Prince Harry Felt Princess Diana Was Actually 'Hiding' After Her 1997 Demise

For many around the world, the shocking death of Princess Diana in a Paris car crash in 1997 was a tragedy witnessed from afar through television broadcasts and newspaper reports. However, for her two young sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, it was the shattering of their world and the loss of their beloved mother. In his new memoir Spare, Harry revealed the profound impact of that fateful day and his years-long struggle to accept that his mother was truly gone, including the fact that he felt she was just 'hiding' and hadn't actually died.

On the morning of August 31st, 1997, the 12-year-old Harry was awoken at Balmoral Castle by his father, (now) King Charles, who sat on his bed to deliver the devastating news: "There's been an accident...I'm afraid she didn't make it." In an interview with Michael Strahan of Good Morning America, Harry also admitted he could not comprehend what he was being told. "I refused to accept that was what had happened," he said, attributing it to the 'magical thinking' that often accompanies childhood grief, as per ABC News.

For years after Diana's death, Harry clung to the belief that she was somehow still alive, merely 'hiding,' as he put it in his memoir. He likened his reaction to a 'defense mechanism' against having to confront the finality of her loss at such a tender age. Harry also wondered if professional counseling may have helped him process the trauma, though he questioned if a 12-year-old would have been receptive to that idea. The days and years following his mother's passing remain a haze punctuated by vivid snapshots in Harry's memory.

The royal recounted the bizarre experience of greeting thousands of mourners outside Kensington Palace, accepting their flowers and tears when he himself could not tap into those wellsprings of emotion. "I remember the guilt that I felt," he told Anderson Cooper in a 60 Minutes interview. "The fact that the people that we were meeting were showing more emotion than we were showing, maybe more emotion than we even felt." One of the most striking public moments was the image of the two princes, just 15 and 12 years old, solemnly walking behind their mother's casket, as per CBS News.

For Harry, the overwhelming silence of that funereal march remains emblazoned in his mind: "The occasional wail and screaming of someone...the horse hooves on the road...but mainly the silence." Remarkably, as he revealed, it was only upon Diana's coffin being lowered into the ground that he finally shed tears over her death—tears that would not come again for many years. Harry suggests his turmoil may have propelled him into unhealthy coping behaviors like drinking and drugs in his youth, ways of 'trying to find a feeling or numb a feeling.'