After twenty years, the world still mourns the passing of Princess Diana. It is fair to say she changed the way people around the globe viewed British royalty.
Now, in a new hour-long HBO documentary about Princess Diana, Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, both Prince William and Prince Harry have the opportunity to speak publicly about their beloved mother. Her life cut too short, Prince William reflects on the kind of grandmother he believes Diana would have been.
Now the father of two lovely children, George (4) and Charlotte (2), and a third on the way, William says he makes sure to talk about “Granny Diana” with his children as much as possible. “It’s hard because obviously Catherine didn’t know her, so she cannot really provide that — that level of detail,” he said. “So, I do regularly, putting George or Charlotte to bed, talk about her and just try and remind them that there are two grandmothers, there were two grandmothers in their lives, and so it’s important that they know who she was and that she existed.”
William guesses what his mother would have been like with his kids: “She’d be a nightmare grandmother, absolute nightmare. She’d love the children to bits, but she’d be an absolute nightmare. She’d come and go and she’d come in probably at bath time, cause an amazing amount of scene, bubbles everywhere, bathwater all over the place and — and then leave,” he jested.
Harry, Diana’s youngest son, agreed. “Our mother was a total kid, through and through,” Harry said. “One of her mottos to me was ‘You can be as naughty as you want — just don’t get caught.'”
Harry and William appreciate how their mother both wanted them to have a life outside the palace, and to have some privacy from the ever-encroaching media. She regularly took them to volunteer at homeless shelters and fought when she could to keep photographers from harassing them during family vacations.
While the world still misses the “People’s Princess,” the documentary gives us a glance of how her sons have picked up the torch of public service from their mother, and how she is still such an important part of their lives.
