Prince William
The royal dad talks ongoing grief over his mother’s death
NEARLY 20 YEARS AFTER HIS MOTHER Princess Diana’s shock death, Prince William has begun to publicly dissect the effect it had on his life and the sadness he still carries. Last month, Prince Harry revealed he needed therapy to process his grief and now William has shared his emotional baggage with GQ magazine. “I would like to have had her advice,” he said. “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.”
Still, William, 34—he also posed for a series of intimate family portraits with his wife, Kate, 35, and their kids, Prince George, 3, and Princess Charlotte, 2—conceded he is finally “in a better place” about losing his mother when he was 15 years old: “I can talk about her more openly, I can talk about her more honestly and I can remember her better.”
The prince told GQ that working with Harry and Kate on Heads Together, their mental-health campaign, brought back his teenage struggles and how he finds Diana’s loss “difficult” even now. “It is not like most people’s grief because everyone else knows about it, everyone knows the story,” he said. “It is a different situation for most people who lose someone they love, it can be hidden away or they can choose if they want to share their story.”
One way William finds strength? His family. “Stability at home is so important to me,” he said. “I want to bring up my children in a happy, stable, secure world and that is so important to both of us as parents.” That means he wants George “to grow up in a living environment, I don’t want him growing up behind palace walls, he has to be out there. The media make it harder but I will fight for them to have a normal life.”