"Our mother was informal and she liked to laugh."
William and Harry speak for the first time of the death of her mother, Princess Diana.
"Twenty years later, Harry and I feel that this is an appropriate time to open up a little more about our mother ... We will never again speak about her in such an open and public way." It was said by Prince William, the elder of the two sons of the princes of Wales, Diana and Charles, in the documentary 'Diana: our mother, her life and her legacy', which aired on English television a month ago .
They had never talked about her in such an open and public way, but neither had they done it in private or among themselves, as Prince Harry acknowledges in the same documentary.
This was due to the veil that covered the issue from the moment of Lady Di's death, which was so tragic and controversial due to the circumstances of the accident (she was going with Dodi al Fayed, her boyfriend of the moment; they were fleeing from the paparazzi, they were going to high speed, the driver went with drinks ...) as for the episodes starring Diana and Carlos in the last two years, among them the interview that the princess gave to the BBC Panorama program, in which she spoke of her bulimia, her depression, Carlos's infidelity with Camila Parker and his clandestine relationship with James Hewitt, officer of the queen's cavalry guard.
However, the young princes, who were 15 and 12 years old respectively when her mother died, felt that they owed her this tribute, now that they are 35 and 32 years old and have been able to assimilate what happened.
"Part of the reason Harry and I wanted to do this is because we think we owe it to her," William says in the documentary. “I think one element of this is feeling like we let her down when we were younger. We couldn't protect her. "
These two decades have served both of them to decant her emotions and lighten the weight of this hard blow of losing her mother being so young and with so much media exposure.
In fact, Harry told The Telegraph this year that he spent years trying to ignore his emotions, and when he turned 28 he decided to seek professional help, prompted by several people, including his brother. "My way of dealing with this was putting my head in the sand, refusing to think about my mother because she was thinking, 'How can she help me?' 'This is only going to make me sad.' 'He's not going to bring her back.'
In the privacy of a living room in Prince William's house, in a relaxed and unpretentious way, the brothers opened a fat family album to begin to remember their mother and to tell the public through the documentary funny anecdotes, family scenes, love moments brought about by Diana, like the one William recounted.
It turns out that one day in September, when the prince was returning home from school, he got a great surprise: at the bottom of the stairs that led him to his room, none other than Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell were waiting for him. , the supermodels of the moment.
“I was a kid of probably 12 or 13 who had posters of them on the walls and I turned completely red and didn't know what to say. I think I mumbled something and fell down the stairs on the way out. That is a memory that has always lived with me of how she was loving and could even embarrass you, she was a kind of joker ”.
They both remember Diana as a casual person, who liked to laugh and have fun. And, furthermore, she is a pimp mother, as Prince Harry reveals, who described her as "one of the naughtiest mothers."
"One of the things he taught me," says William, "was 'you can be as naughty as you want, just don't get caught.'
The two young men emphasize in their interviews that thanks to their mother they had a normal childhood, which included going to fast food restaurants and amusement parks. Sometimes I would wait for them outside school to walk around London.
But they were not left with the glamorous life of the palace and the fun of adventures outside of it. They also appreciate the fact that Diana took them with her on her philanthropic visits. "She understood that there was a real life outside the palace," say the boys.
In this way, they were instilled that spirit of solidarity and service towards others, which they admire so much in their mother and never cease to highlight, as in the last Diana Awards, established to promote solidarity and presided over by the princes.
“Henry and I have the feeling that our mother lives in numerous acts of compassion and courage that she inspires in others,” said William. And, in his turn, his brother said: “One of the things our mother taught William and me was the value of doing good when no one is looking. She visited hospitals late at night to comfort patients, spent hours writing letters to privately support the work of others. She shone in the spotlights, but she worked hard when the cameras went. "
