How Diana kept her sons close the night she died
When Diana’s life was tragically cut short in August 1997, she hadn’t seen her boys in nearly a month - but that doesn’t mean they were far from her thoughts.
She was due to meet up with William and Harry, who were 15 and 12 at the time, in London in the following days, and she was carrying a special reminder of them with her the night she died.
When investigators emptied Diana’s purse, they found a treasured photo of her sons.
By the time Charles arrived in Paris to see his ex-wife’s body, the image had been placed between her hands, alongside a string of rosary beads.
Charles had flown in with Diana’s sisters Lady Jane and Lady Sarah, and they were greeted outside the hospital by a red carpet at the then French President Jacques Chirac.
After they were led to Diana’s room on the first floor Charles asked the hospital spokesperson if he could spend some time alone with Diana.
According to the Daily Mail, he emerged tear stained.
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Hours before she was involved in that horrific car crash, Diana had phoned her sons. They were playing with their cousins in Balmoral at the time and were reluctant to spent much time on the phone.
Harry has since revealed how that moment has played on his mind in the two decades since, saying in a recent documentary, “I do remember regretting... for the rest of my life how short the phone call was.”
“And if I'd known that was the last time I'd speak to my mother, the things I would have said to her...”
“Looking back on it now it is incredibly hard. Not knowing that was the last time I was going to speak to my mum, and how differently that conversation would have panned out if I'd had even the slightest inkling that her life was going to be taken that night.”
His brother William also remembers the phone call vividly, saying, "I think Harry and I were in a desperate rush to say 'goodbye', 'see you later', and 'we're going to go off'...”
“If I'd known what would happen I wouldn't have been so blasé about it. But that phone call sticks in my mind quite heavily,” he said.
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