Prince William Gave His Mom, Princess Diana, Some Sage Advice When She And Charles Were Getting Divorced

Prince William reportedly gave his mother, Princess Diana, some solid advice when she and Prince Charles were going through their very ugly, and very public, divorce, Irish magazine Her is reporting. This according to a new documentary, “Prince William: Royalty In My Family.”

Both adolescence and divorce are hard on kids, and it’s doubly bad when an adolescent is watching his parents get divorced. For Prince William, who was 14 at the time, not only did he have to contend with his parents divorcing, he also had to deal with the fact that it was happening publicly, with every salacious detail being breathlessly reported on by the British press.

William was intensely protective of his mother, says the documentary, so much so that at one point he told his younger brother, Harry, that he wanted to be a police officer so he could protect his mother – to which Harry replied, “You can’t, you’ve got to be King!”

Similarly, another anecdote from the documentary claims that when William was nine, Diana was going through some difficulties. and William wanted to cheer her up. The future King picked up a Clarence House phone and booked Diana’s favorite restaurant in order to cheer his mother up.

In 1996, when William was 14, William’s parents — and their lawyers — were getting close to finalizing their divorce. As such minutiae like custody, property, and money were being sorted out, there was another sticking point that kept the two from coming to an agreement: Diana’s titles and styles.

When Diana married Charles, she acquired a long list of titles: Princess of Wales, Duchess of Rothesay, and others, as well as various styles and forms of address (such as “Her Royal Highness”). Charles’ and Diana’s teams went to great lengths to agree on the list of titles and styles that Diana would give up, and which ones she would keep.

William had some sage advice for how to quickly end the public divorce drama: give up on fighting over titles and styles, which for the most part are just words on paper.

“William later advised her to accelerate her divorce proceedings by agreeing to be stripped of her royal title.”

Regardless of which titles and styles she kept and gave up, she would still retain the most important one, William reportedly told her.

“You’ll still be mummy.”

Just months after her divorce from Charles, Princess Diana tragically died in a Paris car crash.