Prince Harry has opened up on losing his mum Princess Diana when he was just 12-years-old.

The royal talked candidly about his own grief as he urged children and young people to speak about their emotions. He lost his mother, the Princess of Wales, following her tragic death in 1997. Prince Harry spoke about the impact of her death as part of his role as global ambassador for Scotty’s Little Soldiers, which supports youngsters who have lost parents in the military.

He revealed: “It’s so easy as a kid to think or convince yourself….you convince yourself that the person you’ve lost wants you, or you need to be sad for as long as possible to prove to them that they are missed. But then there’s this realisation of, no, they must want me to be happy.”

My Lady Jane: how to watch free and all we know about Amazon’s Bridgerton rival

Prince Harry gave an emotional interview on his grief ( 
Image:
Scotty’s Little Soldiers)
The 39-year-old has recently shared how Diana’s death was handled within his family led to him bottling up his emotions and eventually seeking therapy. Prince Harry shared: “That’s the hardest thing, especially for kids, I think, which is, ‘I don’t want to talk about it because it will make me sad, but once realising that if I do talk about it, I’m celebrating their life, then actually, things become easier’…as opposed to this ‘I’m just not going to talk about it, and that’s the best form of coping’, when in fact it’s not.

“It can be for a period of time…you can’t suppress it for ever. It’s not sustainable. And will eat away at you inside. No-one wants to in the position where they are forced to talk about the very thing they don’t want to talk about, especially when every defence mechanism in your mind, nervous system and everything else is saying ‘do not go there’.”

The emotional interview was filmed in May during his last visit to the UK. Prince Harry opened up to Nikki Scott, who is the founder of Scotty’s Little Soldiers. She also shared the devastating moment she told her five-year-old son that his father Cpl Lee Scott had been killed in Afghanistan.

Princess Diana died when Harry was 12-years-old ( 
Image:
Getty Images)

Prince Harry didn’t want to speak about his mother’s death for years ( 
Image:
Daily Mirror)

Her own personal tragedy inspired Nikki to set up the charity. The interview with Prince Harry has been released in the lead up to Armed Forces Day this weekend. It aims to highlight the ongoing needs of bereaved military children in the UK. Prince Harry told Nikki: “What you’ve done is incredible. It is truly inspirational. I’m really honoured and privileged to be part of Scotty’s now and I really look forward to us doing everything we can to bring in more people, more interest, raise more funds and be able to get the message out there to get more kids the support they so desperately need.”

During the 20th anniversary year of the death of Diana, he had revealed he spent nearly 20 years “not thinking” about his mother’s death and eventually got help after two years of “total chaos”. The Duke of Sussex has also shared how he and Prince William were unable to show emotion as they met with the crowds outside Kensington Palace in the days after Diana’s death. He told ITV ’s Tom Bradby he had cried when his mother was buried, but did not cry again.