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Prince Harry revealed in his 2023 memoir that he recreated his mother Princess Diana's final moments and regrets it.
Princess Diana of Wales died on 31 August 1997 in the early hours of the morning from injuries sustained in a car crash, while driving through the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris, France.
Survived by her two children, Prince William and Prince Harry, Diana's death sparked international devastation as 'the people's princess' was beloved by many.
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Harry was only 12 years old when his mother died, with William being 15.
In the car was Diana's partner Dodi Fayed, driver Henri Paul and bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones. Everyone except Rees-Jones passed away, although he did sustain serious injuries and, of course, has to live with the fate of that dreadful day.
Over the years, both William and Harry have spoken about their mother's passing, but according to Harry's 2023 memoir Spare, he went one step further to try and get some closure from the tragic experience.
In 2007, the prince visited Paris for the 2007 Rugby World Cup semi-final when he decided to try and relive his mother's final moments.
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23 years old at the time, Prince Harry explains: “The World Cup provided me with a driver, and on my first night in the City of Light I asked him if he knew the tunnel where my mother…”
“I watched his eyes in the rearview, growing large. The tunnel is called Pont de l’Alma, I told him. Yes, yes. He knew it.”
Not enough for him to simply see the last place the princess was, he asked the driver to drive at 65mph - the speed at which his mother's car was travelling when it crashed.
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“The exact speed Mummy’s car had supposedly been driving, according to police, at the time of the crash.
“Not 120 miles per hour, as the press originally reported.”
With two people in the car with Prince Harry at the time, he reveals that although they agreed to the drive, it was not to be mentioned to anyone else. Passenger 'Billy the Rock' had apparently said 'if the driver ever revealed to another human that we’d asked him to do this, we’d find him and there would be hell to pay.'
Spare continues: “Off we went, weaving through traffic, cruising past the Ritz, where Mummy had her last meal, with her boyfriend, that August night.
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“Then we came to the mouth of the tunnel. We zipped ahead, went over the lip at the tunnel’s entrance, the bump that supposedly sent Mummy’s Mercedes veering off course. But the lip was nothing. We barely felt it.”
Speaking of his reaction, he said: “I leaned forward, watched the light change to a kind of water orange, watched the concrete pillars flicker past. I counted them, counted my heartbeats, and in a few seconds we emerged from the other side.
“Is that all of it? It’s…nothing. Just a straight tunnel.
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“[I] always imagined the tunnel as some treacherous passageway, inherently dangerous, but it was just a short, simple, no-frills tunnel."
Harry continues to reflect on why he in fact regrets the experience.
“I’d had plenty of bad ideas in my twenty-three years, but this one was uniquely ill-conceived. I’d told myself that I wanted closure, but I didn’t really.
“Deep down, I’d hoped to feel in that tunnel what I’d felt when JLP gave me the police files—disbelief. Doubt. Instead, that was the night all doubt fell away.”
Although he managed to achieve closure from the experience, he also felt a lot of pain.
“She’s dead, I thought: ‘My God, she’s really gone for good.'
“I got the closure I was pretending to seek. I got it in spades. And now I’d never be able to get rid of it. I’d thought driving the tunnel would bring an end, or brief cessation, to the pain, the decade of unrelenting pain.
"Instead it brought on the start of Pain, Part Deux.”
If you have experienced a bereavement and would like to speak with someone in confidence, contact Cruse Bereavement Care via their national helpline on 0808 808 1677
Topics: Prince Harry, Prince William, Princess Diana, World News, Royal Family, UK News, Parenting, Books
Saskia Calliste