Prince William and Prince Harry Were “Always Very Different” and Princess Diana “Understood That”

The brothers have been locked in an ongoing feud for years.

Princess Diana, Prince Harry, and Prince William.Credit: 

Getty

Perhaps it doesn’t need to be said that brothers Prince William and Prince Harry—who have been locked in a years-long rift that shows no signs of stopping—are very different people. That’s true of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex not just as adults, but going all the way back to their childhood, according to their mother Princess Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell.

Burrell, who worked for the former Princess of Wales up until her death on August 31, 1997, told Marie Claire, “My fondest memory of Harry is when he used to build snowmen in the gardens of Windsor and Highgrove with my boys,” referring to sons Alexander and Nicholas. Harry, he remembered, was “a generous and sensitive boy” and “kind.”

“He would like nothing better than to give my boys a ‘Pink Granny’ or a ‘Blue Granny,’” Burrell said. Harry called banknotes “Grannys” since his grandmother Queen Elizabeth’s face was on them. “Now, you’d prefer a ‘Pink Granny,’ because that was a £50 note, and that’s what he called it—it had his Granny’s face on it. So now if anyone ever offers you a pink or a blue Granny, definitely take the ‘Pink Granny.’”

Burrell added on behalf of Casino.org that Harry “used to give out notes to my boys so they could save for a PlayStation or something.” But William, he said, “wouldn’t have done that, because William would be saving his money for something important.”

“I remember Harry riding his chopper bike through the estate at Highgrove, coming down to play football with my boys, and William arriving in his model Aston Martin car,” Burrell said. “Harry would have holes in his jeans, and William would be immaculately dressed.”

Of their ongoing feud, royal biographer Ingrid Seward, who personally knew Diana, said, “I think she’d be very sad and would do her very best to pull them together.”

“I think she’d be very sad, but not surprised,” Seward also told Hello!. “They were always very different, and she understood that. But what would really upset her is the fact that they are the only two people in the world who know what it’s like to be in their situation.”

“The one thing that still unites them is the compassion and empathy they inherited from her,” she continued. “They always fought, they scrapped like boys do, but I don’t think if Diana had been alive they would ever have fallen out to such an extent. I don’t think it would have happened, because Diana would have intervened.”

“As a mother, she was absolutely fantastic,” said Seward, who is also the editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine. “And, as she always said, the boys were her life.” According to Seward, Diana described William as “the sensitive one” and Harry was one who “would just skim through life.”

“They were her life, and maybe she sometimes smothered them,” Seward said, “but I think that’s totally understandable, as someone in her situation, because that’s really what she had—her boys.”