William, Harry walk together behind loved one’s coffin, again

LONDON (Reuters) – Princes William and Harry walked side by side behind their grandmother Queen Elizabeth’s coffin on Wednesday, a scene reminiscent of when, as boys 25 years ago, they followed their mother Princess Diana’s casket in the glare of global media.

The brothers, whose relationship has become strained in recent years, were taking part in a solemn procession from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall, where the queen’s body will lie in state for four days until her funeral on Monday.

Their father King Charles was just in front of them with the late queen’s other children. Charles’ wife Camilla, the Queen Consort, William’s wife Kate, Princess of Wales, and Harry’s wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, traveled to the hall by car.

In 1997, after Diana was killed aged 36 in a car crash in Paris, William and Harry, aged 15 and 12, walked through central London in her funeral cortege, one of the defining images of their lives.

While the circumstances are very different now, the queen having died peacefully aged 96 at her Scottish home, there are similarities – the emotion, the solemn pageantry, and the sense of a momentous event unfolding in front of crowds and cameras.

Both brothers have spoken in the past of the lasting trauma they endured after their mother’s death and that long, grueling walk, during which they maintained a stoical facade despite the grief and turmoil they were feeling.

”It was like I was outside my body, just walking along, doing what was expected of me, showing one tenth of the emotion that everyone was showing,” Harry said in a 2021 TV documentary series, revealing that he had later used alcohol and drugs to numb the pain.

William said in 2017 that the shock of Diana’s death still lingered within him.

”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,” he said in a TV program.

The brothers were close for many years after Diana’s death, but their lives have taken different turns in recent years.

William, who dedicates himself full-time to his royal duties, is now next in line to the throne. Harry lives in the United States, having stepped away from his own royal duties since 2020.