Prince Harry has revealed his sadness that his son Archie will never get to meet his late mother, Princess Diana, claiming that her name was among the youngster’s first words.
In his new mental health series with Oprah Winfrey the Me You Can’t See, the Duke of Sussex said: ‘I got a photo of her in his nursery, and it was one of the first words that he said — apart from “mama”, “papa”, it was then “grandma”. Grandma Diana.
‘It’s the sweetest thing, but at the same time, it makes me really sad because she should be here.’
Prince Harry has revealed his sadness that his son Archie will never get to meet his late mother, Princess Diana, claiming that her name was among the youngster’s first words. Pictured, a shot of Archie and Meghan on the beach from the mental health interview
Prince Harry opened up about his family and his mental health in the chat with Oprah
Prince Harry explained he had a photo of Princess Diana in Archie’s nursery. Pictured, a young Prince Harry and Prince William with Princess Diana in 1995
Oprah Winfrey cries as she speaks to Harry in a film the pair both helped produce
Proud parents Meghan Markle and Prince Harry previously revealed more details of their son Archie’s extensive vocabulary during a more light-hearted moment in their bombshell Oprah interview.
Harry, 36, and Meghan, 39, who now live in Montecito, California, said that their talkative toddler’s new favourite thing to say is ‘hydrate’, a week after his doting dad told James Corden’s Late Late Show that Archie’s first word had surprisingly been ‘crocodile.’
Harry and Meghan gave fans a rare glimpse of their son during the most recent interview. At one point he is seen playing on the beach with his mother and their dogs.
The footage was previously shown on the first Oprah interview in black and white.
The toddler, who turned two this month, is also shown sitting on his mother’s lap later on – in footage filmed around the time of his first birthday.
Archie was also seen swinging on a garden swing with his father, although his face could not be seen.
Harry said of Archie’s words: ‘It’s the sweetest thing, but at the same time, it makes me really sad because she should be here’. Pictured, Archie swinging on a garden swing
Harry urges viewers to speak out in a clip from his new show that also shows his wife and son together at home in Los Angeles
Harry said his family tried to prevent him and Megan from leaving when she was having suicidal thoughts
However the focus of the interview was on Prince Harry and his mental health.
He revealed he was discouraged from discussing his mental health as a child following the sudden death of his mother, and when he tried to ask his family for help more recently — when Meghan claimed she was feeling suicidal — he was ‘met with total silence’ and neglect.
He said: ‘I thought my family would help, but every single ask, request, warning, whatever it is, just got met with total silence, total neglect.
‘We spent four years trying to make it work. We did everything that we possibly could to stay there and carry on doing the role and doing the job. But Meghan was struggling.’
He said the way Meghan was feeling reminded him of his own mother’s final days.
Prince Harry, 35, and Meghan Markle, 39, who now live in Montecito, California, previously revealed their son Archie’s favourite word is ‘hydrate’ (Archie pictured on the beach with Meghan in a shot shown on the Apple TV+ series). It was shown in black and white on Oprah
Meghan Markle embraces Archie in a moment shared on the AppleTV+ mental health series
The toddler is seen carrying a dog toy while the family spend time together on the beach
‘History was repeating itself,’ he said in an interview with Oprah. ‘My mother was chased to her death while she was in a relationship with someone who wasn’t white. And now look what’s happened.
‘It’s incredibly triggering to potentially lose another woman in my life. Like, the list is growing. And it all comes back to the same people, the same business model, the same industry,’ he said.
He also discussed his failure to process the grief from the death of his mother; the helplessness he felt to protect her; his dependence on drugs and alcohol to numb the pain; his anxiety and sense of being trapped in the palace; his family’s refusal to help when Megan felt suicidal and how therapy helped him ‘break the cycle.’
Prince Harry has revealed he was discouraged from discussing his mental health as a child following the sudden death of his mother, and when he tried to ask his family for help more recently, when Meghan claimed she was feeling suicidal, he was ‘met with total silence’ and neglect. The Apple TV show was broadcast Thursday and was produced by the Duke and Winfrey
In candid interviews with Oprah Winfrey on his new show, The Me You Can’t See, he said: ‘I thought my family would help, but every single ask, request, warning, whatever, it is just got met with total silence, total neglect
‘For me, therapy has equipped me to be able to take on anything,’ he said.
He says his family tried to prevent him and Megan from leaving when she claims she was suicidal and admits to drinking and doing drugs in his 30s.
‘Eventually when I made that decision for my family, I was still told, ‘You can’t do this,’ Harry recounted to Oprah. ‘And it’s like, ‘Well how bad does it have to get until I am allowed to do this?’ She [Markle] was going to end her life. It shouldn’t have to get to that.’
When asked if he has any regrets, he says it is not taking a stand earlier in his relationship with Markle.
At one point Meghan can be seen looking over Harry’s shoulder at a computer as she wears a ‘Raising The Future’ t-shirt in their LA mansion.
‘It was like that for me so it’s going to be like that for you’: Harry criticizes his father Charles for continuing the cycle of generational suffering
In the third episode of the series, Harry talks about how his family would not discuss their feelings, leading to more ‘generational suffering.’
‘My father used to say to me when I was younger, he used to say to both William and I, ‘Well, it was like that for me so it’s going to be like that for you,’ Harry says, ‘That doesn’t make sense. Just because you suffered, that doesn’t mean your kids have to suffer. In fact, quite the opposite. If you suffered, do everything you can to make sure that whatever negative experiences you had, you can make it right for your kids.’
‘Isn’t this all about breaking the cycle?’ he asked, rhetorically. ‘Isn’t this all about making sure that history doesn’t repeat itself.’
He said in an interview with Dax Shephard before the series aired he doesn’t blame anyone, ‘but certainly when it comes to parenting, if I’ve experienced some form of pain or suffering because of the pain or suffering that perhaps my father or my parents had suffered, I’m going to make sure I break that cycle so that I don’t pass it on, basically.
‘It’s a lot of genetic pain and suffering that gets passed on anyway so we as parents should be doing the most we can to try and say ‘you know what, that happened to me, I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen to you’.’
He added: ‘I never saw it, I never knew about it, and then suddenly I started to piece it together and go ‘OK, so this is where he went to school, this is what happened, I know this about his life, I also know that is connected to his parents so that means he’s treated me the way he was treated, so how can I change that for my own kids’.
‘And here I am, I moved my whole family to the US, that wasn’t the plan but sometimes you’ve got make decisions and put your family first and put your mental health first.’
‘This is my mum. You haven’t even met her’: Harry hit out at mourners at Diana’s funeral who showed ‘ten times’ as much emotion as he could
In the first episode of the Apple TV+ series, the Duke of Sussex recounts how he was only allowed to show ‘one-tenth of the emotion everyone else was feeling,’ making him angry as he saw strangers on the street crying over Diana’s death.
‘This was my mother,’ he said, ‘you never even met her.’
The prince has previously spoken of the emotional turmoil he faced after his mother was killed in a Paris car crash in 1997, saying he spent nearly two decades ‘not thinking’ about her death before eventually getting help after a period of ‘total chaos’.
He said on the show he was discouraged from talking about his mother’s death, and when people would ask him how he was feeling, he said, ‘fine was the easy answer.’
Prince Harry suffered panic attacks and binged on drugs and drink for years to deal with his mother’s death – and says Meghan encouraged him to start therapy
But, the prince said in his new show, by the time he was 28 he would ‘freak out’ whenever he saw a camera flash or he had to get into a car, and over the weekends he ‘probably drank a week’s worth in a single day.’
He admitted he had tried drugs and alcohol to numb his pain, not realizing at the time that was what he was doing, and when people close to him told him to seek help, he would say he did not need help.
It wasn’t until he met Meghan, he said in the second episode, that he decided he needed help.
‘I knew that if I didn’t do the therapy and fix myself that I was going to lose this woman who I could see spending the rest of my life with,’ he said, recounting how Meghan first suggested he go to therapy after they got into an argument.
He said he realized early on in therapy that he had never processed the loss of his mother, and was projecting that grief onto others.
‘That was the start of a learning journey for me,’ he said. ‘I became aware that I had been living in a bubble within this family, within this institution and I was sort of almost trapped in that sort of thought process or mindset.’
Six-month pregnant Meghan shared with Harry HOW she was going to kill herself before they attended charity function at Royal Albert Hall captured in now infamous squeezing hand pictures
Harry recalled in the second episode how difficult it was for Meghan to adjust to royal life as an outsider, noting, ‘There was a lot of learning in the beginning of our relationship.’
Soon after the relationship started, he said, Meghan was in the proverbial spotlight, with cameras following the couple around.
‘It made my blood boil,’ he said. ‘It makes me angry. It takes me back to my mum, to what I experienced as a kid.’
Making the situation worse, he said, were negative comments on social media.
‘I thought my family would help,’ Harry told Oprah, ‘but every single ask, request, warning, whatever, it is just got met with total silence, total neglect.
‘We spent four years trying to make it work. We did everything that we possibly could to stay there and carry on doing the role and doing the job. But Meghan was struggling.’
Before they walked into the Royal Albert Hall in London for a charity event when Meghan was already six months pregnant, gripping each others hands, Harry said on the show, ‘Meghan decided to share with me the suicidal thoughts and the practicalities of how she was going to end her life.
‘I’m somewhat ashamed of the way that I dealt with it,’ he said, ‘and of course because of the system that we were in and the responsibilities and the duties that we had, we had a quick cuddle and then we had to get changed and had to jump into a convoy with a police escort and drive to the Royal Albert Hall for a charity event.’
‘There wasn’t an option to say, ‘You know what, tonight we’re not going to go, because just imagine the stories that come from that,’ he said, recounting how once the lights dim Meghan started to cry and he felt ashamed he could not go to his family.
Prince Harry told Oprah that Meghan didn’t kill herself because she didn’t want him to lose another woman he loved
Harry said in an interview with Oprah that the only thing preventing Meghan from killing herself was the thought that it would be unfair to him to lose another woman he loved in his life while also pregnant with their baby.
‘The scariest thing for her was her clarity of thought,’ he said. ‘She hadn’t lost it. She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t self-medicating, be it through pills or by alcohol. She was absolutely sober. She was completely sane.
‘Yet in the quiet of night, these thoughts woke her up.’
He says he now would like to focus on his son, Archie, ‘rather than every time I look in his eyes wonder whether my wife is going to end up like my mother, and I’m going to have to look after him myself.’
‘That was one of the main reasons to leave,’ Harry said.
Prince Harry says Royals tried to STOP him and Meghan leaving after ‘she was going to end her life’
But, the prince said, his family tried to stop him and Meghan from leaving, even as she was supposedly feeling suicidal.
‘That feeling of being trapped within the family, there was no option to leave. Eventually when I made that decision for my family, I was still told, ‘You can’t do this.’ And it’s like, ‘Well how bad does it have to get until I am allowed to do this?’ She [Markle] was going to end her life. It shouldn’t have to get to that.’
He said his biggest regret was not taking a stand earlier in his relationship with Markle, claiming a barrage of attacks on her won’t stop ‘until she dies.
‘It’s incredibly triggering to potentially lose another woman in my life,’ Harry said in the interview with Oprah. ‘Like the list is growing, and it all comes back to the same people, the same business model, the same industry.’
Harry claims Royals showed ‘total neglect’ for his and ‘struggling’ Meghan’s mental
The Duke of Sussex said on the Apple TV+ series he thought his family would help as Meghan started claiming she felt suicidal, but instead he was ‘met with total silence, total neglect.’
‘We spent four years trying to make it work,’ he says on the show. ‘We did everything that we possibly could to stay there and carry on doing the role and doing the job. But Meghan was struggling.’
He said the way Meghan was feeling reminded him of his own mother’s final days.
‘History was repeating itself,’ he said in an interview with Oprah. ‘My mother was chased to her death while she was in a relationship with someone who wasn’t white. And now look what’s happened.
Ultimately, he claimed, he and Meghan had to leave the U.K. to ‘put our mental health first.’
‘That’s what we’re doing,’ the prince said, ‘and that’s what we’ll continue to do.’