The image, closely scrutinized, revives memories. William and Harry walked together on Wednesday behind the coffin of her grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, 25, almost the day after Princess Diana’s funeral.
It was September 6, 1997. The whole world then discovered the two young men, stoic, walking behind the coffin of their mother, who had died a few days earlier in a car accident in Paris. William was 15 and Harry was going to be 13. A traumatic event for both boys.
“Thousands of people watched me”
“I don’t think a child should be asked to do this under any circumstances. I don’t think that’s going to happen today,” Prince Harry said in 2017 when asked about this painful memory in an interview with Newsweek.
“My mother had just died and I had to walk for a long time behind her coffin, surrounded by thousands of people who watched me while millions of people watched on television.”
The streets of London were packed with people and an estimated 2.5 billion people followed the event in front of their televisions.
The procession this Wednesday, after the coffin of the queen, presents very different circumstances. Twenty-five years after the death of her mother, the two princes, united in adolescence, moved away from each other. They have even been cold since Harry and his wife Meghan Markle gave up their role in the royal family and settled in California.
But the break was really consummated in March 2021, when the Sussexes confessed in an explosive interview on American television that Kate had made Meghan cry and accused the royal family of racism. A great unpacking far from the usual reserve of the “Signature”.
Reconciliation
If all eyes are on them this Wednesday, it is also to be on the lookout for signs of reconciliation. The siblings, who are said to have not spoken in months, appeared on Saturday, September 10 for the first time since March 9, 2020, along with their respective wives, Kate and Meghan.
An image “really unexpected, surprising, but which delighted the British population because it is the image of a real show of great reconciliation,” said Stéphane Bern on BFMTV.
Harry and Meghan have returned to Britain very shortly after what the press has dubbed “Megxit”. We were able to see the two brothers together but very distant, at the opening of the statue of his motherPrincess Diana on July 1, 2021. William and Harry were also seen exchanging a few words at the funeral of his grandfather, Prince Philip.
Source: BFM TV
