Diana’s sons share memories of her in HBO documentary
The last time Prince William and Prince Harry are known to have spent time hanging out with their mother Diana, Princess of Wales, was in July 1997 — and in the company of her brand new boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, the playboy son of controversial business tycoon Mohamed Al Fayed.
The boys, then 15 and 12, were invited to accompany their mother on vacation at the Al Fayed family villa in St. Tropez.
Over the next month, the young princes and their mother went their separate ways, as children of separated and divorced parents often do.
She had her humanitarian work, but would also go off yachting with Fayed in late August. The boys headed to the royal family retreat in Balmoral, Scotland, to spend time with their father, Prince Charles, and grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II.
The boys were due to meet up with their mother on Aug. 31. Tragically, that’s the day she died in a car crash in Paris, alongside Fayed. She was 36.
Prince William, now 35, and Prince Harry, 32, open up their memories of their famous mother in the new documentary. “Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy,” which premiered earlier this week on HBO and repeats though August on the cable network. (It’s also streaming on HBO Now, HBO Go and other outlets.)
In addition to revealing that they hadn’t seen their mother for a month before she died, they also share their regret for keeping their last phone call with her — on the day she died — so short.
Diana was presumably calling from her vacation with Fayed, and reached them at Balmoral. But they were eager to get back to hanging out with their cousins.
“If I’d known that that was the last time I was going to speak to my mother the things that I would — the things I would have said to her,” Harry says in the documentary.
Their parents, Diana and Charles, the heir to the British throne, divorced in August 1996 after four years of separation and a onceseeming fairytale marriage that went terribly wrong. After the divorce, the boys had to divide their time between parents.
“There was the point where our parents split, and . . . we never saw our mother enough or we never saw our father enough,” Harry says in the documentary. “There was a lot of traveling and
lot of fights on the back seat with my brother — which I would win.
“There was all that to contend with,” he added. “And — I don’t pretend we’re the only people to have to deal with that, but it was an interesting way of growing up.”
The documentary features other candid conversations with Diana’s friends, family and admirers.
In the summer of 1997, Diana was said to have been starting “a new life,” People reported in 2015. However, that new life wasn’t without more heartbreak, according to biographer Judy Wade, the author “Diana: The Intimate Portrait.”
Her relationship with distinguished Pakistani surgeon and cardiologist Hasnat Khan, a man many believed was the love of her life, hit a rough patch in July, Wade said. He didn’t want to be involved with such a world-famous woman.
“She had wanted to marry him,” says Wade. “She had this vision that together they could bridge East and West, crossing creeds and continents. They could save lives and make it a better world.”
Looking to get her mind off Khan, Diana accepted an invitation from Al Fayed, the then-owner of the department store Harrods, to vacation at St. Tropez with her sons. Dodi Fayed, described as a minor film producer, also turned up, and Diana and Dodi began what was characterized as a “discreet romance.”
After St. Tropez, the boys headed to Scotland, and Diana went on her last humanitarian mission, to Bosnia to raise awareness about the brutality of landmines.
In the documentary, Harry talks to two landmine victims, Zarko Peric and Malic Bradaric, about their memories of his mother. That’s when he reveals he hadn’t seen her for several weeks.
“You guys were the almost the last people to see my mother,” Harry tells them in the documentary. “Well, you saw my mother more recently than I did, I guess.”