William and Harry Walk Behind Queen’s Coffin Almost Exactly 25 Years After Princess Diana’s Funeral
usmagazine.comA moving echo of the past. Prince William and Prince Harry united behind Queen Elizabeth II‘s coffin almost 25 years to the day after Princess Diana‘s funeral.The Prince of Wales, 40, and the Duke of Sussex, 37, walked next to each other on Wednesday, September 14, as the late monarch’s coffin was moved from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall, where it will lie in state for several days.
The brothers were part of the procession along with their father, King Charles III, and the king’s siblings, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.William and Harry’s side-by-side walk was reminiscent of the moment when the brothers — then 15 and 12, respectively, walked behind their mother’s coffin at her 1997 funeral.
The late Princess of Wales died in August 1997 in a car crash in Paris at age 36.The queen’s Westminster processional on Wednesday took place exactly 25 years and eight days after Diana’s funeral, which happened on September 6, 1997.
Anne, 72, later recalled that her father, Prince Philip, offered to walk with the duo as a show of support.“I seem to remember him saying that in fact, it was a question of, ‘If you’ll do it, I’ll do it,'” the Princess Royal told ITV News after Philip’s death in April 2021. “And that was him as a grandfather saying to them, ‘If you want me to be there, if that’s what you want to do and if you want me to be there, I will be there.’”Harry, for his part, has been open about how difficult the experience was for him as a preteen. “My mother had just died, and I had to walk a long way behind her coffin, surrounded by thousands of people watching me while millions more did on television,” the Invictus Games founder told Newsweek in June 2017. “I don’t think any child should be asked to
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