How Old Were Prince William and Harry When Diana Died?
Prince William and Prince Harry's Young Ages When Princess Diana Died Are Still Shocking
When Princess Diana died on 31 Aug., 1997, she left behind two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. William and Harry were 15 and 12, respectively, at the time and wrapping up their summer with their grandmother Queen Elizabeth II — who died on 8 Sept., 2022, at age 96 — at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. On the 20th anniversary of her death in 2017, William said he still felt the shock of the tragedy.
"The shock is the biggest thing," he shared in a BBC documentary. "I still have shock within me. You know, 20 years later. People go 'shock can't last that long' but it does. You never get over it. It's such an unbelievably big moment in your life that it never leaves you, you just learn to deal with it."
Ahead of the release of his memoir, "Spare," Harry sat down with Anderson Cooper on "60 Minutes" to talk about the book and his life and revealed that as a child and young adult, he believed Diana faked her own death to escape the media. "I just refused to accept that she was — she was gone. Part of, you know, she would never do this to us, but also part of, maybe this is all part of a plan," he said, explaining that he thought one day she would call her children to come join her wherever she was. "I had huge amounts of hope," he said. At 23, he was able to see the police reports from her death and truly accepted for the first time that she was gone.
In 2017, William and Harry set up a memorial at Buckingham Palace to honour their mother's 20th anniversary. They selected most of the items for the display, which included a pair of Diana's beloved ballet shoes, a personalised school trunk, her old Kensington Palace desk, and a case full of her cassettes featuring albums by Diana Ross, Elton John, and George Michael. William and Harry also released a handful of sweet photographs from Diana's personal photo album, which were featured in their documentary for ITV, "Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy."
Now, 25 years later, recollections of Diana still linger, though according to Harry's Netflix docuseries, "Harry & Meghan," he doesn't have many "early memories" of her. "The majority of my memories are being swarmed by paparazzi," he says in the docuseries. "Rarely would we have a holiday without someone with a camera jumping out of a bush. Within the family, the system, the advice is always 'don't react, don't feed into it.'"
Harry also honoured his mother by saying her spirit continues to influence him today. "[The] difference between making decisions with your head or your heart. My mom certainly made most of her decisions, if not all of them, from her heart," Harry adds in the documentary. "And I am my mother's son."
