was a certain coolness about the way they approached uh educating their children, raising their children, where in her eyes, the royals put duty first and child care second. With Princess Diana, it was always going to be the other way round. Diana’s next tussle with tradition came when she insisted on taking a 9-month-old William on a royal tour.
Once Diana became a mother, she did take control of her own destiny. She insisted that William went on tour with them to Australia. Diana caused a huge sensation in Australia when she and Charles went there, taking William for their first official tour. William was just beginning to crawl, so he was about 9 months old.
Diana completely changed royal motherhood. Completely turned it on its head. She put motherhood before monarchy. And that was not traditionally what had happened for generations of royal mothers and women. >> Ladies and gentlemen, this evening I I couldn’t possibly stand here and speak without um mentioning our small son, William.
I hope that his presence here has helped to provide that family feeling which I know my wife and I feel is so important. For Charles, Diana’s hands-on approach to mothering was worlds apart from his own upbringing. >> Charles really didn’t have an ideal role model as a family because his mother, though I’m sure the queen loved him very much, was away working for so much of his young life.
I think he was only four when uh his parents went off on a six-month tour of the Commonwealth and he he he was left with the grandparents and with the nannies from Lime Street to Houston, where the Queen with Princess Margaret and Prince Charles were waiting. Charles came to greet his mother after her return from a long tour abroad and it was as though he was part of a delegation meeting the queen instead of being her son whom she hadn’t seen for such a long time.
So rather than kissing him and hugging him and and and showing human emotion, the queen felt that she had to shake hands with him. And in a way, that’s who the royal family are. They don’t show their emotions in public. Both the queen and the queen mother came from a very different world. In a world where children were pushed away into the royal nursery and brought up by someone else, and they were just brought out at certain times.
Prince Charles and Princess Anne famously had a life up in the royal nursery, so very rarely did the queen see them. They’d be brought down at tea time. A tart and rug will be spread on the floor with a few toys and children are placed very nicely so that granny can have 5 minutes with them. Diana broke the royal mold in the sense that she dispensed to some extent with the whole nanny state.
She breastfed her children. Uh, she put them to bed herself. She tucked them up. She was the very model of a modern mummy. >> Prince of Wales decided to provoke some action. First with a handkerchief and assorted noises. >> Charles was keen to demonstrate his desire to be a domesticated dad. In the early days, Diana and Charles really enjoyed things like bath time with William.
And Diana admired the fact that Prince Charles spent a lot of time with his son. >> Charles understood the need to love. He did love. He understood the need to be secure. But again, I just don’t think he had the He hadn’t didn’t have the role models. >> We get all this chance, but she’s saying we handled it wrong.
Yes. >> Less than 2 years later, the couple were delighted to announce there would be another addition to their happy young royal family. >> The Prince and Princess of Wales were at their London home, Kensington Palace, when the announcement was made. Within an hour, a crowd of well-wishers had gathered. >> I’m absolutely thrilled.
I think it’s wonderful. She ordered her six or eight. >> You think so? Yes. >> Well, she said she wanted a large family. >> Mother, she’s a good mother and uh they could afford it and probably what would be nicer. >> She’s done everything right, 100% perfect. We’re very thrilled about it. >> Prince of Wales needed to find a bride who could provide him with children, and it was Diana, and that’s precisely what she did.
The House of Windsor was was secure. Like any father, Prince Charles was keen to introduce his two sons to each other at the first opportunity. And so it was that Prince William was led by the hand back to the room where he was born 2 years ago. William, of course, was excited about seeing his mother again, unaware and uncaring that he was also to visit the new third in line to the throne.
>> Prince Harry was born on the 15th of September 1984. >> The tiny bundle in the White Shaw was receiving his first sights and sounds of the outside world, but from the glimpse we saw of him, it appeared he was fast asleep. The princess looked happy, relaxed, and well recovered from her labor. >> But the birth of a second son would prove to be the high water mark for Charles and Diana’s relationship.
>> During her pregnancy with Prince Harry, Diana told me that she’s had the happiest time with Prince Charles. But the shutters went down after the birth of Prince Harry. Prince Charles said, “Oh, it’s a boy.” He wanted a girl, and he had red hair, so he was a Spencer. She said that something in her snapped after Harry’s birth.
Diana was a very very complex character and I think she was a very damaged character and in common with many people who have the sort of damage that she has, they can present a very very um normal and happy front to the world. But when they go behind their front door, things can be very different. She was an absolute superstar.
But what Charles saw and the people who lived in their household saw was something very different. Over the next few years, Diana’s deteriorating mental health would coincide with Charles’s new affair with his first love, Camila Parker BS. >> We were an unhappy organization. We were keeping a lot of secrets.
We were conscious that at the heart of what we were doing was uh this deceit and that had a corrosive effect on relations. It had a pretty corrosive effect on the way we delivered the royal engagements that we did. They were all pretty good, but I used to think how much better they could be if the effort we were putting into concealing the truth were actually put into um the day-to-day royal business.
>> William and Harry were kept away from the underlying issues within the royal household. >> Despite the ordinariness, if you like, of of the William and Harry’s childhood, um there were huge numbers of staff. I mean, Diana liked having people to take care of her, as does Charles. So, there were nannies and all sorts of aids uh and assistants who could spirit the children off and entertain them.
In those formative years, they were unaware uh of the difficulties that that that their parents were going through. And I suppose in that sense they were quite privileged because there were people like me, the team that I had, the other members of the household staff that were able to be part of this entertaining group um that that that gave them laughter.
Certainly Diana always encouraged her children to call all her staff by their first name. She saw everybody within the household as an integral part of that family >> and thus enabled William and Harry not to be distanced from them, not to be sort of completely isolated. They had the completely free roam of the palace and I think that’s a good sign.
>> But by the late 80s, cracks in the marriage were wider than ever. Diana always told me that she and Charles, whatever their differences, tried never to row in front of or because of the boys. And I do think they tried to be good parents in that way. >> William and Harry adored their mommy. And I remember one incident on Britannia when they rushed down the gang way, flung themselves into their mother’s arms, and she hadn’t seen them for a while. She was so happy to see them.
And when she came back inside, I was there when Prince Charles tore her off a strip. Never let me see you do that in public again. Showing your emotions in a in a public way is not what we do. >> I honestly don’t think Harry ever really knew quite how bad uh things were between his parents. William certainly did.
Diana herself talked about William passing tissues under the bathroom door because, you know, he heard his mother crying because of what was going on in the marriage >> and him declaring that he would wanted to be when he grew up he wanted to be a policeman so he could take care of mommy. I mean, uh, enchanting sort of anecdotal evidence that but nevertheless, it was evidence that that William was aware that something wasn’t quite right.
>> I think William and Harry were protected during this time because they were away at school. I’m sure it’s much the same as many people who go to boarding school. They don’t really know what’s happening to their parents on the outside world. And William and Harry were no different. But the Princess of Wales was in better form.
She sprinted past the other moms to finish a close second. But for all the best intentions of protective grown-ups, William and Harry’s childhood innocence would soon be shattered. Within a couple of years, their parents would be openly fighting it out in the full public glare. >> Ladies and gentlemen, >> in 1992, Charles and Diana toured India and Korea.
It proved to be a PR disaster. Diana appeared to be reing in revealing the cracks in her marriage with missed kisses, isolated photocs, and moments of misery. In the UK, a series of newspaper stories had created a tabloid feeding frenzy. >> The scene is now set for a major circulation war between the tabloid newspapers at the very center once again, the private lives of the Prince and Princess of Wales.
Now the boys were older, more aware. The breakdown of their parents’ marriage could no longer be hidden from them. It was very difficult for William and Harry to have to listen to their parents’ marriage disintegrating in public. It must have been a nightmare for them. >> The Queen was forced to step in and by the end of the year, the boy’s parents decided to formally split.
The separation was announced by the then Prime Minister John Major. It was a very defining moment for the entire world to see. >> It is announced from Buckingham Palace that with regret the Prince and Princess of Wales have decided to separate. Their Royal Highnesses have no plans to divorce and their constitutional positions are unaffected.
This decision has been reached amicably and they will both to continue to participate fully in the upbringing of their children. >> I think the boys were very unhappy and sad when they separated but they knew it was coming. I mean Diana told them and Charles spoke to them too about what was going to happen.
So during the week the boys would still be in their same bedrooms at Kensington Palace and every weekend they would then go to High Grove for the weekend anyway. And that sort of routine carried on. And at one stage, one of the boys said to to Diana, “Actually, they were now getting double everything cuz they got two holidays, two skiing holidays, two summer holidays.” And of course, they were sad.
But William certainly realized that his parents just no longer could live under the same roof. >> I think Harry said he didn’t see enough of either his parents because they were constantly shuttling between the two as the separation um happened. They both saw a lot of things that a lot of young children aren’t exposed to.
It definitely affected them very deeply. >> Aware of the public and private pain that her boys were exposed to, Diana then made a shock announcement inspired in part by her desire to give more time to her children away from the spotlight. When I started my public life 12 years ago, I understood the media might be interested in what I did.
>> Clearly, Diana had snapped at that point, feeling that the media were intruding on her privacy, but more importantly on the privacy of her children. But I was not aware of how overwhelming that attention would become in a manner that’s been hard to bear. >> She felt if she retired from public life, it would give her breathing space, time to be with William and Harry, time to repair her relationship with them.
I hope you can find it in your hearts to understand and to give me the time and space that has been lacking in recent years. >> Of course, her focus was going to be very much on the boys. I mean, I think she wanted to be around more to perhaps to talk to them, to help help them if they wanted it, to discuss their lives.
My first priority will continue to be our children, William and Harry, who deserve as much love and care and attention as I am able to give, as well as an appreciation of the tradition into which they were born. >> This was a new chapter for Diana as a mother. She and Charles were now modern co-parents, sharing the duty of raising their sons.
>> They got very used very quickly to having these two lives, one life with Diana and one with Charles. But of course, they were as devoted to their father as they were to their mother. I mean, Charles gave them wonderful holidays. They loved being with the rest of the royal family and doing all those things they did.
Now that she was on her own, Diana sometimes treated William and Harry more like confidants than sons. >> She treated them as equals. And in many ways, they were adults before they should have been because of the trauma they’ve been through in their lifetime. They grew up very quickly. >> Diana was a very, very loving mother.
There is no doubt about that. But I do think that she perhaps shared too much of her personal problems with them. They were children and I think it’s very difficult for a child to see a parent’s raw emotions. >> William once very shrewdely observed about being with Diana that there’s always a crisis with mommy and things are much calmer with papa.
Yet there was one area of her life that Diana was determined to keep private from her sons. >> I think Diana would have trotten very carefully uh when she was introducing uh new men into the boys’s lives. I think that was always um uppermost in her mind and I think many of her relationships were were secret. >> She tended to conduct these relationships when the boys were away uh at school.
She was very conscious that it would be difficult for for William and Harry if there was a a strange man around the house. And that actually didn’t happen very often. One or two called in when the boys were there, but she treated it in a fairly light-hearted way and the children didn’t get confused by it. >> But when a new woman came into her son’s lives, Diana was anything but lighthearted.
In 1993, Charles hired Tiggy Leg Burke as a nanny to the boys. >> The relationship between former royal nanny Alexandra Leg Burke, or Tiggy she’s better known, and the Princess of Wales has been the source of much speculation ever since she first appeared in royal circles. Diana was said to have resented her high-profile role as Girl Friday and mother figure to Princess William and Harry.
Diana accused Leg of falling pregnant with Charles’s child and was furious with the nanny for allegedly smoking constantly in front of the boys. Diana let it be known in no uncertain terms that she was extremely jealous and she became vindictive about Tegbrook who became a central figure in the the boy’s lives after the separation.
They really got on so well with Tiggy. But for Diana, it must have been hard. She knew that they were out and about enjoying themselves, hugging, sharing with another woman. >> A possessive Diana was determined to keep her boys in Kensington Palace as close to her as possible. When it came time for William to go to public school, she bucked the royal tradition of sending royal sons to Gordon in Scotland, insisting on nearby Eaton instead.
That schooling gave William the opportunity to spend time with his schoolmates at their home and you know virtually every other day that during term time his schoolmates were invited back to Kensington Palace. Eaton is is the perfect choice of school for a royal child really because the queen at Windsor Castle is just across the river and William and Harry did both go and visit the queen and their grandfather and have tea with them or they knew people.
They were comfortable there. It was it was the right choice, I think. >> But just as life seemed to be settling for the boys, a new round of public warfare broke out between their parents. Then there were the television programs. >> This time the headlines were of their own making and took the war of the Wales to a whole new level.
First, Charles was interrogated into confessing his infidelity by Jonathan Dimbleby on ITV. It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to walk down the streets of Eaton or Windsor and see the newspaper headlines about Diana, about Charles because unfortunately Charles and Diana did wage their war very publicly and that was very hard for the boys.
I know that everyone around them tried to shield them but it wasn’t possible and it was very hurtful for them. >> All of that they would have been teased about it. The embarrassment for them I think just you know it it’s beyond belief. >> Her primary concern throughout all the war of the Wales was for her children and what they would think.
She says they worry how other boys will treat them because sometimes children can be cruel. Even aristocratic children going to boarding school can be quite barbed. >> Charles and Diana finally divorced on the 28th of August 1996. Life for all the Wales had at last reached a new normal and Diana was free to become the woman and the mother that she could never be before.
>> I think she began to put her life together again. She became much more confident. Her self-esteem went up. She then felt, “Okay, I’m my own woman. I’m going to get on with it. I’m going to do things my way. And if I’m not representing the royal family, I’m going to represent the very best of me. And I know what I’m good at.
I’m good at giving tender loving care.” But just one year later, almost to the day of the divorce papers coming through, William and Harry’s lives would once more be thrown into turmoil and total tragedy. On the 30th of August 1997, a 15-year-old William and a 12-year-old Harry were enjoying the annual summer break with their father at Balmoral.
Imagine what it’s like being a fairly young boy and your mother dies very very suddenly, very very dramatically. You are in one part of the world up in Scotland. I think both of them felt it was really strange that literally millions and millions and millions of people around the world were commentating and expressing their view on what they should be feeling and how they should be reacting to that.
I don’t think this public spectacle of two hugely damaged, hurting young boys walking behind their mother’s coffin, I don’t think it helped anyone. I cannot think that she wanted her boys to go through that ordeal, that trauma. >> Remember these two boys are very different boys. One inspired by duty. Who knew it was his duty to walk behind his mother’s coffin? And the other not.
Harry never wanted to walk behind his mother’s coffin. Not until the very last minute did he feel that pang of guilt that he should and support his brother. And that’s why he was there to walk with his brother. Of course, they’re not the only men who lost their mothers at at a young age.
You know, it it it happens and it’s sad for everyone, but the circumstances were particularly unpleasant for them. The fact that the country went into such extraordinary mourning. The fact that they had to almost share their grief with with a nation who didn’t know her. This was their mother that they had lost. They had ownership of that grief, but somehow it was taken away from them by the public.
I’ve heard them both at different points talk about how strange they found it that they were surrounded by all these people and they were these people were were sort of behaving as though she was part of them but actually she wasn’t. William and Harry were being expected to behave in a certain way and indeed behaving in that way. I can see why a lot of people say it was terribly unfair to put them as boys in that position, but they were going to be somewhere and they’d have been in the church in the abbey that had been seen. And I think it’s
amazing they kind of held it together as well as they did. The boys had lost their mother, but their mother’s love for them and their ability to show love lives on. First day I met him, he just came running up and chucked a ball at me. He was uh third youngest there or something. Um and uh no father, no mother. Really sweet.
>> Starting to change. Diana’s legacy is in every single bit of everything that William and Harry do. I don’t think you can underestimate that. Every time I’ve spoken to Harry, he thinks about what his mother would have thought of what he was doing. Um, and he’s spoken about wanting to, you know, make her proud and hoping that she would feel proud with a lot of the work he’s done.
>> I think it’s fairly obvious to everybody across the world what the key issues are. Um they’re certainly not political issues, they’re humanitarian issues and they’re ones that need to be talked about because if we talk about it then we’ll hopefully be able to fix it before it becomes a complete disaster.
>> And the same with William. I mean I think I mean people talk about gosh aren’t they just their mother’s boys but but they are consciously. >> The more we talk about mental health the more normal the topic becomes and the more we feel able to open up and seek support. You know, parenting it comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes and children survive all sorts of experiences.
As long as they have love, as long as a child feels secure and loved in its first 18 months of life, then it can withstand just about anything. And if ever there was proof of that, then I think it would be William and Harry. I mean, you know, they’ve been through some terrible things, but they have survived. And I think they had indisputably an absolute bedrock of love and security when they were small.
>> They’re not completely stiffly formal. Um they’re sort of natural and easy. Diana opened their their minds and their eyes in so many ways. It’s given them a very inquiring nature and it’s made them very relatable. people in really enjoy meeting them and admire them hugely largely because of of of what Donna provided for them.
>> And when he walked through the minefields, I was so proud of him. That little boy who loved his mommy so much. Following in her footsteps, literally paying homage to the path which she trod, Williams carry on his mother’s work in a more subtle way. He’s approaching homeless, HIV, and AIDS at the boardroom level.
>> I feel very closely linked to Sense Points. It is a charity with which both my mother and father became passionately involved. Indeed, it was while my mother was patron that Harry and I had our first contact with Center Point. >> Prince William is far more Hannavarian than Prince Harry.
He’s shown himself to be wiser and being prepared to accept what’s happened and moved on. And I don’t think that Prince Harry has ever really moved on from the traumas that he’s faced in his life. You see in William, you know, sometimes the way he will sit and listen to people in a meeting or a conversation or an event.
And it’s literally like looking at Dan. Reflections of Diana can even be seen in her son’s different choice of wife. >> Diana knew what William’s future held. She knew that she was preparing him to be king one day. Kate is the most perfect support and consort for a king. So I think she would be very pleased with Kate.
The one thing she did say certainly to William was about the woman he married should first and foremost be a friend. Why did she say that was she felt that she never got to know the Prince of Wales. >> Harry is a much freer personality with a freer life ahead of him. And Megan is perfect for that. >> Diane always said from a very early age she there was a very rebellious streak in her.
Very independent uh very feminist. There are parallels obviously between the way Diana decided that the media attention the way of life was too much for her. Um and the way Harry and Megan have chosen to quit as senior members of the royal family even more dramatic. And I think that Harry is replicating his his mother’s footsteps there and saying that it isn’t a way of life for me.
I think Megan is the one who has possibly taken an objective viewer and given Harry a way out that he was looking for before Megan but hadn’t conceived possible. >> I think she’d be incredibly impressed with the way they’ve turned out. I think she’d have been thrilled that William was able to go to university and find a life partner equally.
I think she would have been hugely taken by Harry’s choice of bride. It was a very adventurous decision, but Harry, you know, is an adventurous young man and I think that was there and Diana encouraged it when he was little. >> Now, both princes have children of their own. >> As parents, they seem to be very aware of the psychology behind their upbringing.
Prince Harry can’t get let go of Archie. He seems to be besotted. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that Princess Diana, who had a troubled childhood, and Prince Charles, who’s complained of distant parenting, had brought up two kids, William and Harry, who were both triumphs of parenting. As a mother, Diana was loving, fun, and completely devoted, changing the royal family in ways that we are only now beginning to understand.
She was a one-off. We are still talking about her now. Diana completely changed royal motherhood. She put motherhood before monarchy. All future royal mothers have Diana to thank for that. Heat. Heat. Republican.
