{"id":26671,"date":"2025-05-04T19:27:42","date_gmt":"2025-05-04T19:27:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/?p=26671"},"modified":"2025-05-04T19:27:42","modified_gmt":"2025-05-04T19:27:42","slug":"prince-harry-regrets-devastating-decision-to-recreate-princess-dianas-final-moments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/?p=26671","title":{"rendered":"Prince Harry regrets devastating decision to recreate Princess Diana\u2019s final moments"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Prince Harry revealed in his 2023 memoir that he recreated his mother Princess Diana’s final moments and regrets it.<\/p>\n

Princess Diana of Wales<\/a>\u00a0died on 31 August 1997 in the early hours of the morning from\u00a0injuries<\/a>\u00a0sustained in a car crash, while driving through the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, France.<\/p>\n

Survived by her two children,\u00a0Prince William<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Prince Harry<\/a>, Diana’s death sparked international devastation as ‘the people’s princess’ was beloved by many.<\/p>\n

Harry was only 12 years old when his mother died, with William being 15.<\/p>\n

In the car was Diana’s\u00a0partner<\/a>\u00a0Dodi 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.<\/p>\n

Over the years, both William and Harry have spoken about their mother’s passing, but according to Harry’s 2023 memoir\u00a0Spare<\/em>, he went one step further to try and get some closure from the tragic experience.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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Prince Harry wrote in his memoir that he recreated the Princess of Wales’ final moments (Georges De Keerle \/ Contributor)<\/cite><\/div>\n

23 years old at the time, Prince Harry explains: \u201cThe 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\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI watched his eyes in the rearview, growing large. The tunnel is called Pont de l\u2019Alma, I told him. Yes, yes. He knew it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe exact speed Mummy\u2019s car had supposedly been driving, according to police, at the time of the crash.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot 120 miles per hour, as the press originally reported.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019d asked him to do this, we\u2019d find him and there would be hell to pay.’<\/p>\n

Spare<\/em>\u00a0continues: \u201cOff we went, weaving through traffic, cruising past the Ritz, where Mummy had her last meal, with her boyfriend, that August night.<\/p>\n

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The scene from Princess Diana’s car incident in Paris 1997 (JACK GUEZ \/ Stringer \/ Getty)<\/cite><\/div>\n

\u201cThen we came to the mouth of the tunnel. We zipped ahead, went over the lip at the tunnel\u2019s entrance, the bump that supposedly sent Mummy\u2019s Mercedes veering off course. But the lip was nothing. We barely felt it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking of his reaction, he said: \u201cI 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs that all of it? It\u2019s\u2026nothing. Just a straight tunnel.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201c[I] always imagined the tunnel as some treacherous passageway, inherently dangerous, but it was just a short, simple, no-frills tunnel.”<\/p>\n

Harry continues to reflect on why he in fact regrets the experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d had plenty of bad ideas in my twenty-three years, but this one was uniquely ill-conceived. I\u2019d told myself that I wanted closure, but I didn\u2019t really.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeep down, I\u2019d hoped to feel in that tunnel what I\u2019d felt when JLP gave me the police files\u2014disbelief. Doubt. Instead, that was the night all doubt fell away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although he managed to achieve closure from the experience, he also felt a lot of pain.<\/p>\n

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Prince Harry’s controversial memoir was released in 2023 (Scott Olson \/ Staff \/ Getty)<\/cite><\/div>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s dead, I thought: \u2018My God, she\u2019s really gone for good.’<\/p>\n

\u201cI got the closure I was pretending to seek. I got it in spades. And now I\u2019d never be able to get rid of it. I\u2019d thought driving the tunnel would bring an end, or brief cessation, to the pain, the decade of unrelenting pain.<\/p>\n

“Instead it brought on the start of Pain, Part Deux.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Prince Harry revealed in his 2023 memoir that he recreated his mother Princess Diana’s final moments and regrets it. Princess Diana of Wales\u00a0died on 31 August 1997 in … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26671"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26673,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26671\/revisions\/26673"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}