‘After the split we were bounced between them’
THE devastating impact of Charles and Diana’s toxic marital breakdown on their sons was laid bare by Prince Harry in the interviews.
The boys longed to spend more time with both of their parents and were left feeling as if they were ‘bouncing between the two of them’, he admits in the ITV documentary.
Harry recalls: ‘There was the point where our parents split and… we never saw our mother enough or we never saw our father enough. There was a lot of travelling and a lot of fights on the back seat with my brother – which I would win. There was all that to contend with. And I– I don’t pretend we’re the only people to have to deal with that, but it was an interesting way of growing up.’
On screen, Harry laughs as he remembers the squabbles while in transit between their warring parents, but the story lays bare the emotional toll of the divorce.
The Prince and Princess of Wales separated in December 1992 after 11 years of marriage.
The relationship was riven with bitterness, notably over the fact that, in 1986, Charles had resumed his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles.
The couple would divide their households, with Diana at Kensington Palace and Prince Charles living between Highgrove and Clarence House. They were to share the parenting of William and Harry. But the day-to-day arrangements left the boys, then aged 10 and eight, yearning to see more of their father and mother.
Speaking about Diana, William tells the programme: ‘We felt incredibly loved, Harry and I.’