Prince Harry's 'Biggest Regret' Over Final Call with Princess Diana

Prince Harry has revealed what he considers his "biggest regret" concerning his mother, Princess Diana, specifically the final phone call he had with her before her fatal car crash in 1997. Harry, who was 12 years old at the time of Diana's death, shared that he wishes he had handled that last conversation differently, knowing now that it would be their last.

"If I had known it was the last call with her, how different that conversation would be," Harry said in a recent interview with GQ. "And I’m the one that has to live with that." He recalled that at the time, his primary desire was to play with his cousins, suggesting a child-like preoccupation that he now looks back on with regret.

He explained that the "heavy guilt" he carried from the tragedy began to dissipate after he became a parent himself. This shift in perspective allowed him to process his mother's death in a new way.

Throughout his life, Harry has spoken about the public nature of his grief. He noted that even now, people frequently approach him to share their vivid memories of the day Diana died and express empathy for him and his brother, Prince William, as teenagers experiencing such a profound loss under intense public scrutiny.

"When you’re surrounded by people and different generations, where they can remember exactly where they were when that happened, and then they look at me and/or my brother and go, ‘Wow, you guys were teenagers, not even, and this happened to you on such a public scale, where do you go from that?'" he described.

Harry stated that he now feels a responsibility to help others navigate their own grief, offering encouragement to those at their lowest points. "It’s nice to be back," he added, referring to his recent move with his family back to the UK from California.

In a separate MasterClass session on grief, Harry mentioned that he often looks at a portrait of his mother and wonders what she would think of his life today. He described feeling a strong connection to her through the portrait, noting her "cheekiness in her smile."

He also confessed to feeling "emotionally numb" for years following Diana's death, experiencing feelings of disloyalty and guilt when he considered the possibility of finding happiness again. However, becoming a father provided him with a crucial perspective shift, enabling him to accept that his mother would have wanted him to be happy. "It freed me, and it gave me a whole different outlook on life," he stated.