When Princess Diana died in Paris on the last day of August in 1997, her sons were in Scotland, at the Queen’s summer home of Balmoral. They had been at Balmoral for weeks. When Prince Charles flew to Paris to bring home the body of his late ex-wife, he left his sons in the care of his family. Harry and William would stay at Balmoral for days, barely being seen in public, until Tony Blair finally convinced the Queen to return to London with Charles and the boys. One of the first things the Queen and Charles did when they returned to London was put Harry and William on display, greeting the mourners outside the palace. The boys looked shellshocked. But there was additional drama to come: the decision to have William and Harry walk behind their mother’s casket, on display, for the walk to Westminster Abbey.
Harry has spoken of his long-term pain of that, of being made to walk behind Diana’s casket, and he’s said outright that he should have never been made to do it. The story goes that Prince Philip was the one who convinced Harry & William to walk, but honestly, it never really sounded like the boys had much of a choice. Now Robert Lacey says, in his book Battle of Brothers: William and Harry – The Inside Story of a Family in Tumult, that Diana’s brother, the Earl Spencer, was adamantly against his young nephews walking behind their mother’s casket.
Heir to the throne Prince Charles allegedly made “offensive” comments about his ex-wife, Princess Diana, to her brother days after her 1997 death, a new book claims. Historian Robert Lacey writes in “Battle of Brothers: The Inside Story of a Family in Tumult” that Charles made the remark to Diana’s brother, Charles, 9th Earl Spencer, as the ex-in-laws feuded over funeral arrangements. Apparently, Spencer objected to his nephews walking the entirety of a public funeral procession behind their mother’s casket.
“Prince Charles had no doubt that he should walk the long route with both his sons beside him,” Lacey wrote in excerpts obtained by People, “But Uncle Charles Spencer did not agree. He was already angry on his family’s behalf that his sister’s funeral had been hijacked into a royal occasion, and he was particularly opposed to the idea that his young nephews should have to walk the best part of a mile behind their mother’s coffin through the streets.”
“Spencer felt quite sure that Diana would have been horrified at the idea of her sons having to endure such an ordeal,” Lacey added. “He had already told Charles as much.” One contentions call between them “had ended with the earl slamming down the phone on his brother-in-law after Charles had made a particularly offensive comment about Diana.”
In the end, both William and Harry joined their father, Spencer and their grandfather Prince Philip for the lengthy procession. The service took place Sept. 6, 1997, six days after her death due to a car crash in Paris.
I have no doubt that the Earl Spencer and Prince of Wales fought about this and many other issues during that week. While it is probably just Labour propaganda, it felt like Tony Blair was the only one who really understood the tricky stagecraft around Diana’s death. Now, was the Earl Spencer right? Would Diana have been horrified? I don’t know. My guess is that was the comment Prince Charles made to his former brother-in-law, that Diana loved the attention and she wasn’t above using her sons as pawns, and it would make perfect sense in Diana’s worldview to put her sons on display even though they were grieving.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
Charles is an ahole. And this was disgusting. It did a lot of long-term damage too, which btw, we are seeing play out today. This kind of damage done to children doesn’t just disappear.
The Queen, Charles, Philip, couriers. All of them. This was a despicable move.
It’s one big group of people with dysfunctional childhoods passing on that dysfunction to the next generation, because they ultimately care more about clinging to their spot in an outdated institution than they do about making sure the members of the institution are emotionally healthy human beings. What a sad bunch.
Yes, the Earl Spencer has been wong about a lot of things, but not that one.
Hopefully Harry will be able to completely break the patter of dysfunction in his part of the family.
You all know how I feel about William at this point, but whenever I see pictures of him and Harry at the funeral my heart still breaks for both of them. That was unbelievably cruel to force them to do that.
And the fact that Charles and Phillip walked with the Earl and the boys – what was that, Victoria Arbiter? It’s not all about PR? Sorry, it’s ALL about PR with this family.
Same. I even could believe that people expected William, as the older brother, to toughen up for the sake of his younger brother.
It guts me to see it. Harry was the same age as my son is now. They are still very much little boys and should have been shielded from the public and supported in their grief. Barbaric, unfeeling, compassionless people.
When did Harry publicly talk about this? Does anyone have links?
I hope it’s okay for me to copy this here, in response to your post. I post it respectfully, but with the warning that the link name itself is graphic, and may upset those experiencing loss
https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/prince-william-prince-harry-open-learned-mothers-death/story?id=49362641
How awful that ABC News tagged that as an “entertainment” story.
It really is a heartbreaking-read.
Thank you for the link. That was quite touching.
Prince Charles actually had a point.
Well, both he & Di used the boys.
Earl Spencer spoke against Meghan. So eff him.🙄
(That’s why Harry iced his ass and he wasn’t invited to the wedding reception, nor Archie’s christening.😉😉)
He was wrong to have said that (if he did say it) about someone who had just tragically lost her life, and to her own brother no less. It would be downright cruel to say something like that. Diana loving some attention has nothing to do with exposing her children to this traumatic experience. We could also see how she was hounded and how she hated certain intrusions. And yeah, eff Spencer for meddling into his nephew’s relationship.
I think part of why Diana enjoyed the attention from the public was because that’s where she was getting positive reinforcement. Charles was cold and distant, the Queen cold and distant, the courtiers were the men in gray suits to her and so getting love from the public must have felt good in comparison to what she dealt with daily at the palace.
That makes sense. She was so young when she married and we know that the institution can be so cold and indifferent. She must have felt really isolated and it’s sad that she didn’t have a Harry by her side (like Meghan did)
Camilla even told her that the public liked her and what more would she want. Diana answered I want my husband. This when the two spoke at that party. I think that about says it all. Diana also enjoyed her work and she had every excuse she could make but she went out there and attended to her royal duties.
Jegede:
Not sure which “Earl Spencer” you’re talking about, but Charles Spencer was, in fact, at Harry and Meghan’s wedding and reception was, in fact, at Archie’s christening but was left out of the photo shoot because of the animus between him and the Prince of Wales (for obvious reasons). He has never spoken “against” Meghan, for the record. You’re extrapolating conversations that did not happen based on other people’s reporting.
Harry has stayed very close not only to Earl Spencer (whom he even called out on Archie’s birth announcement) but to the entire Spencer clan, including Spencer’s ex-wives and cousins.
Let’s not spread fiction, mmkay?
Not fiction.
Earl Spencer was not at the wedding reception, he was placed in an unfortunate seat at the church wedding and he was not invited to the christening.
Prince Charles had nothing to do with it, as it’s known Harry & William often get their way over their Pa’s wishes.
The stories of him speaking out against Meghan were already known to us in Blighty, and confirmed in Lacey’s book, that he indeed took William’s side, in trying to discourage Harry.
I do know Harry’s close to his Spencer cousins and aunts, which is why I didn’t mention them.
Earl Spencer was in no way qualified to advise anybody about marriage. He took a “date” to Diana’s funeral while still married to his first wife. He left his first wife about the time she had their second child. And now he’s with his third wife. I think Harry’s aunts did not “advise” Harry and they were front and center at Archie’s Christening photos.
I’m a lot more kind to 36 year old Diana’s character and legacy because I think that’s prob fair. Her story was mainly told by a lot of vipers in the palace and somewhat sympathetic yet still bitchy biographers who were still mostly old and male. Imagine if we took Meghan actions by the sum of consensus from royal biographers, press and the tabloids. If Charles had died, 100% believe would she never made her sons walk behind his casket for millions of eyes in grief theatre. And if she did, she would have been crucified as a female Jezebel and ruthless mummy dearest.
Prince Charles was wrong and has been shown to put his ego and the royal ‘firm’ above family, many many times.
It was appalling. Using your children for PR points by walking to church together, going to Disneyland, whatever, is NOTHING like capitalizing on their grief over their mother’s death. It was gross and unforgivable. The Windsors are cold, cold, cold.
Heart just breaks again seeing those photos of tiny young Harry looking so lost and alone. They should never have made them do that.
As a mother now, it breaks my heart and brings a tear to my eyes, to see little Harry particularly, so young – being forced into such an inappropriate and insensitive situation so publicly.
How devastating for those poor boys to have just lost your mum, and be put on public display and unable to privately grieve. I still dont understand for what purpose it was done? It couldnt have painted the royals in a good light, regardless of a united front?
And look what thanks Harry gets in return. A whole generation of haters in the UK and America who think they have a right to dictate who he should love, and think it perfectly acceptable to try to destroy his family. No wonder he hates the media. I wouldn’t be surprised if he harbored resentment toward the public in general. He never asked to be in this position. I cant imagine what it would be like to be in the public eye to the extent that people think they own you.
I think part of why he gets so much grief now is that many women saw that little boy as a child who could have been their little boy, and then deep-down pictured him as exactly that as he grew up. Meaning that they, in the absense of Diana, saw themselves as having the right to play the role of Mummy (in spirit). Especially women like that Angela Levin biographer hag. That shrew has some serious boundary issues, and does not seem to understand that Harry is not her son. Her critiques of Meghan in the media seem absurdly personal, and not in keeping with a professional point of view at all.
Harry’s the only man on earth with likely 10 million women who fancy themselves as his mother in some regard, and Meghan must be the unluckiest woman in that sense, as she has 10 million women who fancy themselves as her mother in law. The worst kind of mother in law as well: the one who can’t stand the thought of her “little boy” putting any woman above her. This translates to many women feeling that they are free to hate Meghan on Diana’s behalf. Insane.
I don’t get that because Diana was a “rebel” and wanted out. I think she would have taken to Meghan. So the women feeling they are “hating Meghan on Diana’s behalf did not know much about Diana.
The Earl Spencer used his sister’s funeral to call attention to himself. He’s not innocent in any of this.
I agree, after watching all of this, as it unfolded back then, with you. He left me feeling like he wanted something out of this tragedy – not sure what it was but it all seemed odd to me at that time.
“Heir to the throne Prince Charles allegedly made “offensive” comments about his ex-wife, Princess Diana, to her brother days after her 1997 death,”
Maybe the quote above is the reason Earl Spencer gave the eulogy at Diana Funeral that he gave. The feeling he espoused while delivering the eulogy and content of his eulogy speech made no sense to me at the time. What he said and how he said it makes more sense to me in light of the quote above.
I disagree. He was rightfully angry given their poor treatment of his sister only to have her funeral turned into a phony display of “royal concern” for a princess they all hated, IRL.
Put yourself in his shoes for a moment.
If Earl Spencer had his way, there would never have been a public funeral, period. He “called attention to himself” in the context of a circumstance that he did not support, was overruled on, and all while he was in the middle of immense grief and shock. In that context, the anger that he expressed, and the eulogy that he gave in public, was fully justified. For years everyone thought he was being purely self-serving, but the fact is, he wasn’t. It was prompted by what had taken place in the run up to the funeral, and the anger was not self-righteous, but real.
Earl Spencer also did not allow Diana to live at Althorp following her divorce – just sayin
NOT TRUE He won a lawsuit against the newspapers for saying that.
Rita – thank you for clarifying! I wasn’t aware he had sued and won
The media in the UK went after the Royal Family after Diana’s death, demanding that they and the boys been seen in public and return to London. The Queen and Prince Charles strongly disagreed and felt that the boys should stay in Scotland. They got completely hammered for it, day in day out until William and Harry were brought back to London and taken out to see the flowers left by the public at Kennsington Palace.
The media played a huge part in William and Harry taking part in the funeral. They were as vile then as they are now.
Exactly.
The media used all kind of tactics to deflect from the backlash they were getting over her death. Despicable.😠
And we see it playing out to this day, where the media and the british public think they have some claim of ownership over Harry.
Not only that, but the press are still doing it and getting away with it. H&M have blamed the media for their leaving and are really trying to have that conversation. The press have pushed that aside completely to make it seem as if the family is 100% responsible. The truth is the family was bad but the press was worse. The fact remains that the press got annoyed all the way back in 2016 when Harry wrote that letter to try to protect Meghan. The press have been against them ever since. Whenever they’ve been called out for racism, they’ve gotten offended and doubled down to prove they aren’t racist. They also regularly got their stories from Meghan haters on the internet. There’s no denying that the entire family was in on it to some degree. However, if the press had not been so awful, H&M likely wouldn’t have left. The press doesn’t want the blame. Just like they didn’t want the blame with Diana’s death. So, now the story is that the family is 100% to blame. Harry knows what they were all like. He also knows how to deal with them and still get things done. The Invictus Games, among other things, are proof of that. The press are getting off way too easy. The press will take down the BRF before they take the blame. The same way they did with Diana’s death.
I disagree. The press got worse after the tour when people within the Firm started leaking about internal relationships, making clear their disapproval of Meghan (degree wife comments). The leaks created mistrust and then Firm’s silence on press attacks showed they were on their own. Plus sounds like the Firm was trying to sideline them with a move abroad so can’t blame the family dynamics behind that on the press alone.
Setting aside whether the issue was ‘political’ or not I don’t think majority of the GB press would have ragged on the Vogue issue so hard if the Queen had shown support similar to Hold Still project.
The press tried to deflect from the public anger over Diana’s press harassment by targeting the Queen but there was also a sense that the Queen should have come out & address the nation over Diana’s death earlier& had the flag at half mast. If she had done that earlier wonder if there still would have been that ‘public’ need to see the boys & have them dragged down to London before the funeral.
Also as much as the tabloid press is trash – this is who the Firm gives exclusive access to for their engagements out of self interest and they are part of the press she was praising the other day
“I don’t think majority of the GB press would have ragged on the Vogue issue so hard if the Queen had shown support similar to Hold Still project.”
During a discussion I had “in person” with two male 35-40 year old Brits living in Florida, they told me they did like the fact that QEII was not on the Vogue cover as one of the “forces of change”. At first I thought that they were joking and I explained that QEII might have been a “force for change” in 1948-1952 but now she was guardian of the past. My Brit friends were in disbelief at my statement and told me they thought it was really disrespectful for QEII not to be included. They were serious and I could not believe what they were saying as they said it. I still do not understand why they felt as this way because they are not BRF watchers or even Monarchists. They are in the group of Brits that really do not think about or care about the BRF nor do they read Vogue. Maybe this explains some of the trouble Meghan had.
@BayTampaBay, with respect to the discussion you had, I imagine those same dudes would have been horrified had Meghan included the Queen in her forces for change. It would have been Meghan “making the Queen political” and “how dare she use the Queen to advance herself.” Unfortunately, with a lot of Brits, there’s a lot of unexamined racism toward Meghan that they can’t even see. They frame that racism in “damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t” stances where any stance Meghan takes would be wrong in their eyes. The absurdity of that comes down to the belief that she doesn’t really belong there. They can’t come out and say they think that, so they create these “protocol violations” and other petty grievances to give themselves permission to despise her instead.
I wrote in another post that the Brits seem to be about a generation behind the US and Canada in terms of open discussions about race–that’s why I think so many people there are really surprised and defensive when they’re called out for racist actions. (A reporter who never met Meghan called her uppity on TV and was surprised he got flak for it.)
Too bad Meghan didn’t marry into another European royal family instead–she might have fared better in Scandinavia?? (Not that there isn’t racism there, but their royal families are much more low-key, and have a much smaller profile).
Great points @Lanne. press like the Sun said that the Queen & Kate should have been on the cover of an issue that was celebrating forces for change but at the same time praise the Queen for being a stabilising force who stays in her lane (she def has meddled in her time but anyway). So how can she be heralded by Meghan as a force for change too? They would have criticised Meghan if she had included a royal especially as one of their criticisms is that they felt she was trying to push social change which they stated wasn’t her role as a royal.
Anyway vogue was just an example of a project that was maligned but same applies to eg the cookbook- would the Telegraph have suggested it was funding terrorism if the Queen had said at launch it was a great cookbook supporting the Grenfell community hit by tragedy and a celebration of London’s diversity? I doubt it.
What LANNE said. 👍🏾
If memory serves, the fury was over the Queen’s absolute silence about the death and her initial refusal to have a state funeral. The boys were then forced into the public to quell the growing public anger.
True, but based on the excerpt from the book, it does not seem that Earl Spencer wanted a state funeral. Would love more strong tea on all of this incident.
So then it’s the adults’ (the Queen and Charles) responsibility to protect their kids from the press. Come out and say, they are grieving their mother, you vile tw*ts, and we will protect them so that they can grieve in private like they deserve. Adults are supposed to protect their children, not feed them to the press.
Didn’t TQ make a statement after W&K’s marriage to leave them alone to start their marriage in peace? So why couldn’t she do that for William and Harry after their mom died?
The press didn’t demand that the royal family trot out children to do the heavy lifting in terms of leading the public mourning. They wondered where the QUEEN was, why she wasn’t in public, why she wasn’t taking the lead on this, as the monarch. The Queen decided to deal with that particular situation by putting the boys in the public eye. She didn’t need to. All she had to do was show herself, be seen interacting with the people who she is the monarch of.
What essentially happened here was that this huge, important, 900+ year old institution, demanded that two young, recently motherless, grieving boys had to do what the monarch was too much of a coward to do, and moreover, thought herself as above doing.
There were two failures at work here. The first is the Queens failure to connect with her subjects when they are grieving and in shock. She treats every negative emotion like it’s a disgusting inconvenience. She treats vulnerability like a disease, and she always has, and she has no respect for anyone she finds is expressing their emotions too openly. The second was her failure to take accountability for that first failure, and behaving like a rank coward in the process. She used her grandsons as shields to protect the criticism she KNEW she deserved. She also used them to do the emotional labour she was supposed to do, as the fucking monarch of the country.
The Queen should have walked behind that casket for the better part of a mile. The Queen should have been out there that Friday, talking to mourners, sharing in their grief, holding space with them. The way she behaved and continued to behave, trotting out her grieving grandkids to do the work to they were not equipped to do, the work that was HER duty, because she knew she had failed her subjects by demonstrating such open contempt for their sorrow all bc she didn’t agree with how they were expressing it, or that they were expressing it at all, and was awful.
I don’t blame Earl Spencer for this at all. Frankly, I see his point of view. In his eyes, this was an institution that essentially chewed up and threw his sister out, and by extension, the Spencers as well. She was inconvenient and unwanted by them in life, but now that she’s dead, and now that her memory is malleable to their whims more than Diana was when she was alive, they suddenly want everything to do with her. Yes, her brother treated her poorly too, but in that moment of his own grief, to be asked to play along with the royal family and give them an opportunity to shore up their clout points. Yeah. He had every right to be mad.
Same thing with the Aberfan disaster. She waited a WEEK…w/out a word to her “subjects” or any sympathies to the families of 144 DEAD (28 adults, 116 children, a whole school!). She is ICE COLD. The ONLY things she cares about are her snippy dogs and her horses. Oh, and Pedo.
Harry and William were used by the Royal Family to pacify the angry crowds.
Yes they were. This is what this family does best, use others to protect themselves and their positions. The British people wanted a response from the queen because they needed her to acknowledged that Princess Diana mattered, because she mattered to them. The queen and Charles and Phillip could have taken that walk they could have gone out to the crowds, but instead they used those boys as a shield to calm Britain/Press and also keep from doing what they didn’t want to do. It’s the same way they used H/M to protect from any scrutiny at the BRF and continue to use them whenever the press becomes too intrusive.
I remember at the time watching William and Harry being made to do a walkabout outside the gates of Kensington Palace and being stunned. How can you make a 12 year old and 15 year old who lost their mother shake hands with crying strangers and comfort them. I’m around their age and I couldn’t imagine being made to do something like that. I don’t see those pictures used when people talk about this maybe because it’s so distasteful that the media has chosen to ignore them?
At the time, the procession didn’t make as strong an impact on me because there was a little more distance from the public and the boys had three adults with them, but now I can see so clearly how they used those kids to shield the monarchy from criticism. Betty did an about turn when her popularity was affected and she and Charles used two kids as their shield. Why couldn’t the Queen go outside? How cowardly to send a twelve year old instead.
And then Harry was sent back to his boarding school and no one was allowed to mention his mother to him. William was at least by Windsor Castle and met weekly with the Queen. At the time they claimed the boys received grief counselling but this seems to not be true?
Yeah, that’s what I remember more than the procession. I just wanted to scream at those people hanging outside the gates and laying their grief over a woman they never met on two little boys who lost their mother. I was just appalled.
I remember my mother was crying when the news showed little Harry holding onto his dad’s hand while looking at the flowers. I’m tearing up now remembering it. He needed his dad for comfort but his dad needed him for image. 🙁
I think she was crying out of disgust. Like, Why are those boys out there?
And William having to thank the crowds sounding much older than the 15 year old heartbroken kid that he was. Guh.
By all reputable accounts it really was Blair and his spinmaster/PR guru Alastair Campbell that was watching the public’s anger explode toward the Queen. (In Blair’s case, with concern and in Campbell’s case, with glee.) The anger was formented by the same media that had that tormented Diana with the Queen’s help and approval. And that’s the queen in a nutshell: even when her “instincts” like keeping the boys out of London are “right”, the fact that she created and helped along the conditions in the first place ruins the idea she has the high road. There was also absolutely nothing preventing her and Charles from going back and forth. The Palace had not even made a statement for days. It was not because of concerns for the boys. It was simply bc Diana was divorced.
“There was also absolutely nothing preventing her and Charles from going back and forth. The Palace had not even made a statement for days. It was not because of concerns for the boys. It was simply bc Diana was divorced.”
Thank you! She could have gone to London days earlier. She did not need to stay holed up like she did. She could have made a small statement, done a tiny televised segment, whatever it was, and it would have disarmed the press and the public.
They used William and Harry then, and they kept using them as an excuse for their own inaction in the years since.
And like many other commentaries are saying here, it was horrific at the time. I remember seeing it live on television and being around their age and Harry looked so young and sad, and the cameras were zooming in on that “mummy” note he left on the flowers on the hearse. The family used them as shields.
That mummy note should have been kept private and put in the casket. WTF. That was such a betrayal of a brokenhearted young boy. It still infuriates me. Which one of those animals saw that envelope and had the “ah-ha” moment of displaying it to the entire world? Truly an awful moment in an awful day.
+1000 Guestwho!
Whenever I think about Harry on that walk, I’m happy all over again that he left. They were CHILDREN!
Charles Spencer acting like he wasn’t the one also saying horrible things about his sister just the week before.
My take away from this is that none of the adults involved (press included) did what was best for the children. It’s heartbreaking and clearly so damaging. I’m so glad Harry got out.
I will never ever get over this decision to make these 2 boys do this. And yah, this definitely has Prince Philip, HM & Prince Charles stiff upper lip stamped all over it. Revolting!
This is the reason William has so much good will from the British people. They remember that little boy walking behind his mother’s coffin. The media is working overtime to turn the British people against Harry, but because of that same image it’s nearly impossible to do this, it’s why they mainly focus on Meghan.
It’s horrible, I can’t imagine myself being in a toxic family like this for so many years.
Harry really did a good decision at walking out of this family with Meghan.
I remember at the time being so heartbroken over Diana and I thought the boys chose to walk as a way to honor their mother. I remember thinking how brave they were. The little card with “Mummy” on it. I see now that they were forced. How truly horrible.
They were so afraid the crowd would yell and shame Charles in the procession that he had to be protected by the presence of the newly motherless boys. Charles really is a coward. If he was that afraid of being called out in public the choice should have been to ride to the funeral in a royal vehicle, not to use your two sons as sympathy shields.
The Queen was criticized for not lowering the flag at BP for Diana. The public wanted some sign from the palace that something tragic had happened, but the Queen was all, nope! No flag when I am not in residence; that isn’t protocol! The utter coldness of the Royals in the face of public grief turned so many people against the Queen and the institution. It’s the reason why William is coddled today. The public clearly did not want to support an institution that was so unfeeling, so the Queen and Charles have to look like they are going soft on William. And, that’s why we have the rage monster and Kate and Carole. The public reaction post-funeral scared the sh** out of the royals and to this day they do not want to repeat that.
then they better pray nothing happens to the Sussexes. Charles really should be paying their security–I still hope he is doing so behind the scenes. The RF owe the sussexes that, at least.
I was horrified then and am still horrified when I see those two children having to go through one of the worst days of their lives in public. That walk is child-abuse, pure and simple. There’s a lot of blame to go around, but I have to say that I was disgusted by the British people when Diana died. Charles, William and Harry went outside Buckingham Palace to look at the massive flower display. They went and greeted some of the people out there and it was horrible. The people grabbed and groped those children like they were animals in a petting zoo. Just the memory of it makes me sick.
I don’t like William very much and I don’t think I ever will. But after what he experienced those horrible days and considering the family he comes from, did he have any choice but to turn into a monster. Harry is the lucky one; he got out.
I agree-I thought it was sick. Who grabs and gropes at a grieving child? Watching from the US, a year after I came home from St Andrews, I was also creeped out by the whole thing. I remember thinking that the British as a group were seriously emotionally stunted. Those boys should have been left in Balmoral, and the adults should have gone out and met the crowd. I’m so glad that Harry spoke up about his anger later on. If I recall, the word was that they boys had chosen to walk, as someone else has said here. What a terrible thing to do–to make kids walk in a funeral in front of the whole world, and then lie about it.
I feel sympathy for the 15-year-old William but have little patience for the adult version. I remember seeing the boys looking at the mementos and greeting the crowd: people were trying to grab at both of them, seemingly wanting these young boys to comfort THEM. Harry just looked shell-shocked and clung to Charles for dear life. Looking back on how Diana’s funeral (and how she was treated in general), I have to wonder why Carole Middleton would raise her daughter to aspire for that world. I know press was different then and I’m not sure what was reported, but still…
Definitely, the boys should have been at the Funeral. Charles was supposedly scared for his life, the boys being there stopped the boos but I understand there were some. They should not have walked behind the coffin. But I think it would have been comforting to them to hear prayers at the Church later in the morning of her death. The Queen apparently did not want Diana’s name mentioned. Never heard of anything so cold.
The BRF obviously wanted the boys out in public for their own benefit but the public also wanted/demanded the same thing. They also wanted the boys out when they should have been allowed to grieve privately and not grieve for the public/BRF consumption.
No-one protected them. At all.
No wonder Harry wants to raise Archie differently. Unfortunately, I think we’re already seeing the Cambridge position on this issue. Those kids will be trotted out as human shields for William. No surprise, it’s what William knows. And he can justify it by saying “I went through it, so it’s okay for them.” And so the world turns…
I found it rather tacky for William to tell the story of how George wanted him to turn off the TV because the show talked about extinction of animals. That sort of thing should not be blasted, give the child some privacy. Yet William lets George watch him kill birds.
Just noticed looking at these old pictures that prince William looks a lot like Prince Phillip.
Harry looks more like Philip now. I think he’s more a Mountbatten than a Windsor.
well Jackie Kennedy walked nearly a mile for her husband’s funeral. I’m sure if her children were older they would have walked with her.
I understand not having to comfort the British public, but I feel like it’s respectful to walk behind the casket.
I’m assuming that was Jackie’s choice.
This was different because this is literally the boys being trotted out as cover for the royal family’s failings and as a shield for Charles, who was not married to Diana at the time of her death.
The boys have said repeatedly that it wasn’t really their choice, but they were forced to put their grief on display for the world.
I don’t think Diana would have found it respectful, to be honest.
Yes, the immediate family usually follows behind the casket. My family did for my dad’s funeral. I was only 18 and I will never get the image out of my mind of just staring at his coffin in the hearse in front of us for the drive from the funeral home to the church to the cemetery. But I was able to do that alone with my immediate family in the privacy of a car where I could grieve openly and be held by my mother.
Now imagine knowing that your family forced you to do this to make themselves look good.
And that you couldn’t cry or hold on to someone you love, but were expected to stoically parade yourself for huge crowds of strangers. They weren’t Jackie Kennedy. They were just children who suddenly lost their mom. Jackie’s kids weren’t older and neither were William nor Harry.
Jackie would have never allowed Caroline and John to walk behind their father’s casket; she fiercely shielded and protected her children from the media and the public. I believe that Diana would have been horrified at the thought as well. I’m a mom and I’m horrified by it and would not force my children to participate in such a spectacle.
I will say that if the William and Harry had chosen to participate, or if any thought or support for their mental well being and deep grief had been provided by any of the legion of adults tasked with shepherding them through the worst catastrophe in their young lives, they probably wouldn’t have been so damaged by this event, but they were roundly failed by everyone. Their emotionless grandparents, worried about “protocol” and “optics”, their selfish father, worried about how he would be blamed and shamed, and the courtiers trying to placate the angry masses at their expense.
Damaged people will raise more damaged people unless they do the difficult work of undoing their damage. Harry did that as an adult, on his own. None of the rest of them will even acknowledge an issue, so they are doomed to repeat this terrible cycle. They may have money, jewels, beautiful homes, and a staff of hundreds, but they are impoverished in everything that matters.
Jackie Kennedy stage-managed that whole funeral; watch her episode of ‘First Ladies’ on CNN and you’ll see. She created the myth of ‘Camelot’ which was completely untrue. Jackie Kennedy knew exactly what she was doing when she walked behind her husband’s coffin. But she was an adult and it was her choice and she had a political agenda. William and Harry were children and EVERYBODY had an agenda surrounding Diana’s death BUT them. They were just children grieving their mother and deserved better treatment from the people who claimed to love them, including the British people.
Jackie’s situation was completely different. Part of the pageantry was her bravery in being out in the open. People would not have appreciated her putting her children at risk after their father was just assassinated after being out in the open. There’s a reason the president now travels in an armored vehicle. She wasn’t being blamed for JFK’s death so there was no fear of boos or derision from the crowd. There’s also an unwritten rule in the US that you leave the minor children of prominent figures alone, especially the president’s children. They aren’t heirs to the presidency and American’s don’t clamor to see them. Once they leave home and go off to university there may be a story here and there about a party, but they never get much traction. Chelsea was something of an exception, but she was slowly choosing a public path of her own volition.
This family will survive a messy PR war at any cost, including the mental health of two teenage boys being made to walk behind their mother’s coffin through the streets of London and on view to billions of viewers worldwide. Remember, King George V had the government of the time rescind the invitation of asylum to the Tsar of Russia and his family because he had fears it would put the monarch in danger in the UK. The firm is a ruthless machine.
All those boys wanted to do was cry in private and be held by those who loved them, I am sure of it. And they forced these children to parade themselves for the crowds. Behind their dead mother.
This family is bizarre and at many times, vile.
Seeing those photos, and the way they treat Harry and his wife, makes me so angry. Especially William, he should know better and done better. Wonder how William was shaped into what he is today since that funeral.
I was 8 when Diana died. My mom had all the coverage on when it happened. I have the same feeling now that I did when I was 8 watching that funeral. I told my mom that I think Harry doesn’t want to be royal anymore. She reminded me of that when he left the royal family this year. I do believe that on a subconscious level at the very least that it was when 12 year old Harry had to walk behind his mother’s casket his mind began forming an escape plan away from the royal family. It would take 23 years for that plan to come to fruition but he did. I think Kaiser is right about what was said. Not that Earl Spencer has any room to talk about scumbag maneuvers but I’m glad he stuck up for them.
The world watched, in real time, two boys’ mental and emotional unraveling begin on that day.
Diana always accepted that her children were royals, but she tried her hardest to not let that define them. I think Harry remembers that, and has always made that a priority in his life. William is his father’s son, and Charles is a venal, bean-counting, emotionally constipated douche. The gushing praise he got for his “standing in for dad” routine for Meghan at her wedding scores ZERO points with me; Charles never does anything unless it directly benefits Charles.
How times change. Harry was always made out to be the funny-looking simpleton outlier, while William was the gallant “future of the monarchy” image of his mother. Meanwhile, Harry turned out to truly embody the notion of a “prince,” and Will looks like a cranky Wallace and Grommet character come to life.
Yes I think that Charles taking Meghan down the aisle was for Charles not Meghan. HE never followed up nor helped his daughter in law against the nastiness in the media. He should have helped her out, even if he had to lend Harry and Meghan one of his PR people.
I really liked Charles that day. I wasn’t a huge Diana fan so I didn’t hate him as much as many did. And I thought he stepped up to help a young woman who had been betrayed by her own father. So his silence was even more cowardly because he knew what Meghan had been through. I think he liked Meghan a lot, he just didn’t have the guts to stand up to the media, the racists and the ‘grey men’. Shame on him.