Always remembered. Prince William and Prince Harry have carried on Princess Diana’s legacy since she died on August 31, 1997. The young royals have stewarded the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and have given back to humanitarian charities like their famous mom once did.
William and Harry were 15 and 12, respectively, when the Princess of Wales died at age 36 after sustaining injuries in a car crash in Paris. Since then, they’ve fondly looked back at the time they shared with her through the years.
In 2017, the brothers commissioned a statue to commemorate what would have been the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death. It wasn’t for another four years, however, that the statue was officially unveiled.
“Today, on what would have been our mother’s 60th birthday, we remember her love, strength and character – qualities that made her a force for good around the world, changing countless lives for the better,” the dukes said in a joint statement in July 2021 as they reunited at Kensington Palace in London for the special occasion. “Every day, we wish she were still with us, and our hope is that this statue will be seen forever as a symbol of her life and her legacy Thank you to Ian Rank-Broadley, Pip Morrison and their teams for their outstanding work, to the friends and donors who helped make this happen, and to all those around the world who keep our mother’s memory alive.”
Both of the princes have made it their mission to preserve their mother’s legacy, even through the next generation of royals. In May 2015, William and wife Duchess Kate welcomed their second child, Charlotte Elizabeth Diana, and six years later, Harry paid tribute to their mother with the arrival of his own daughter, Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor.
“Lili is named after her great-grandmother, Her Majesty The Queen, whose family nickname is Lilibet,” a statement on Harry and Meghan Markle‘s Archewell website read in June 2021. “Her middle name, Diana, was chosen to honor her beloved late grandmother, The Princess of Wales.”
Though their mother isn’t around to meet her grandchildren, both William and Harry have ensured that their kids know how special Diana was. During the 2017 HBO documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, the Duke of Cambridge noted that he often tells his kids — Prince George, Charlotte and Prince Louis — about their late grandma.
“We’ve got more photos up around the house of her, and we talk about her a bit and stuff,” he noted. “And it’s hard because obviously Catherine didn’t know her, so she cannot really provide that level of detail. I do regularly, putting George and Charlotte to bed, talk about her, and just try to remind them that there are two grandmothers — there were two grandmothers in their lives. And it’s important they know who she was and that she existed.”
Scroll down to see more of the brothers’ most touching quotes about Diana through the years: