In a new interview, Prince Harry recalls the emotional days following the death of his mother, Princess Diana, and how he followed his royal duties after her passing.
Speaking to the U.K.’s ITV for a sit-down set to air Jan. 8—two days before the release of his controversial tell-all memoir Spare, the former senior royal recalled how he, at age 12, and brother Prince William, then 15, joined their dad, now-King Charles III, in greeting mourners and viewing floral tributes around Kensington Palace in honor of the late Princess of Wales soon after she was killed at age 36 in a car crash in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997.
“There was some guilt that I felt, and I think William felt as well, by walking around the outside of Kensington Palace,” Harry told ITV’s Tom Bradby. “And there are 50,000 bouquets to our mother. And there we were, shaking people’s hands, smiling. I’ve seen the videos. I look back over it all. The wet hands that we were shaking—I couldn’t understand why their hands were wet.”
Harry then explained, “It was all the tears that they were wiping away.”