Prince Harry visited his mother Princess Diana’s grave when he was staying at her ancestral home in the U.K. last week, The Daily Beast has been told by a friend and neighbor of Diana’s brother, the 9th Earl, Charles Spencer.
The gesture will cement a perception that Harry wishes to reinforce his identity as Diana’s son, rather than continuing to be defined by his exhausting feud with his brother, Prince William.
The grave is on a small island in a lake on the magnificent Althorp Estate in Northamptonshire. It was located in this isolated and hard to reach location to deter ghouls and sightseers, and has always been reached via a small rowing boat. In May, Earl Spencer revealed he had been given new handcrafted wooden boat by a friend to reach the island.
Diana died 27 years ago, on Aug. 31, 1997. Harry was in England just days before the anniversary of her death, attending the funeral of his uncle Robert Fellowes (who was married to Diana’s elder sister, Jane). It is believed he stayed with his uncle Charles, the evening of the funeral and made his personal pilgrimage to the grave before flying home to California.
The Spencer friend told The Daily Beast: “Harry visited the grave when he was in Althorp. It’s a very special place for all the family but especially Harry. It was a significant part of his motivation for staying there.”
They were not willing to divulge further details of Harry’s visit.
Harry’s office declined to comment to The Daily Beast. However, sources in Harry’s camp did tell US magazine People that he had stayed at Althorp.
News of Harry’s visit to his mother’s grave coincides with commentary by sympathetic sources about the legacy of Diana in a new profile of Harry in the Daily Telegraph to mark his forthcoming 40th birthday.
In the report, a source is quoted as saying: “The people they work with … don’t know or care about the ins and outs of Harry leaving the working Royal family. They will always see him as the grandson of the Queen [Elizabeth II] or son of Diana.”
The profile adds that a series of meetings scheduled to take place in New York later this month aim “to re-establish Harry’s own long-term projects, as well as positioning him as Diana’s son.”
Harry wrote about taking his wife Meghan Markle to visit his mother’s grave in his memoir Spare, saying: “Meg’s first time. At long last, I was bringing the girl of my dreams home to meet mum.”
“Feeling that Meg might also want a moment, I went around the hedge, scanned the pond. When I came back, Meg was kneeling, eyes shut, palms against the stone.”
— Prince Harry
“We hesitated, hugging, and then I went first. I placed flowers on the grave. Meg gave me a moment, and I spoke to my mother in my head, told her I missed her, asked her for guidance and clarity. Feeling that Meg might also want a moment, I went around the hedge, scanned the pond. When I came back, Meg was kneeling, eyes shut, palms against the stone.”
“I asked, as we walked back to the boat, what she’d prayed for,” Harry wrote. “Clarity, she said. And guidance.”
The funeral of Fellowes was previously described to The Daily Beast as a “a huge gathering of the Spencer clan.”
Intriguingly, it seems that the service might have been delayed to enable Harry to attend. Fellowes’ died on 29 July and the funeral took place on August 28. Harry is required to give 28 days notice to U.K. police in order to receive police protection when visiting the U.K.
Friends of Princess Diana’s birth family, the Spencers, previously told The Daily Beast that Prince William agreeing to attend Fellowes’ funeral service in the knowledge that Harry would be there had “cast a glimmer of hope in an otherwise deeply depressing impasse.”
The Daily Beast has been told that the clan are “working hard to get the brothers to reconcile.” There are hopes that Jane, who is beloved by both William and Harry, might be able to “mediate” between the estranged brothers at a future point.
However, another source who is a friend of the royal family said, “If there is anyone who has a deeper loathing for the royal family than Harry, it is Charles Spencer. He will regard Harry staying at Althorp as something of a coup.”
The estate office at Althorp did not respond to queries on whether Harry visited his mother’s grave.
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