Prince Harry is ‘very immature’ for criticising public mourners of Diana, royal biographer claims

Duke of Sussex told Oprah Winfrey he thought: ‘This is my mum. You never even met her’ in response to public’s grief

Royal biographer Angela Levin has accused Prince Harry of being “very immature” after the Duke of Sussex spoke of his resentment over the public mourning of his late mother, Princess Diana.

Harry recently opened up about the painful memories he has of his mother’s funeral during a conversation with Oprah Winfrey for the pair’s Apple TV+ docu-series The Me You Can’t See.

While reflecting on the tragic 31 August 1997 car accident that killed Diana, and the widely televised funeral that was watched by more than 31 million people, Harry revealed that he struggled with “sharing the grief of my mother’s death with the world”.

“When my mum was taken away from me at the age of 12, just before my 13th birthday, I didn’t want the life,” he told Winfrey. “Sharing the grief of my mother’s death with the world …”

Prince Harry also acknowledged that he was showing “one-tenth of the emotion that everybody else was showing” on the day of the funeral, before admitting to Winfrey that it was difficult for him to see the public’s grief for his mother.

“I was like: ‘This is my mum. You never even met her,’” he said.

Following the duke’s comments, Levin, the author of Harry: A Biography of a Prince, recently appeared on The Royal Beat on True Royalty TV, where she revealed her shock over Harry’s admission.

“I was very shocked when he said yet again how much he resented all the people that were surrounding him and crying [at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales], because it was his mother, and they shouldn’t do that. It showed that he was still very immature,” Levin said, according to the DailyMail.

Levin then claimed that Harry’s feelings of resentment were understandable when he was 12, but that he should “be able to cope with it” now that he is 36.

“Walking behind his mother was hideous for him, but to resent the people who admired Diana and loved her and thought incredibly highly of her, I think it’s not up to him to say who should mourn her,” she continued.

Harry, who was just 12 when his mother died, has previously opened up about the difficulty of walking behind her coffin during the 6 September funeral procession, telling Newsweek that he doesn’t think any child should be put in that situation.

“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,” he said at the time, adding: “I don’t think any child should be made to do that under any circumstances. I don’t think it would happen today.”

While speaking with Winfrey for the docu-series, Harry said the memory that sticks out most from the day of the funeral is “the sound of the horses’ hooves going along the mall, red brick road,” before revealing that, as he got older, he was willing to drink and do drugs to try and numb his pain.

“I was willing to drink, I was willing to take drugs, I was willing to do the things that made me feel less like I was feeling,” he recalled, with the 36-year-old adding that he wasn’t drinking out of enjoyment but to “mask something”.

According to Prince Harry, he eventually sought therapy at the encouragement of his wife Meghan Markle.