William and Harry: That moment they learned of Diana's death, in their words
All questions were allowed for director Henry Singer. He posed to the two princes the most sensitive of all, and they answered it ...
"I believe the princes [William and Harry] are hoping that all of these questions have been answered once and for all. And that there won't be any need to ask them again, that people can refer to this movie. and the words in it if they have any questions. That this will be their first and last word on the subject. " Prime contractor for the BBC documentary Diana, 7 Days (Diana, 7 Days), award-winning director Henry Singer, a Harvard and Cambridge alumnus who made his mark with the film 9/11: The Falling Man on attacks of September 11, has the ambition to have collected the ultimate testimony of the two sons of Lady Di, on the occasion of the twenty years of the disappearance of the princess of hearts.
For his 90-minute film, which focuses on the week after Diana's death, the grief of the people and how this tragic event changed the relationship of the British to their monarchy, the 50-year-old director was given carte blanche, allowed to ask any questions he wanted of William and Harry - they were free, however, not to answer some.
Why me ? What did I do ? Why is this happening to us?
Among the essential subjects, Henry Singer did not fail to question the two brothers on the last words they exchanged with their mother and on their feelings on the day of her public funeral. Harry, who was then 12 years old and has a very bitter memory of it, told him that he had been marked by "the hands of people who were wet with the tears they had just wiped"; as for William, who was 15, he admitted that walking behind the coffin with his head bowed with his lock of hair falling in front of his eyes "like a safety curtain" is "one of the hardest things. 'he has] never had to do, "but he also confessed to having" felt like she was almost walking alongside [them] to help [them] get there ".
A few days before the broadcast across the Channel, Sunday, August 27, of Diana, 7 Days, other extracts have been revealed. Among the most striking moments of this interview with the princes, the latter evoke for the first time the moment when they learned of the death of their mother, being careful, however, as is understandable, to give the details of the way the news of which was communicated to them by their father Prince Charles. "I only remember feeling completely paralyzed. Disoriented, dizzy, very, very disoriented ... And you keep asking yourself 'Why me? What did I do ? Why does it happen to us? ", All the time," William testifies. Prince Harry, too, explains that he was "in disbelief" and stunned: "Denial. Refused to accept it. There was no outpouring of grief, of course not. I don't believe that anyone that either, in this situation and at that age, is able to understand the concept of what it means in practice to continue to move forward, "he notes.
PRINCE CHARLES "DID HIS BEST"
Against all expectations, the younger of the two praises the attitude of their father, whose divorce from Diana had been pronounced a year earlier: "One of the hardest things for a parent is to have to tell your kids that their other parent is dead. But he was there for us, he was the one who stayed and he did his best, making sure we were protected and watched over us . But, you know, he too had to go through the same process of mourning, "underlines the young man, who knows how the last years of his parents' marriage were nauseating and punctuated by settling of scores in the media.
CLOÎTRE IN BALMORAL
William and Harry also look back on the days that followed, spent in recluse at Balmoral, the Scottish residence of Queen Elizabeth II. A decision of the monarch that public opinion, shocked by the death of the much loved Diana, had a hard time understanding and explicitly reproached her ... But the sons of the deceased, them, respected her choice, which allowed them to mourn in private, sheltered from the collective hysteria that gripped the kingdom and from the waves of unprecedented grief. To this end, the sovereign had even had the newspapers removed from Balmoral to prevent the two teenagers from falling on them ... "I think it was a very hard decision for my grandmother to make, William notes. She felt very torn between being a grandmother to William and Harry and being queen. " And there were no smartphones, of course, as the Duke of Cambridge recalls: "Fortunately, to be honest, we had the privacy to cry and gather our spirits, being away from it all. world. We had no idea that the reaction to his death was so colossal. "
“It was a dilemma,” Harry adds, “between how to let the boys grieve in private, and at the same time find the right time for them to put on their princes hats and do their duty by not only mourning their mother, but also the Princess of Wales, on a very public occasion. "
In the aftermath of the fatal accident in Diana, the young princes attended mass at Crathie Kirk Church, next to Balmoral Castle. They had also read the messages and flowers left by admirers: "I looked at the flowers and the words, and I was very touched but I did not understand any of them. All that mattered to me was that I 'had lost my mother and didn't want to be there, "admits William.
Then came the moment to leave this hermitage and return to London, for the funeral. The shock with reality, a collective grief out of proportion, was severe. "People were grabbing us, pulling us into their arms, all of that. I don't blame anybody for that, of course not. But those were the moments that were quite shocking, the people screaming, people crying." Harry remembers about this mourning for their mother that had to be shared with millions of anonymous people. "It was so unusual for people to see boys this young who weren't crying when everyone else was crying," he also remarks.
ESPECIALLY DON'T CRY
The sensitive question of whether the boys should walk behind the coffin containing Diana's remains on that fateful September 6, 1997, had been the subject of fierce debate throughout the week. While members of the royal staff pleaded in favor of their participation, the Duke of Edinburgh, their grandfather, raged to avoid them this painful exercise. The decision would not have been made until the same morning, Prince Philip eventually convincing William by offering: "If I come too, will you come?"
Nevertheless, the eldest son of Prince Charles would have preferred "to go and lock himself in a room and cry" rather than walk for half an hour behind the coffin, from Saint James Palace to Westminster Abbey: " I just remember, basically, I was hiding behind my lock of hair, back when I still had a lot of hair, and my head was down a lot, "he says. As for Harry, if he had sworn, in reaction to the trauma of his mother's death, to never cry in public in his life, he almost broke up when Sir Elton John performed Candle in the Wind at the of the ceremony. "The song was incredibly moving. It was part of all this mechanics that almost made me cry in public, which I'm glad I didn't, he testifies. In hindsight, I'm happy. of never having cried in public, because there is a fine line between work, between grieving when you work and grieving in private. Even though someone had tried to make me cry in public, I probably still can't. What happened changed me, from that point of view. " What William also evoked by speaking of "front face" displayed despite the interior chaos that the two brothers felt inside.
To William the last word: "She loved us, Harry and I. Even after these twenty years, I still feel that love. If I can be even a fraction of what she was, I will be proud and, with luck, I will make her proud. "
