Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, has described the guilt and grief he felt as a child while walking outside Kensington Palace after his mother Diana’s death.
He said he cried only once during that period, and he and Prince William were unable to show any emotion when they met grieving members of the public.
He was speaking in a TV interview, to be aired on Sunday in the UK, set up to promote his memoir, Spare, which has exposed the rift between the brothers, and details how he and his wife, Meghan, stepped back from royal life.
In Spare, Prince Harry also makes a series of accusations and revelations aimed at his family, including William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales.
Prince Harry said he cried once after his mother’s death — at her burial.
“Everyone knows where they were and what they were doing the night my mother died,” he said.
“I cried once, at the burial, and you know I go into detail about how strange it was and how actually there was some guilt that I felt, and I think William felt as well, by walking around the outside of Kensington Palace.”
Prince Harry described feeling the mourners’ tears on their hands when he shook them.
“There were 50,000 bouquets of flowers to our mother and there we were shaking people’s hands, smiling,” he said.
“I’ve seen the videos, right, I looked back over it all. And the wet hands that we were shaking, we couldn’t understand why their hands were wet, but it was all the tears that they were wiping away.”
He added that he and Prince William were unable to show any emotion as they met the mourners.
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“Everyone thought and felt like they knew our mum and the two closest people to her, the two most loved people by her, were unable to show any emotion in that moment,” he said.
Spare is dedicated to Diana — who died in a car crash in Paris when Prince Harry was 12 — Meghan, and their children Archie and Lili.
In the book, Prince Harry says he thinks he was unable to cry in public because of his family's preference for not showing emotion.
"I disliked the touch of those hands. What's more, I disliked how they made me feel: guilty," he wrote.
"Why was there all that crying from people when I neither cried nor had cried? I wanted to cry, and I had tried, because my mother's life had been so sad ... but I couldn't ... not a drop.
"Perhaps I had learnt too well, had absorbed too thoroughly the family maxim that crying was never an option — never."
In clips of an interview promoting his book with Good Morning America, Prince Harry said his mother would have been saddened by her sons’ fractured relationship.
He writes that had Meghan placed her hands on the grave of Diana and asked for guidance.
The book also includes several stories involving clashes between the brothers and their wives.
Harry: The Interview will be broadcast at 9pm GMT on ITV1 and ITVX on Sunday.
