Prince Harry Opens Up About Death Of Mother Princess Diana

2017 will mark the twentieth anniversary of Princess Diana’s tragic death which shocked the world, but it’s often easy to forget that Prince Harry was only 12 years old when his mother died. Now, in a clip from a new interview, the royal opened up about how he processed such a tremendous loss at such a young age.

In a documentary for ITV that centres mainly on his charity work in the African state of Lesotho, the 32 year old, who is fifth in line to the British throne, spoke a little about how he came to terms with his mother’s death in 1997, admitting that he used to “bury” his feelings.

“I never really dealt with what had happened. It was a lot of buried emotion,” Harry told the interviewer. “For a huge part of my life I didn’t really want to think about it.”

He continued, “I now view life very differently from what it used to be. I used to bury my head in the sand, and let everything around you tear you to pieces.”

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However, Harry said that he eventually came to be inspired by his mother’s charitable work, and that he eventually wanted to continue her legacy by following her example.

“I need to make something of my life… I was fighting the system, going, ‘I don’t want to be this person’,” Harry explained. “My mother died when I was very, very young and I don’t want to be in the position. Now I’m so energized, fired up, to be lucky enough to be in a position to make a difference.”

His particular focus on Lesotho, a small independent state completely surrounded by the country of South Africa, came about when he spent his gap year on the continent in 2004.

“What started as an idea of me turning round and saying, right, I’ve got a year off, I want to do something really constructive with my life, want to do something that makes my mother proud,” he said. “Someone said, right, go to Lesotho, it’s like where the hell is that? Now I can see exactly where I want to take it. I have huge amounts of passion for the causes and interests and charities I’m involved with.”

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