A new revelation about Princess Diana’s private fears for Prince William and Prince Harry has emerged, shedding fresh light on her emotional state in the final months of her life.
According to her close friend Rosa Monckton, the late Princess of Wales secretly regretted giving her explosive 1995 BBC Panorama interview because of the lasting impact she believed it had on her sons.
Diana travelled to Greece with Monckton shorty before her tragic death in August 1997, and during that quiet getaway, she reportedly opened up about her deepest concern: the effect the interview had on William and Harry.
Speaking to PEOPLE Magazine, Monckton said: "She told me she regretted doing it because of the harm she thought it had done to her boys."
The interview, conducted by Martin Bashir, became one of the most infamous moments in royal history after Diana declared there were “three of us in this marriage” and questioned then-Prince Charles’s suitability for the throne.
But it later became engulfed in scandal when it emerged Bashir used falsified documents and deceptive tactics to gain Diana’s trust.
Monckton recalled Diana’s vulnerability at the time, adding: “She was frail, and that made her susceptible to Bashir”, and explained that Diana had no support system because “she kept it all in”.
"He’d told her she couldn’t talk about it. She cut people out because of that.”
Dyson found Bashir used “deceitful behaviour” in a “serious breach” of the BBC’s guidelines and rejected large portions of Bashir’s testimony as “incredible, unreliable and, in some cases, dishonest.”
Prince William responded with a searing public statement, saying the interview deepened his mother’s suffering: "It brings indescribable sadness to know that the BBC's failures contributed significantly to her fear, paranoia and isolation."
"It is my firm view that this Panorama programme holds no legitimacy and should never be aired again,” he added.
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