Prince Harry still regrets his last phone call with his mother, Princess Diana. “If I’d known it was the last call with her, how different that conversation would’ve been,” he said. “And I’m the one that has to live with that.”
Harry, 42, spoke about his family in a GQ interview, including the rift with Prince William and his grief over his brother’s absence from his life. He wants to repair their relationship, even as he believes others want the estrangement to continue.
“I want it to work out,” he said. “And some people don’t want it to work out.”
He described family breakdown as something people regularly raise with him when discussing their own lives. He suggested that seeing the brothers find a way forward might help others navigate their own broken relationships.
His relationship with William, 44, and Catherine, Princess of Wales, remains fractured after his public accounts of royal life. Those included his and Meghan’s 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview, which included an allegation of racism against a senior royal, and his 2023 memoir, Spare.
Harry and Meghan, 45, returned to Britain from California in August with their children, Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5. They’ve since met with King Charles and Queen Camilla, but the brothers remain estranged.
“Look, scars stick around forever,” Harry said, before encouraging people to reconsider how they live with past hurts. He acknowledged that letting go becomes harder when those experiences still affect daily life.
His father’s cancer has also brought the possibility of losing another parent into focus. Asked whether Charles’s illness could be triggering after his mother’s sudden death, Harry replied: “Yes, but he’s getting better.”
Princess Diana died in a Paris car crash in August 1997, aged 36. Harry was 12. He said he’s considered the difference between losing someone suddenly and watching a loved one endure a long illness with time to say goodbye, and feels there’s no answer to which is harder.