Prince Harry Almost Didn’t Walk Behind Princess Diana’s Coffin at Age 12

Princess Diana died in the early morning hours of Aug. 31, 1997, following a car accident in Paris. A week later, the world would watch and mourn as her coffin processed through the streets of London, allowing the public to say goodbye before she was buried at her ancestral home.

One of the most poignant moments of that tragic day was the sight of Diana’s two young sons walking behind her coffin.

Prince William, then 15, and Prince Harry, then 12, kept their eyes on the ground as they walked alongside their father the future King Charles, their grandfather Prince Philip and their uncle Charles Spencer.

Harry wrote about that day in his 2023 memoir, Spare, recalling the first time he laid eyes on his mother’s coffin, which was draped in the Royal Standard. That, in itself, the prince wrote, was “an extraordinary break with protocol” that made him second-guess his late mother’s infamous exile from the royal family following her divorce from King Charles.

“The Royal Standard was always reserved for members of the Royal Family, which, I’d been told, Mummy wasn’t anymore,” he recalled. “Did this mean she was forgiven? By Granny? Apparently. But these were questions I couldn’t quite formulate, let alone ask an adult.”

Next came the discussion about the funeral procession.

“Per the latest plan, the coffin would be pulled through the streets on a horse-drawn carriage by the King’s Troop while Willy and I followed on foot,” Harry recalled. “It seemed a lot to ask of two young boys. Several adults were aghast. Mummy’s brother, Uncle Charles, raised hell. ‘You can’t make these boys walk behind their mother’s coffin! It’s barbaric.’ ”

An alternative plan was proposed: Prince William would walk alone. “He was 15, after all,” Harry wrote. ” ‘Leave the younger one out of it.’ Spare the Spare.”

But the answer came back: “It must be both princes. To garner sympathy, presumably.”

“Uncle Charles was furious,” Harry wrote. “But I wasn’t. I didn’t want Willy to undergo an ordeal like that without me. Had the roles been reversed, he’d never have wanted me — indeed, allowed me — to go it alone.”

On the morning of the funeral, the five men took their place behind the coffin. Harry wrote that he could recall Prince Philip looking “serene… as if this was another royal engagement.”

“I could see his eyes, clearly, because they were gazing straight ahead. They all were,” he recalled. “But I kept mind down on the road. So did Willy.”

As they walked, Harry said he remembers feeling “numb” and keeping his fists clenched. “I remember keeping a fraction of Willy always in the corner of my vision and drawing loads of strength from that,” he said.

While he watched the road, Harry recalled, the sounds of the procession echoed in his mind. All he remembered was the sound of the horse-drawn gun carriage carrying Diana’s coffin. Beyond that, it was silent.

“There wasn’t one engine, one lorry, one bird. There wasn’t one human voice, which was impossible, because two million people lined the roads,” he wrote. “The only hint that we were marching through a canyon of humanity was the occasional wail.”

While Harry and William leaned on one another in the days, weeks and eventually years following their mother’s death, the brothers’ current rift runs deep.

In a recent exclusive cover story, PEOPLE spoke with Diana’s biographer, Andrew Morton, who said, “Diana always used to say she had two boys for a reason — the younger would be there to support the older in the lonely task as future king.”

Morton believes, as many do, that if Diana were alive today, she would try to “act as a peacemaker between them.”

“If she had been around, they would have worked things out in a different way,” said the royal biographer, whose latest book, Winston and the Windsors, is out in October.