According to Prince Harry, He Believed Princess Diana Went Into “Hiding” After Her Passing

Prince Harry took a while to come to terms with the passing of his mother, Princess Diana.

The Duke of Sussex discusses the “defense mechanism” that led him to believe his mother had staged her own death and gone into “hiding” in a new candid interview with Good Morning America co-anchor Michael Strahan. His latest memoir, Spare, which officially hits bookstores today, January 10, discusses this “magical thinking.”

“I think for anyone, especially if you’re a kid—I was 12 years old,” he tells Strahan, “I refused to accept that was what had happened.”

Harry reportedly states in his autobiography (according to Page Six), “With nothing to do but roam the castle and talk to myself, a suspicion took hold, which then became a firm belief. This was all a trick. And for once the trick wasn’t being played by the people around me, or the press, but by Mummy. Her life’s been miserable, she’s been hounded, harassed, lied about, lied to. So she’s staged an accident as a diversion and run away.”

Harry also discusses the day his father, now King Charles III, informed him of Diana’s passing on August 31, 1997. “It was really important to be able to sketch that scene and share with people where my story really began,” Harry explains in his GMA interview. “As a dad, I would never, ever want to have to break that news ever, so I have a huge amount of sympathy and compassion and understanding now about how ill-equipped I guess my dad was, how ill-equipped anybody would be in that situation.”

Adding, “I don’t think my family knew what to do. I don’t think they knew what to do, and I can’t say whether other families would’ve done a better job.”

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