William is the living embodiment of Diana

When our daughter was born, we hesitated a few days before deciding to name her after Himself ’s late mother, the grandmother she would never know. There was poignancy in that choice, certainly, but there was also hope. A life that had been tragically cut short would continue, in some way, through this tiny new person who would carry both her grandmother’s splendid name and her greygreen eyes.

In the years since, as the little girl grew up to play and sing the same showtunes her grandmother loved to sing and play, there have been moments when I have thought: “If only the two Evelines could have 10 minutes together at the piano. What joy they would take in each other.” I know Himself feels that loss a thousandfold. Someone’s absence can be as meaningful to a life as their presence. Even more so perhaps.

Look at Prince William. Almost 20 years after the death of his mother, Diana, he tells GQ magazine: “I would like to have had her advice. I would love her to have met Catherine and to have seen the children grow up. It makes me sad that she won’t, that they will never know her.”

William’s mother was a natural with children. It’s easy to imagine the besotted granny she would have been to Prince George and Princess Charlotte.

Two decades on, the Prince says he can finally talk about his mother “more openly, and I can remember her better… I still find it difficult, because at the time it was so raw. It’s not like most people’s grief because everyone else knows about it.”

Following Prince Harry’s revelations to Bryony Gordon about the “chaos” and depression he experienced following his mother’s dreadful death, it’s hard not to see the decision to make Diana’s sons

walk alongside her coffin as utterly brutal. William is far too well-mannered to say so. It would never have happened if their mother had been there to protect them.

William is fiercely protective of his children. Preferring to live as normal life as possible, he has attracted criticism for not plunging fully into royal duties. Undoubtedly, he can be tricky. A police officer tells me that William drives his protection team mad, giving them the slip as he roars off on his motorbike on the journey from his home in Norfolk to work in Cambridgeshire. He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t have mixed feelings about a royal role inextricably linked with the greatest pain he has ever known.

In Prince William’s willingness to speak out against a “stiff upper lip” culture, in his support for mental health charities, in his choice of a nonaristocratic wife, in his wish to be a present and loving father, he is every inch his mother’s son. Through him, George and Charlotte will know the grandmother they never met. William is her living legacy.