‘Harry Was Always Going To Struggle'

Royal expert Jennie Bond opens up about Princess Diana’s worries, how she’d feel about her feuding sons, and how alike she and Meghan really are…

-  Jennie Bond

Lady Diana Spencer and the Duchess of Sussex entered the Royal Family a generation apart, but they had much in common.

‘They would have been thick as thieves,’ Prince Harry said during the TV interview to mark his engagement to Meghan. ‘My mother would have been jumping up and down with excitement.’

A fairy-tale princess and a dynamic duchess, each fêted as a breath of fresh air, but quickly they both found the strictures of court life intolerable…

Diana’s wish

Although Meghan was the catalyst that led to Harry stepping back from his royal duties, he’d been unsure about his role for some time.

Diana once told me that she was worried that, as the spare to the heir, he would struggle to find his way in life. And she would probably have cheered as Meghan and Harry marched out of the palace gates to a brand new life in California.

But she had also instilled the concept of duty in her boys and might have had reservations about Harry relinquishing it.

Although Diana would have understood Harry and Meghan’s wish to air grievances in their tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey, she might have advised against it. She was painfully aware of how badly hurt her sons had been by her revelations to Panorama.

I’m sure the Princess of Wales would have admired both her daughters-in-law, as different as Catherine and Meghan are. And her hope now would have been for her two boys to make peace and for them to pursue the happiness they have found with their wives.