After 25 yrs of Diana's death, William & Harry walk together once again behind Queen Elizabeth's coffin
London: Princes William and Harry, today, once again, walked together beside each other behind their grandmother Queen Elizabeth's coffin as they had followed their mother Princess Diana's casket 25 years ago in their boyhood.
In 1997, after 36-year-old Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris, William and Harry, aged 15 and 12, had walked in her funeral cortege through the streets of central London.
Today, on September 14, the brothers walked behind their father King Charles III, and the late queen's other children in a solemn procession from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall, where the queen's body will lie in state for four days until her funeral on Monday.
Charles's wife Camilla, the Queen Consort, William's wife Kate, Princess of Wales, and Harry's wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, travelled to the hall by car.
William and Harry's relationship has become strained in the last few years but they had been close before.
As they walked today in the full glare of the global media, the scene reminded of a time when they had walked in their mother's funeral procession.
Both brothers have spoken in the past of the lasting trauma they had endured after their mother's death and the long walk as they maintained a stoical demeanour despite the intense grief they were feeling.
"It was like I was outside my body, just walking along, doing what was expected of me, showing one-tenth of the emotion that everyone was showing," Harry revealed in a 2021 TV documentary series.
Harry said he had later used alcohol and drugs to numb the pain.
William said in 2017 that the shock of his mother's sudden death still lingered inside him.
"You never get over it. It's such an unbelievably big moment in your life that it never leaves you. You just learn to deal with it," he said in a TV programme.
Queen Elizabeth II, Britain's longest-serving monarch, breathed her last on September 8 at the age of 96. She died peacefully at Balmoral castle in Scotland, the royal family had said in a statement.
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