The late Princess Diana, gone nearly 24 years, is in the headlines again and it's not for entirely happy reasons.
The long-awaited ceremony to present a statue of the Princess of Wales at her London home on Thursday was always supposed to be a huge story, given Diana's continuing hold on the popular imagination long after she died in a Paris car wreck in 1997.
But now the dedication is also a high-pressure, potentially awkward event thanks to the fierce falling-out between her beloved sons, Prince William, 39, and Prince Harry, 36, who will unveil the statue at Kensington Palace along with just a handful of guests, mostly their mother's Spencer family relatives. No other royal family members are expected.
"We're entering new territory and it's a big challenge to the royal family," says royal biographer Robert Lacey, whose 2020 book, "Battle of Brothers: William and Harry – The Inside Story of a Family in Tumult," will be available in paperback in America this fall.
"What happens on Thursday will be closely watched," the British historian says. "What are these two boys honoring? What values of Diana? The values of humanity, of accessibility? Surely they are honoring their mother, so how does their present dispute honor their mother?"
Who would have thought when the brothers announced the project in 2017 that more than four years later, following a killer pandemic that continues to keep England locked down, the Duke of Cambridge and the Duke of Sussex would be living on different continents and barely speaking to each other?
To recap, Harry and his biracial American wife, the former Meghan Markle, stunned his family and Britain by abruptly quitting their royal roles and moving to America in 2020. A year later, in March 2021, they told Oprah Winfrey in a TV interview that they did so because they were fed up with racism in the British media and in the royal family. Harry said he wanted to protect Meghan, who became suicidal from the pressure.
William was so cross about what Harry has said about the royals in public that he uncharacteristically spoke out himself, sternly declaring to a reporter, "We're very much not a racist family."
The Diana statue was conceived years before, to mark the 20th anniversary of her death and to celebrate the "positive impact" of her legacy. William and Harry chose sculptor Ian Rank-Broadley, whose portrait of Queen Elizabeth II appears on British coins, for the commission, funded largely by donations from Diana's many famous friends.
Then the pandemic delayed the installation in the Sunken Garden, one of Diana's favorite spots at the palace where she lived the last years of her life (and where Harry and Meghan announced their engagement in November 2017). Now the statue is being unveiled on what would have been Diana's 60th birthday.
The brothers are expected to deliver separate speeches about their mother. Will they display some of the tensions that have disturbed their formerly close relationship since Harry married Meghan in May 2018?
Lacey does not anticipate that. Like other royal children, the brothers grew up in the public eye and know how to mask their emotions when necessary – as both did when they were just 15 and 12 and walked behind their mother's coffin in her funeral cortege to Westminster Abbey.
This may be another one of those times, Lacey says, noting that William and Harry are "very PR savvy."
"Their mother was an enormous influence on them, so I am sure they are thinking very hard about what this event means," Lacey says. "They will want to mark the unveiling with something about their (fraternal) relationship in the future, but how they will say it or communicate this to us? It will be some sort of gesture that conveys meaning of what their mother meant to them and what she stood for."
He thinks "the omens are good" that this mutual desire to pay proper homage to their mother could start the healing of the rift between them. Their Spencer relations could also help bring them together again, he says.
"The fury and bad temper remains the essence of the problem," Lacey says. "But the best way to pay homage to their mother is to create some sort of mutually tolerant relationship."
Lacey says he's interviewed mutual friends of both and finds they aren't taking sides. He says they sympathize with both brothers' positions – William defending the family and the monarchy and Harry defending his wife.
"Love versus duty. This is what makes it so painful," Lacey wrote in the Daily Mail over the weekend. "The friends commiserate with each other over the tragedy they are witnessing, and they frequently discuss how to heal the breach – though with an increasing sense of despair."
Meanwhile, the statue, which is already in the Sunken Garden concealed in a large black box, according to photographs in the British media, will be visited privately by William, his wife, Kate, and their children, Prince George, who turns 8 next month, Princess Charlotte, 6, and Prince Louis, 3, according to multiple reports in the British media.
After the official unveiling, the statue is likely to become a new destination for Diana lovers.
"It's the 'Diana-fication' of the monarchy," Lacey says. "(The Sunken Garden) will be a new center of pilgrimage and Kensington Palace will be a new destination" for royal fans.
Prince Harry says he's on 'different path' than brother Prince William in candid ITV interview
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Harry arrived back in Britain alone last Friday and is quarantining at Frogmore Cottage near Windsor Castle where the queen has been living. Having just given birth to their second child, Lilibet "Lili" Diana, earlier this month, Meghan is staying home in Santa Barbara County with the baby and son Archie, 2.
William and Harry are not in a good place right now, as Harry himself acknowledged in an ITV interview during his and Meghan's tour of South Africa in October 2019. But Lacey notes what Harry said then was largely conciliatory.
"We’re brothers, we’ll always be brothers," Harry said. "We’re certainly on different paths at the moment. But I’ll always be there for him and, as I know, he’ll always be there for me. We don’t see each other as much as we used to because we’re so busy, but I love him dearly.”
It's painful to contemplate, Lacey says, that Princess Diana would have shut down this quarrel immediately. But she's no longer around to "knock their heads together."
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https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/entertainment/celebrities/2021/06/30/can-princess-diana-statue-unveiling-repair-prince-harry-william-rift/5371889001/
2021-06-30 14:14:44Z
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