Ahead of the release for his memoir, Spare, Prince Harry sat down with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes on Sunday night. During the interview, he got personal about his experiencing grieving the death of his mother, Princess Diana, and in the process, he made a pretty shocking reveal: Harry believed into his early 20s that Diana had faked her own death.
Harry openly admitted to how he struggled with losing his mother.
Of course, the loss of a parent can be truly unfathomable at any age, and Harry was just 12 years old when Diana died in a car crash in Paris in August 1997.
Her death was obviously unexpected at the time, and Harry admitted that "for a long time," he didn't want to accept that she was really gone.
At first, Harry believed that Diana had just disappeared.
"I just refused to accept that she was gone. Part of [it was] she would never do this to us. But also, part of it maybe [felt like] this is all part of a plan," he said. "For a time [I believed she was alive] and then she would call us, and we would go and join her."
Of course, that never happened, and Harry was 23 years old when he finally understood that his mom really was gone.
He even went searching for 'proof' of her death.
That included going through the photos from the scene of the crash, trying to figure out if she had actually been in the car or not.
"[I was looking mainly for] proof that she was in the car. Proof that she was injured and proof that the very paparazzi that chased her into the tunnel were the ones that were taking photographs of her lying half dead in the back [of the car]," Harry said. "The pictures showed the reflection of a group of photographers taking photographs through the window and the reflection on the window was them."
Fortunately, he said his press secretary kept the most gruesome images from him, though he did see "the back of my mom’s head slumped on the back seat."
He also said this led to the unraveling of his close relationship with his brother.
Because he wasn't able to talk about his grief with Prince William, it sounds like Harry struggled with this alone.
"For me, it was never a case of I don’t want to talk about it with you. I just don’t know how to talk about it. I never, ever thought that maybe talking about it with my brother or with anybody else at that point would be therapeutic," he said.
It sounds like Harry has come a long way since then.
He has openly spoken about how therapy has become a big part of his life on more than one occasion after walking way from the royal family, and it sounds like he is doing a lot better these days.
More than ever, it's good to know that he has someone like Meghan Markle in his life as he navigates this new chapter and what it means for him as he processes his past.
Check out our Meghan Markle page for all the latest news about Meghan, Prince Harry, and their growing family.
