Let’s forget the silly rumors for a second, shall we?
Ignore, at least for a few minutes, talk of Prince William being named King or Prince Harry getting engaged to Meghan Markle.
Let’s focus instead of something far more real and serious: The death of Princess Diana.
The Royal Studs sat down for an interview with BBC One as a part of the upcoming documentary Diana, 7 Days, which commemorates the 20th anniversary of this icon’s tragic death on August 31, 1997.
About a month ago, for a different TV special, her sons opened up about their final conversation with their beloved mother.
In Diana, 7 Days, they think back to learning about her death for the first time.
“One of the hardest things for a parent to have to do is to tell your children that your other parent has died. How you deal with that, I don’t know,” Harry says in a released clip from the program, referring to his father, Prince Charles.
It was Charles who told his kids that Diana died in a car crash after he vehicle was chased down by members of the paparazzi.
“[Our dad] was there for us – he was the one out of two left, and he tried to do his best and to make sure that we were protected and looked after,” Harry adds.
“But he was going through the same grieving process as well.”
At the time of Diana’s death, William was just 15 years old and Harry was 12.
The kids were on vacation with their father and grandparents at the family’s Balmoral Estate in Scotland when the accident took place.
“At the time, my grandmother [Queen Elizabeth] wanted to protect her two grandsons and my father as well,” says William, adding:
“Our grandmother deliberately removed the newspapers and things like that so there was nothing in the house to read.
“We didn’t know what was going on. Back then there were no smart phones and things like that, so you couldn’t get your news.
“Thankfully, we had the privacy to mourn and to try to collect our thoughts and have that space away from everybody.
“We had no idea the reaction to her death would be quite so huge.”
Diana was killed in a car accident as she drove through the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris while being chased by the so-called “press.”
It was later determined that her driver at the time was drunk.
“One of the hardest things to come to terms with is the fact that the people who chased her into the tunnel were the same people who were taking photographs of her while she was still dying in the backseat of her car,” Harry says in the documentary teaser below.
“William and I know that. We’ve been told that numerous times by people that know that was the case.”
He continues:
“She had quite a severe head injury, but she was very much alive on the backseat, and those people that caused the accident, instead of helping, were taking photographs of her dying on the back seat.
“And then those photographs made their way back to news desks in this country.”
That’s awful.
William, meanwhile, has speaks in the special about how herefused to let his mother’s death “break” him.
“When you have something so traumatic as the death of you mother at 15 – which sadly many people have experienced, and no one wants to experience – it will either make or break you. And I wouldn’t let it break me,” William says.
“I wanted her to be proud of the person I would become…
“I didn’t want her worried, or her legacy to be that William or Harry were completely and utterly devastated by it, and that all the hard work and all love and all the energy she put into us when we were younger would go to waste.”
Diana, 7 Days airs Sunday at 6:30 p.m. EST.