Charles didn’t hug Prince Harry after he found out Diana died in a car crash: memoir

“Pa didn’t hug me. He did not know how to show emotions in ordinary circumstances; how could he be expected to show them in such a crisis?” The Duke of Sussex, 38, writes in his new memoir: Spareinforms New York Post.

“His hand fell on my knee again and he said, ‘Everything will be fine. It was a lot for him. Fatherly, encouraging, kind. And this is very untrue.

Harry goes on to detail a conversation he had with then-Prince Charles following his mother’s death in 1997. At the time of her death, he was only 12 years old.

“[Dad] sat on the edge of the bed. He put his hand on my knee. “Dear boy, my mother was in a car accident,” Harry recalls in his memoir.

“I remember I thought: Accident… Good. But is she all right? Yes? I distinctly remember the thought flashing through my mind. And I remember patiently waiting for my dad to confirm that my mom was really all right. And I remember he didn’t.”

Harry explains that he then began to feel an “inward shift” as he realized what was coming next.

“I began to silently beg Pa, or God, or both: no, no, no,” he writes.

The Duke of Sussex also detailed how King Charles, 74, told him of the medical “complications” and “head injury” Princess Diana suffered in a car accident in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris.

“Mommy was very badly injured and taken to the hospital, dear boy,” Charles said, according to Harry. “He used to call me ‘nice boy’ but now he says it quite often. His voice was soft. It looks like he was in shock.”

Harry reveals that he still believed that the doctors could somehow “fix her head” and that he would be able to see her “at the latest in the evening”.

“They tried, dear boy. I’m afraid she didn’t survive,” Harry recalls his father telling him. “These phrases remain in my memory like darts on a board. He really said so, I know for sure. She didn’t have time. And then everything seemed to stop.”

Harry also remembers breaking down at his mother’s funeral at Westminster Abbey on September 6, 1997.

“My body shook, my chin dropped, and I began to sob uncontrollably into my hands. I was ashamed that I violated the family ideal, but I could no longer contain it, ”he writes.

Despite attending the funeral and learning of the “official” events of the accident, Harry became convinced that his mother had “faked the accident” to escape her “miserable” life in the spotlight.

Harry was later asked to write a “last” letter to his mother. He says that this is the moment when he really realized that she was gone for good.

“I wanted to dig deeper, to tell my mother everything that weighs on my heart, especially the regret that we last spoke on the phone,” he writes. “She called early in the evening, the night of the crash, but I was running around with Willie and my cousins ​​and didn’t want to stop playing.

“So I was brief with her. I was itching to get back to my games, so I hung up on my mom,” he continues. “I’m sorry I didn’t apologize for that. I wish I could find words to describe how much I love her. I didn’t know the search would take decades.”

AT Sparewhich hits Australian bookshelves on Wednesday, Harry details his strained relationship with his brother, Prince William, about living as a “spare” to an “heir”, and Charles jokes about who his “real” father is. among many other stories.

This article originally appeared in New York Post and reproduced with permission