At first he didn't believe it.
Or at least he didn't want to believe it.
When his father, King Charles III, informed him of the death of his mother, Lady Diana, Prince Harry veiled his face and told himself for some time that she had gone into hiding.
This is how, according to his Memoirs to be published on Tuesday, he convinced himself that his mother had "staged an accident" to escape her "miserable" life in the limelight.
However, he didn't remain in denial for very long, since, as he told Tom Bradby on ITV, he asked to see photos of the Princess of Hearts' car accident.
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The fatal accident, which occurred on August 31, 1997, when Princess Diana was only 36 years old, took place in the tunnel of the Alma bridge in Paris.
Prince Harry returned in person to the scene of the tragedy: he took the wheel under the tunnel, and found that it is “impossible to lose control there”, unless you are “completely blinded”.
"There were lights around her, auras, almost halos... The color of the lights was the same as the hair"
Excerpt from 'Alternate', Memoirs of Prince Harry
Death Flashes
Indeed, the Duke of Sussex takes the flashes of the paparazzi as the cause of the accident.
Although the driver, Henry Paul, was reportedly inebriated, the younger Lady Di suggested that if it weren't for the paparazzi chasing him, his mother would still be alive.
However, the husband of Meghan Markle does not wish to reopen an investigation.
The fatal flash hypothesis came to him vividly when he saw the photos of the crash.
Prince Harry had indeed asked his private secretary to access the confidential file containing the photos of the disaster.
“I finally got to the pictures of mom.
There were lights around her, auras, almost halos... The color of the lights was the same as that of the hair," Prince William's brother read in the pages of his Memoirs,
The Substitute
, at released January 10.
Photographed until her last breath
In shock, he later realized that these lights were none other than camera flashes.
"They never stopped shooting her (in photos)... None of them asked how she was doing, offered help, or comforted her," he continued.
When he saw "the back of her blond hair, sagging on the back of the seat", he understood: she was gone for good.
“I was looking for something that could hurt me, he also confided, because at that time, I was still quite numb from everything that had happened.
It still hurts me to know that my mother was photographed when she was dying."
In video: "Lady Diana died in an ordinary car accident", recalls Marion Galy-Ramounot