Prince William lashed out after Diana admitted infidelity, reports say
Two years before Princess Diana died in a car accident in Paris in 1997, a then-13-year- old Prince William had to face the fact that his beloved mother wasn’t perfect.
This painful reckoning came in the most public way possible: A globally televised BBC interview in which Diana talked about her misery in the royal family and her unhappy marriage to his father, Prince Charles. “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” Diana famously said, referring to Charles’ ongoing affair with Camilla Parker- Bowles, who now is his wife.
What stung most for William was his mother’s revelation that she, too, had been unfaithful, with former British cavalry officer James Hewitt, royal biographer Robert Lacey wrote in his new book “Battle of Brothers.”
The bombshell interview, with journalist Martin Bashir, left Prince William distraught and in tears, embarrassed in front of his schoolmates and fiercely angry at his mother. Mother and son had a major falling-out, according to both Lacey and a new report by Vanity Fair.
“William was absolutely livid,” Simone Simmons, a close friend of the late princess, told Vanity Fair.
Reports about William’s reactions come as the BBC faces a crisis over whether it knew about allegations that Bashir lied and committed subterfuge to persuade Diana to talk to him, Vanity Fair said. The BBC has vowed to carry out a new “robust and independent investigation” into how the interview came about.
The young prince was at Eton College, a boarding school for boys ages 13-18, when the interview aired, and he watched it in his headmaster’s study. “When William’s housemaster returned to his study, he found the prince slumped on the sofa, his eyes red with tears,” Lacey wrote.
“People at school were calling her all sorts of names,” Simmons said. “The weekend after it (aired), they had a big row at Kensington Palace. William was furious and Diana was distraught. I was there the day after she spoke to him, and Diana was in a terrible state.”
William eventually forgave his mother before she died, Simmons told Vanity Fair.