Diana’s boys do their mother proud
In giving her sons the upbringing she so painfully missed out on, Diana set the royals on a new path
IT’S an image Diana held in her mind’s eye for years – the sight of Prince Charles, then just five years old, solemnly shaking his mother’s hand upon her return to England in 1954 after a three-month visit to Australia and New Zealand. Diana watched those flickering black and white images on TV documentaries about the Royal Family and vowed that she would never raise her own children in such a distant manner.
When William and Harry were born she was determined that, as she told me, “they weren’t hidden upstairs with the governess”.
She was intent on being a hands-on mother, spending as much quality time with them as her royal duties allowed.
It even became a source of irritation inside the Royal Family. During a visit to Balmoral, Diana was so often with her boys that the Queen snapped: “Doesn’t she know there are millions of nannies here?”
Her attitude to motherhood was not just conditioned by what she described as the “unnatural” world of the Royal Family, but her own fractured childhood, which was stained by the acrimonious divorce between her father, Earl Spencer, and mother, Frances Shand Kydd.
Diana wanted her own children to be raised with love, devotion and care.
Her boys still remember that overwhelming affection. “She smothered us in love,” Harry recalled for a TV documentary marking the 20th anniversary of her death.
William said: “She was very informal and really enjoyed the laughter and the fun. She understood that there was a real life outside of palace walls.”
At the same time she realised instinctively that her role was much more than a loving mother.
Her function was to guide and groom her boys for their destiny, some would say doom, on the public stage.
“Harry is a back up, in the nicest possible way,” she told me. So she mixed the fun stuff – trips to burger bars, theme parks and activity centres – with visits to the homeless and hospitals.
She was particularly impressed by the way William, a rather solemn, suspicious boy compared to his happy-go-lucky younger brother, dealt with sensitive social situations.
This instinctive empathy with others, a quality which drew people to Diana, is a quality both William and Harry have inherited.
Tragically it was her devotion to her children that took her on the first steps to that deadly underpass in Paris.
As the boys got older it was clear that life at Kensington Palace during their school holidays was constraining.
They enjoyed the great outdoors – especially rough shooting. It was such a passion for the gun-toting youngsters that Diana dubbed them “the killer Wales”.
That fatal summer of 1997 she was frantically trying to find somewhere in the country that would keep her boys entertained.
In stepped Mohamed al-Fayed with his villa in St Tropez, jet skis, diving gear and hot and cold running yachts. Everything a young prince could desire.
Typically her last conversation that summer was with William, who was worried about his younger brother. He had become increasingly protective not just of his brother but his mother too.
It is a quality he has demonstrated in his adult life, particularly with Catherine and media intrusion, and, more intimately, advising Harry as he has faced his inner demons caused by his profound sense of loss following the death of his mother.
There is little doubt that she would be immensely proud of the way her sons have turned out, both young men striving to make a success of being normal, natural and emotionally connected in a white-gloved, stand back world of red carpets, bowing, scraping and make believe.