How Princess Diana’s tragic death informs the way her sons Prince Harry and Prince William interact with the media

A blonde woman sits on a ride with a little redheaded boy and a blonde boy

Harry (centre) and William lost their mother Princess Diana in a car crash in 1997. (UK Press via Getty: Julian Parker)

This week, two brothers will have very different interactions with the same British tabloid.

Prince Harry will appear in a London court — either in person or via video link — as part of his case against newspapers including The Sun, who he alleges unlawfully hacked his phone and invaded his privacy.

Meanwhile, his big brother, Prince William, was filmed walking out of an upscale grocery store in Windsor with his wife, Princess Catherine.

The video, published by The Sun, shows the future king and queen strolling out of the Windsor establishment with shopping bags in hand, dressed in baseball caps and activewear.

But the timing of this glimpse of Kate and William cannot be ignored, coming off the back of one of the biggest PR disasters the couple has ever faced.

The palace’s poor handling of Kate’s desire for privacy following “planned abdominal surgery” in January spiralled into online conspiracy theories.

A hastily photoshopped picture of the Princess of Wales only added fuel to the fire, leaving the couple no choice but to appear in public to offer what you might describe as “proof of life”.

As sons of the sovereign, Harry and William can’t totally escape the media, but the way they deal with this interest in their lives couldn’t be more different.

The spare has fled the system and gone to war with the press.

But for William, a future king, who is expected to live by the edict of his grandmother Queen Elizabeth that royals must be “seen to be believed”, he keeps trying to outsmart and elude the media.

In the story of Prince Harry and Prince William’s lives, one character is always lurking in the background, bearing all the hallmarks of a fairytale villain: the tabloids.

Royal experts say their intense distrust in the press appears to stem from one shared trauma: The death of their mum, Princess Diana.

“The manner in which Prince William and Prince Harry think of the press and deal with the press has a common root cause in the death of their mother,” said former communications secretary to Queen Elizabeth, Simon Lewis, on his podcast When It Hits The Fan.

“How do these two young men deal with the media? Harry is suing them all, he’s in court against almost every major newspaper group. He is fighting — to a degree he’s fighting on behalf of his mother.”

Meanwhile, William is attempting to go around the tabloids, according to Mr Lewis.

“He’s going straight over their heads, giving out pictures which have been doctored, straight to the public, which have been taken on their own devices,” he said.

“The behaviour of both the princes is, in my opinion, a direct, understandable result of trauma.”

How Diana’s death shaped Harry and William’s relationship with tabloids
At the height of her popularity, Princess Diana was one of the most photographed women in the world.

The paparazzi would spend hours lurking around corners, dangerously weaving through traffic and jumping across car bonnets all in the hopes of securing a lucrative shot of the star royal.

It may have seemed normal at the time, part and parcel of life as a celebrity figure, but that all changed with the young woman’s death in Paris.

Earl Spencer, Prince William, Prince Harry and Prince Charles look at the coffin of Diana, Princess of Wales.
Earl Spencer pledged to protect his nephews from the kind of scrutiny he blamed for his sister’s demise. (Reuters)
Public grief over the loss of a beloved figure quickly turned to anger at the men with cameras who had been chasing the royal when the car she was riding in crashed in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel.

In a scathing assessment of the press intrusion into Diana’s life, Charles Spencer recalled at her funeral that one of the “ironies about Diana” was that “a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age”.

Decades later, his nephew would take up this analogy when examining his own response to Diana’s death.

“I’d been told that paps chased mummy, that they’d hunted her like a pack of wild dogs, but I’d never dared to imagine that, like wild dogs, they’d also feasted on her defenceless body,” Prince Harry wrote in his memoir, Spare.

“I hadn’t been aware, before this moment, that the last thing mummy saw on this earth was a flashbulb.”

Earl Spencer’s takeaway from his sister’s death was that her two sons should be protected from the scrutiny she endured.

“She would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys William and Harry from a similar fate and I do this here Diana on your behalf,” he said.

“We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair.”

A blonde woman surrounded by photographers
After her divorce from then Prince Charles, Diana was hounded by photographers every time she left the house. (Reuters)
But in reality, it was not solely within Earl Spencer’s power to grant such a wish.

Being the heir and the spare meant the two brothers could never fully untangle themselves from the spotlight.

A Press Complaints Commission delivered this exact verdict in 1999, acknowledging that while they deserved the same rights to privacy during their time at school as all other children, Prince William and Prince Harry “are different from them because of their proximity to the throne”.

“There is legitimate public interest in news and information about the way in which the princes are growing up and that includes the progress of their education,” it found.

“In such circumstances, a complete black out on news would be contrary to the general public interest, and would undermine the authority of the code.”

While Prince William and Prince Harry likely held anger at the tabloids they believed played a hand in their mother’s death, they were still required to play the game.

Princes Harry and William
William and Harry are estranged but the stability of the future king’s reign may depend on a reconciliation. (Reuters: Stefan Wermuth)
In return for the media’s restraint when the two princes were at school, the palace organised periodic photocalls around significant events in their lives.

If the overarching strategy is to sustain a level of interest and intrigue in the lives of the royal family, William and Harry, as two of the monarchy’s youngest members, were the star players.

But while they were both experiencing the same intrusion in their lives, Harry told ITV’s Tom Bradby that after Diana’s death he and William, “were on different trajectories, dealing with the same traumatic experience in different ways”.

By the time they reached adulthood, the two brothers were locked in an uneasy competition, unable to control the intense interest in their lives but determined to deflect unwanted attention.

Social media allowed them to bypass the tabloid press
While Diana experienced a level of press intrusion few royals have ever faced, she never had to contend with the double edged sword that is social media.

The rise of platforms like Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok has presented both opportunity and danger for her sons.

Social media has given the House of Windsor a direct line of communication to their subjects, allowing the public a glimpse into their lives in a tightly-controlled format.

William’s office has been celebrated for the glossy, aspirational videos of his young family uploaded to social media.

But both brothers have experienced social media’s dark side.

Prince Harry says the racist and misogynistic abuse directed against his wife Meghan on social media was a coordinated campaign involving bot armies.

The relentless abuse was so bad that the couple said it left Meghan contemplating suicide.

And while the scrutiny of Kate and William in recent weeks may be nothing compared to what Meghan went through, they have still experienced the unruly, all-consuming force of social media.

Their misstep with the doctored image only gave more fodder to conspiracy theorists and content creators who are trying to harness public interest in the couple.

As a future king, William will one day need to navigate an evolving media landscape, unlike anything his parents or grandmother encountered.

His distrust in the media and his estrangement from his brother present two key challenges to a successful reign.

The complicated dynamics of the heir and the spare
Sometimes it takes an outsider to see the reality of a situation more clearly than those on the inside.

When reflecting on a cancelled meeting with the Queen, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, explained how the royal family and the family business can sometimes be “in direct conflict”.

Harry and Meghan sitting in a theatre box
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, says the relentless online trolling and critical press coverage left her suicidal. (Reuters: Paul Grove)
From birth, Prince William and Prince Harry’s lives have been predestined, forever defined by their roles as the heir and the spare.

Only the two men can know the challenges of forging a path within the confines of what is effectively a gilded cage.

Their proximity to the crown may have forged a unique bond, but it also appears to have been a source of tension, fuelling an already intense brotherly rivalry.

The dynamic is a familiar one in the House of Windsor, with the heir and spare sometimes used as foils in royal narratives.

“Charles the patient versus Andrew the foolish. William the cautious matched against reckless Harry,” royal biographer Andrew Morton once said.

But when this spilled over into a “hero and villain” narrative between Meghan and Kate, it was the final straw for Prince Harry.

He walked away, pursuing an exit strategy that was not available to his brother, while waging a personal battle against the tabloids that had haunted him for most of his life.

As the future king, William continues to operate within the system but will one day have the power to decide how the House of Windsor interacts with the press and the public.

His and Harry’s unique experiences with tragedy and loss may act as a catalyst for change within the institution.

If he were to use the opportunity to change the dynamic that has wrought so much damage to the people he loves, it could go some way towards healing old wounds and perhaps deliver a long-desired truce between brothers.

Two little boys in matching caps waving
The UK Press Complaints Commission once ruled that coverage of William and Harry was in the public interest. (Getty Images via PA Images: Martin Keene)