Prince Harry has revealed that his older brother Prince William was convinced that their mother, Princess Diana, was alive, saying that both brothers believed she would one day get in touch with her sons and whisk them away.
According to Harry, 38, he and William, 40, ‘talked about’ the idea that their mother had not died in the 1997 Paris car crash that saved her life, but had instead decided to ‘disappear for a time’ – with the Duke of Sussex explaining that they believed it was ‘all part of a plan’.
‘For a long time, I just refused to accept that she was… she was gone,’ he told 60 Minutes host Anderson Cooper in an explosive new interview.
‘Um, part of, you know, she would never do this to us, but also part of, maybe this is all part of a plan.
‘[I believed she had disappeared] for a time, and then that she would call us and that we would go and join her, yeah.’
Prince Harry has revealed that both he and his brother William refused to accept that their mother Princess Diana was dead – and instead became convinced that she’d just ‘disappeared’
According to Harry, 38, he and his brother discussed the idea that their mother’s death had been staged as part of a wider ‘plan’, with both believing she would one day return to them
Harry – who also wrote about this in his bombshell new memoir Spare – added to Cooper that his brother ‘had similar thoughts’, saying: ‘William and I talked about it as well. He had similar thoughts.’
He admitted that he kept this belief alive for ‘many, many years’, adding that he ‘had huge amounts of hope’ that his mother would one day return to be with her children – until he ultimately demanded that he be given access to the police report about her death, which contained graphic images of the scene of her crash.
According to Harry, he wanted to see these images because they provided ‘proof’ that she had really gone.
‘Proof that she was in the car,’ he told Cooper when asked why he’d requested to see the report. ‘Proof that she was injured. And proof that the very paparazzi that chased her into the tunnel were the ones that were taking photographs – photographs of her lying half dead on the back seat of the car.’
In his explosive new book Spare, which was accidentally released several days early in Spain before its intended January 10 publication date, Harry writes at length about his struggle to come to terms with his mother’s death – admitting in its pages that he has only ever been able to cry about the loss on one occasion: her burial.
In his explosive new book Spare, Harry reveals that he demanded to see the police report about his mother’s fatal car crash, which included images of her wrecked vehicle
The Duke (seen at his mother’s funeral) said he wanted to see the photos because he needed ‘proof’ that Diana was really dead
Speaking to Cooper, Harry further opened up about the ‘guilt’ that he felt over his inability to show emotion or shed a tear – telling the 60 Minutes host that he used to look at videos of his mother and think about memories of her in an attempt to try and cry.
‘There was this weight on my chest that I felt for so many years that I was never able to cry,’ he said.
‘So I was constantly trying to find a way to cry, but… in even sitting on my sofa and going over as many memories as I could muster up about my mum. And sometimes I watched videos online.’
Harry struggled with his grief for years – and says it wasn’t until he began going to therapy and experimenting with psychedelic drugs that he truly came to terms with his mother’s death.
The Duke of Sussex told Cooper that psychedelics like ayahuasca and magic mushrooms his ‘medicine’ after the huge ‘loss’ of his mother in 1997, saying that using psychedelics when he got older ultimately ‘cleared away the idea’ that he needed be sad to prove he ‘missed’ his mom.
‘I would never recommend people to do this recreationally,’ he said.
‘But doing it with the right people if you are suffering from a huge amount of loss, grief or trauma, then these things have a way of working as a medicine.
‘For me, they cleared the windscreen, the windshield, the misery of loss. They cleared away this idea that I had in my head that … I needed to cry to prove to my mother that I missed her. When in fact, all she wanted was for me to be happy.’