How Prince Charles Reacted to Princess Diana's Death

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In the fourth episode of The Crown's sixth and final season, the royal family—and the world—learns of the news of Princess Diana's death. Key to the royal family's reaction, of course, is Prince Charles himself. In the show, Charles, played by Dominic West, dissolves into tears when he learns of his ex-wife's passing. The episode then sees him walking, alone, near Balmoral, speaking on the phone to Camilla, before he wakes up his sons to tell them the news.

But how did the real Prince Charles (now King Charles) react to Princess Diana's tragic passing?

"He was absolutely distraught. He fell apart," Tina Brown, who wrote The Diana Chronicles, said Diana: 7 Days That Shook the Windsors. "He knew, instantly, that this was going to be a terrible thing, that...he will be blamed, that they will be blamed, for the death of Diana."

In King: The Life of Charles III, Christopher Andersen says Charles was "ashen and trembling" when he heard the news of Diana's death. "He let out a cry of pain that was so spontaneous and came from the heart. Palace staff rushed over to Charles’ room and found him collapsed in an armchair, weeping uncontrollably."

Like the Netflix show depicts, Charles let his sons sleep, and as they woke up, he told them the news of their mother's passing. "He wasn’t great at showing emotions under normal circumstances, how could he be expected to show them in such a crisis?" Harry writes in Spare of that fateful morning of August 31, 1997. "But his hand did fall once more on my knee and he said: It’s going to be OK. That was quite a lot for him. Fatherly, hopeful, kind. And so very untrue."

In the Diana: 7 Days documentary, Harry said, "He was there for us. He was the one out of two left. And he tried to do his best and to make sure that we were protected and looked after. But he was going through the same grieving process as well."

That morning, the royal family then went to church at Crathie Kirk, near Balmoral.

That day Charles flew to Paris with Diana's sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes. Defying his mother Queen Elizabeth's wishes, Charles argued for the use of a royal plane. They went to the hospital, and then flew back with her body. As Anderson notes in The King, "I don’t think people realise how really stricken he was by her death. I interviewed the nurses in the hospital who saw him when he came into the room and saw her body for the first time, and he looked like he’d been hit in the face." In the car to the airport, the then-Prince reportedly said to the British ambassador to France, Michael Jay, "It all seems unreal."

The use of the royal plane was notable. "This was a surprising and brave move. He was an ex-husband and had no right to be there other than as the father of her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. Charles wanted to take the royal flight to Paris, but the Queen wouldn’t allow it. Charles fought harder for Diana than he had ever fought for her in her lifetime," journalist Richard Kay said in Diana: 7 Days. He ended up flying with Sarah and Jane on No. 32 Squadron plane, and had Diana's coffin draped with the royal standard.

As the New York Times reported at the time, "Diana lost her right to be called 'Her Royal Highness' as part of the divorce settlement last year, so she is theoretically not part anymore of the inner family entitled to a royal funeral. But as the mother of a future king, her place in the Windsor dynastic line is secure, and the Prince of Wales's decision to bring the body back on a royal plane today was seen as confirmation of that."

Charles quickly returned to Balmoral to be with his sons; they would return to London a few days later, where they would view tributes to Diana left outside Kensington Palace.

Seven days after her death, Prince Charles, his sons Princes William and Harry, his father Prince Philip, and Diana's brother Charles Spencer walked in the procession at Diana's funeral.

"My mother had just died and I had to walk a long way behind her coffin, surrounded by thousands of people watching me while millions more did on television," Harry would tell Newsweek years later. "I don’t think any child should be asked to do that, under any circumstances. I don’t think it would happen today."

At Diana's funeral, Charles didn't speak, but his former brother-in-law Charles Spencer delivered an eulogy, saying "I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative and loving way in which [Diana] was steering these young men, that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition, but can sing openly as you planned."

The Prince's first public remarks following Diana's death were a few weeks later, when Prince Charles shared "how particularly moved and enormously comforted my children and I were, and indeed still are, by the public response to Diana’s death. It has been really quite remarkable and indeed in many ways overwhelming."

He added, "I can’t tell you how enormously grateful and touched both the boys and myself are." He also spoke of his sons saying, "Also, I am unbelievably proud of the children," and how they managed "with quite enormous courage and the greatest possible dignity."

Charles said, "They are coping extraordinarily well, but obviously Diana’s death has been an enormous loss as far as they are concerned, and I will always feel that loss."

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