The True Story of Prince William and Prince Harry's Final Call with Princess Diana
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Throughout the first three episodes of The Crown season six, there's a sense of foreboding. Even if you're not a royal fan, all viewers know that the death of Princess Diana is looming—and the specter of the tragic accident looms over these scenes. Nowhere does it feel as painful as the scene when Princess Diana speaks to her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, on August 30, 1997.
Diana, who has been vacationing with Dodi Al Fayed in the South of France, has just stopped in Paris on her way home to London. The princes were due to return from their vacation at Balmoral on August 31, and spend time with her. Diana calls them at Balmoral, and they have a brief discussion about her returning home, her time with Dodi—they ask her if she's going to marry him, to which she empathetically says "no"—and how she's excited to see them.
Obviously, The Crown cannot know what was discussed on Harry and William's final call with their mother, but the royals have discussed this in a few interviews. In the 2017 documentary, Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, both princes open up about the call. After their parents split and divorced, Harry and William would have a daily or nightly call with Diana.
"Harry and I were in a desperate rush to say goodbye, you know 'see you later.' If I'd known now what was going to happen, I wouldn't have been so blasé about it," Prince William said. "But that phone call sticks in my mind quite heavily."
Prince Harry said, "Looking back on it now, it's incredibly hard. I’ll have to sort of deal with that for the rest of my life. Not knowing that was the last time I was going to speak to my mum. How differently that conversation could have panned out if I'd had even the slightest inkling her life was going to be taken that night."
In Spare, Harry writes about August 30, "Someone chimed in, your mother’s in Paris! Maybe it was Mummy herself who said that. When she phoned earlier that day for a chat? Alas, the memory lies, with a million others, on the other side of a high mental wall. Such a horrid, tantalizing feeling, to know they’re over there, just on the other side, mere inches away—but the wall is always too high, too thick. Unscalable."
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