After the tragic death of his mother, Princess Diana, in 1997, Prince Harry wanted to step away from royal life.
“I was thinking, ‘I hate this job, I hate this role, I hate this role,'” the Duke of Sussex said Thursday during a debate with Australian businessman and former politician Brendan Nelson at the InterEdge Summit in Melbourne, according to People magazine.
Prince Harry, who was 12 years old at the time of the tragedy, claimed Princess Diana was “killed” by her work as a royal and insisted he did not want to suffer the same fate.
“I was so against it and stuck my head in the sand for years and years,” he said.
However, the ‘Spare’ author changed her mind about quitting royal life (which she later did in 2020) after telling herself she could use her privilege to ‘make a difference in the world’.
“And what does mom want me to do?” he added about Diana. “And it really changed the way I saw myself.”
Princess Diana tragically died in a car accident in Paris in August 1997, when her sons Prince Harry and Prince William were just 12 and 15 years old respectively.
She was in a Mercedes being chased by paparazzi when her car crashed into a pillar in the Pont Alma tunnel in Paris.
Her driver, Henri Paul, had a mixture of prescription drugs and alcohol in his system and was speeding at 105 mph.
In 2017, Prince Harry told the Telegraph that he almost had a “complete breakdown” in the years after Princess Diana’s death.
“I can say that losing my mother at the age of 12 and therefore shutting down all my emotions for the past 20 years has had a very serious impact not only on my personal life but also on my work,” he said at the time.
The Duke of Sussex also revealed that he sought help from a “shrink” to help him cope with Princess Diana’s death.
Prince Harry has also opened up over the years about being Prince William’s “spare” in the line of succession to the throne when he was younger.
“I wasn’t offended and didn’t feel anything about it,” he wrote in his 2023 memoir. “Boys and girls alike will imagine themselves being a prince or princess at least once. So, spare or not, it wasn’t half bad to actually be a prince or princess.”
Elsewhere in his book, Harry claimed that his father, Charles III, branded him a “spare” on the day he was born.
Prior to Thursday’s talks with Nelson, Prince Harry spoke of his sadness during his keynote address at the InterEdge Summit, the third day of his visit to Australia with Meghan Markle.
“In my experience, loss is disorienting at any age,” Harry told the audience. “Sadness doesn’t go away just because you ignore it.”
The former military pilot continued, “What you experience as a kid in a fishbowl where you’re constantly being watched, sure, it’s challenging. And if you don’t have a purpose, it can break you.”
Prince Harry also admitted that he had felt “lost, betrayed and completely powerless” many times in his life, but said his resilience helped him overcome hardships.
The Sussexes, who married in 2018, quit royal duties two years later and moved from the UK to Montecito, California, where they live in a $14 million mansion with their two children, Prince Archie, 6, and Princess Lilibet, 4.
Prince Harry is currently estranged from his family after slamming them in a 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey and in the 2022 Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan.
