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Since his exit from the monarchy in 2020 and move to the U.S. with Meghan Markle, Prince Harry has increasingly opened up about his mental health and how the death of his mother, when he was just 12, significantly impacted his emotional development.
In his new Netflix docuseries, titled Heart of Invictus, the prince referenced his own response to the trauma he experienced as a child in the context of discussions about his service within the armed forces and with veterans who have also developed their own ways of overcoming mental and physical adversity.
August 2023 marks the 26th anniversary of Princess Diana's death at the age of 36 from injuries she sustained in a Paris car crash while being pursued at speed by paparazzi.
Here, Newsweek looks at all the references Prince Harry made to his mother in Heart of Invictus.
'I Didn't Really Talk About It'
Over the five episodes of the Heart of Invictus series, the mental health and wellbeing of the veterans taking part in the Invictus Games was given as much, if not more, prominence than the physical ability.
Throughout, Prince Harry placed the experiences of others within the context of his own experience, noting that his mental health journey began long before his service in the Armed Forces, though he was not aware of how significant this was until after he'd been to war.
In the show's second episode titled "Invisible Injuries," Harry noted how his second tour of Afghanistan in 2012 caused him to reflect on how he emotionally handled the death of his mother, 15 years earlier.
"My tour of Afghanistan in 2012, flying Apaches, somewhere after that there was an unraveling and the trigger to me was actually returning from Afghanistan and the stuff that was coming up was from 1997 from the age of 12," he said.
"Losing my mum at such a young age, the trauma that I had I was never really aware of. It was never discussed, I didn't really talk about it and I supressed it like most youngsters would have done, but when it all came fizzing out, I was bouncing off the walls.
"Like, what is going on here? I'm now feeling everything as opposed to being numb. The biggest struggle for me was no one around me really could help.
"I didn't have that support structure, that network or that expert advice to identify what was actually going on with me.
"Unfortunately, like most of us, the first time you really consider therapy is when you're lying on the floor in the fetal position probably wishing that you dealt with some of this stuff previously. And that's what I really want to change."
'I Was Unable To Cry, I Was Unable To Feel'
In the fourth episode of the Heart of Invictus series titled "Group Therapy," Harry again looked back at the latent emotional outburst he experienced in the years after his mother's death.
In a conversation with the prince, Canadian naval veteran Darrell Ling described the impact of his service on his mental health, and how important learning to manage it has been, telling him: "It's like shaking a [soda] pop bottle and twisting the lid and [explosion] it's a mess. I don't want that to happen. I'm glad that you have been through this stuff and know how we feel."
"I can't pretend to know what you've been through but the reason why I was smiling when you talked about the [explosion] is because I had that," Harry responded, going on to note how his own experience was linked to his mother.
"I had that moment in my life where I didn't know about it, but because of the trauma of losing my mom when I was 12, for all those years I had no emotion. I was unable to cry, I was unable to feel.
"I didn't know it at the time and it wasn't until later on in my life at age 28 there was a circumstance that happened that the first few bubbles started coming out and suddenly it was like someone shook it and went [explosion] and then it was chaos."
"My emotions were sprayed all over the wall everywhere I went," he said. "I was like 'how the hell do I contain this, I've gone from nothing to everything, and I now need to get myself like a glass jar, and put myself in it leave the lid open, and my therapist said 'you choose what comes in and everything else bounces off.'"
The prince has become a vocal advocate for mental health coaching, signing on as the chief impact officer for the digital mental health coaching platform BetterUp in 2021.
In 2022, BetterUp partnered with the Invictus Games Foundation to offer its coaching services to the participants in the games which took place in The Netherlands.
This year's Invictus Games are scheduled to take place in Düsseldorf, Germany, beginning on September 9 and running through to September 16.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.
About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more