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As long as we’ve known about the legacy and impact of Princess Diana, we’ve been wholly aware just how close she was to her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. The late Princess of Wales’ affection for her sons and parenting style is well-documented in photographs, and many royal tell-alls have shared intimate anecdotes about the Diana’s unbreakable bond with her boys. But a new forthcoming tell-all about the House of Windsor reveals that, by the time he was a teenager, Prince William was privy to Princess Diana’s affairs.
In an excerpt, published by Vanity Fair, of royal biographer Tina Brown’s upcoming tell-all The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor — the Truth and the Turmoil, the author recalls how William was “well aware of [Princess Diana’s] volatile love life. He knew the tabloids made her life hell, but he also knew she colluded with them. By his early teens, he was his mother’s most trusted confidant. She used to describe him as ‘my little wise old man.'”
Princess Diana's reported reason for staying in the U.K. has everything to do with family. https://t.co/f3RT12DuO0
— SheKnows (@SheKnows) March 30, 2022
There was, however, one conversation the mother-son pair had, according to the book, that laid bare practically any and every question William had for his mother. “Then Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan describes in his diary a startlingly revealing background lunch with Diana and the 13-year-old William at Kensington Palace in 1996 at which, he says, the princess allowed him to ask ‘literally anything,'” Brown describes in The Palace Papers. Even at a young age, William “seemed thoroughly up-to-date on all the tabloid rumors about her lovers. ‘He is clearly in the loop on most of her bizarre world and, in particular, the various men who come into it from time to time,’ the astonished Morgan noted.”
The book, per Vanity Fair’s excerpt, goes on to reveal that William may have even met one of the men Princess Diana was seeing in the mid-’90s. But what this latest anecdote really reveals to us is how much Diana relied on William during a very difficult time in her life. This chapter surely shaped how William saw the media and surely transformed his relationship with his mother, at a time when she likely felt siloed. We could never imagine being in William or Diana’s position, for a number of reasons, but this latest story illustrating their bond and how Diana looked to her eldest son for honesty and support definitely surprised us.
The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor — the Truth and the Turmoil by Tina Brown
Even as casual British royal family observers, there’s still so much we don’t know about what happens in the House of Windsor. 2022 is poised to be a memorable year for the royal family. But with historic highs come lows and pitfalls. Royal biographer Tina Brown takes readers from the troubling years following Princess Diana’s death, to the rift between Princes William and Harry, the scandals of Prince Andrew, and Queen Elizabeth’s steady resolve through it all in The Palace Paper: Inside the House of Windsor — the Truth and the Turmoil. Brown’s book features new, intimate details about the royal family, and contemplates how the House of Windsor moves into a new era.
Before you go, click here to find out which tell-all books expose major royal family secrets.
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