Prince William and Princess Diana's 'Misbehaving' Looks Caught on Camera

Side-by-side footage of Prince William and Princess Diana has gone viral on social media after eagle-eyed fans noted the uncanny similarities between mother and son in archive clips.

William's physical resemblance to Diana has become a subject of debate on social media in recent months after the publication of Prince Harry's memoir, Spare, in which he said his brother's "famous" similarity to his mother was "fading" with his advancing age.

Posted to video-sharing platform TikTok by the account Remembering Diana, a clip comparing footage of Princess Diana at a New York fashion event in 1995 has been edited alongside one of William at the Royal Air Force centenary celebration at Westminster Abbey in 2018, with the caption: "Why do they look like they have been caught misbehaving."

The prince and princess are shown mirroring one another's movements of looking up, breaking into a smile and then looking sharply down again.

The video has been viewed over 800,000 times on the social media platform and received in excess of 32,000 likes and 600 comments, many of which voice agreement with the pair's highlighted similarities.

"They are like twins, mother and son," wrote one TikTok user.

"The smirk, the smile and the eyes are the same," posted another, with a further adding: "William has SO many of his Mumʻs mannerisms!......I can see her in his face and expressions."

Other posts make reference to the comments made by Harry in his memoir, with one reading: "It makes me kind of sad that Harry said what he did in his book. Both brothers have her [Diana's] spirit—William just looks more like her."

Harry made his comments in the context of meeting in 2021 between himself, William and King Charles III (when he was still Prince of Wales), after a strained period which saw the brothers partially estranged when the Prince of Sussex and Meghan Markle moved to the U.S.

Harry wrote in Spare: "All at once something shifted inside of me. I looked at Willy, really looked at him, maybe for the first time since we were boys.

"I took it all in: his familiar scowl, which had always been his default in dealings with me; his alarming baldness, more advanced than my own; his famous resemblance to Mummy, which was fading with time. With age. In some ways he was my mirror, in some ways he was my opposite. My beloved brother, my arch nemesis, how had that happened?"

Harry faced criticism for his harsh assessment of his brother and other family members in his book, including his father and his stepmother, Queen Camilla.

Despite this, the royal said in interviews promoting his memoir that he still felt "love" for William but that the pair had experienced a number of issues that were not previously known to the public.

"I love my father. I love my brother. I love my family. I will always do," he told ITV anchor Tom Bradby in January. "Nothing of what I've done in this book or otherwise has ever been to...any intention to harm them or hurt them."

William, and the royal family at large, have not made any public comment on Harry's book or it's contents.

The prince is due to be reunited with his family for the first time publicly since Spare's publication on May 6 where he will attend King Charles and Queen Camilla's coronation in London.

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.

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