It was a Royal tradition meticulously observed for decades – members of the Firm should always preserve a ‘stiff upper lip’ and avoid any public displays of emotion.
Yet Prince William, who tragically lost his dear mother, Princess Diana, at just 15 years old, has made a conscious decision to break away from this archaic mould.
His deliberate embrace of emotion has now been showcased by new, heartbreaking footage of the future King brought to tears as he spoke to a grieving mother whose husband took his own life just days after their one-year-old son passed away.
In a profoundly moving conversation to observe World Mental Health Day, the Prince of Wales’s voice broke, and he squeezed his eyes shut as Rhian Mannings told him how she desperately wished her late husband, Paul, had spoken to her about how he was feeling.
‘I think that’s what the hardest thing is… we would have been OK,’ she said.
William’s disdain for the Royal stoicism, however, is not unusual. Instead, it has a striking resemblance to the compassion of his late mother and has also been accepted by several other Royals in their hour of greatest need.
Typically referred to as the ‘People’s Princess’, Diana became loved globally for her extraordinary ability to connect with people and her heartwarming kindness.
When the Princess of Wales visited Ashworth Hospice in Liverpool in 1992, she became overcome with emotion, with powerful shots showing her fighting back tears as she left the building.
However, while she was no doubt moved by her visit, the events surrounding that day were subsequently suggested to have had a profound impact on her outward tears.
The visit came just days after Andrew Morton’s incendiary book, Diana: Her True Story, was published to the world, in which Diana herself described her mental health struggles and indeed the breakdown of her marriage to King Charles.
Last year, former Palace press secretary Dickie Arbiter, who worked for the Royal Family from 1998 to 2000, revealed that Diana had experienced acute anxiety surrounding the press coverage of the book, which sold more than five million copies that year.
Speaking to The Telegraph, he recalled: ‘Diana called me at 5 am asking what she should do, and I told her it couldn’t be undone now.’
He also advised the Princess to keep a low profile ahead of her visit to Ashworth Hospice, adding: ‘[I told her to] just to keep schtum, not answer her phone, and I would accompany her on her next engagement two days later to keep people at bay.’
Then, in December of the following year, Diana was photographed arriving for a gala concert at The Equinox in Leicester Square, appearing distraught once more.
The late Princess declared her retirement from formal responsibilities a month later. The breakup of her marriage to King Charles was to be the culmination of a year that was extremely emotional.
Now, more than 40 years on, Diana’s son seems to have echoed his dear mother’s human touch and understanding spirit.
When a young Prince William, accompanied by his 12-year-old brother Harry, walked behind their mother’s coffin following her tragic death, the grieving young boys never surrendered to their emotions publicly and seemed remarkably composed.
In an interview conducted in 2023, Prince Harry announced that both he and William were unable to display any emotion when they met the expansive sea of mourners who had assembled at Kensington Palace to commemorate Diana.
In a clip from ITV’s Harry: The Interview, he told presenter Tom Bradby: ‘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’.
But when William spoke to grieving Ms Mannings about her late husband, Paul, at her home in Cardiff in an interview broadcast this week, his feelings were laid bare as the Prince struggled to conceal his anguish during their devastating discussion.
At one point, Ms Mannings, who lost her husband to suicide just five days after their one-year-old son George passed away, gently asked the Royal: ‘Are you OK?’
Nodding his head and holding her hand, the Prince responded: ‘I’m sorry. It’s just it’s hard to ask these questions that I… ‘
‘No, it’s fine. It’s just you’ve got children,’ Mrs Mannings told him gently.
‘I know, I know… It is…’ the royal trailed off.
‘It’s hard… And you’ve experienced loss yourself,’ she reassured him.
‘It’s ok,’ William responded.
‘Life can throw you these awful curve balls, but by talking about it, you know, having hope, you can continue,’ she added.
William, who by now has managed to pull himself together, agreed, saying: ‘The best way to prevent suicide is to talk about it. Talk about it early, talk about it with your loved ones, those you trust, your friends. So thank you for talking about it.’
Like father, like son, King Charles has also appeared to have become less fearful about showcasing his real emotions publicly in recent years.
An extremely striking image displayed a visibly emotional King Charles watching from the Royal Box after his horse, named ‘Desert Hero’, bred by the late Queen, won the King George V Stakes at the Royal Ascot in 2023.
The King appeared to brush away a tear as he watched his first win as monarch – and the first without his beloved mother. He also appeared to find it hard to control his emotions as he collected the trophy, knocking it over as Camilla looked on.
Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams said that the win had been a ‘deeply emotional experience’ for Charles because it was ‘an event which his mother loved so much’.
Then, this summer, King Charles was again moved to tears by the powerful first-hand testimony of VJ veterans as they spoke at a service of remembrance to honour 80 years since the end of the Second World War.
Charles and Camilla seemed to be visibly emotional after Captain Yavar Abbas went ‘briefly off-script’ to salute ‘my brave King’ for attending despite ongoing cancer treatment.
The 104-year-old said that he himself had been ‘rid of it for 25 years and counting’, before reading an excerpt from his war diary, which he penned while serving in the 11th Sikh regiment of the British Indian Army.
Although Camilla’s eyes were red with tears, the guests applauded his remarks.
Certainly, while the ‘stiff upper lip’ mentality has traditionally been adopted by the royals in the face of personal loss, the King has been a lot more open in sharing his emotions, particularly following the death of his mother, body language expert Judi James previously told The Mail.
‘The Queen led the country through the war, where stoicism and emotional resilience might have been vital for survival,’ Judi told FEMAIL.
‘Charles has inherited a country coming out of an epidemic and also a country much more in touch with the subject of mental health, meaning emotional displays might create empathy with his public.’
Clearly, Queen Camilla also seems to have embraced a departure from the traditional stoicism generally favoured historically.
She was observed crying last year as a D-Day veteran courageously described the tragedy of losing his best friend on the Normandy beaches.
Charles and Camilla joined the Prince of Wales, leading UK politicians and veterans at a major event in Portsmouth, where the King gave his first public address since being diagnosed with cancer.
He told the crowd: ‘The stories of courage, resilience and solidarity we have heard today and throughout our lives cannot fail to move us, to inspire us and to remind us of what we owe to that great wartime generation.’
The first time the late Queen Elizabeth II cried in public was on December 11, 1997, in Portsmouth, when her beloved HMY Britannia was decommissioned.
For royal observers, who had grown so used to her stern demeanour, it was a startling sight.
Dressed in an all-red ensemble, a photo from the event shows Her Majesty brushing a tear from her cheek as she said goodbye to her luxury yacht when the costs of the ageing vehicle became too great to maintain.
The Monarch had been the target of intense public criticism only a month earlier for keeping a tight-lipped stance after the passing of Princess Diana, her former daughter-in-law.
While the Queen seldom put a foot wrong during her 70-year reign, her response to Diana’s demise the week before was one of the rare episodes most experts now view as a mistake.
Later, Tony Blair took credit for convincing the Queen to come back to London and honour the princess in public, meeting the public’s demand.
Historian Dominic Sandbrook said of Blair’s intervention: ‘He understood this, the new sentimentalism that this wasn’t a sort of stiff-upper-lip 1950s country anymore.
‘That was the sort of ritual display of empathy, which he was very good at, and the Queen wasn’t very good at, that was an important part of our political culture that’s becoming.’
In keeping with a shift towards more displays of public compassion, the late Queen also showed deep sadness on Remembrance Sunday in 2002.
Tears were seen gathering on the Monarch’s cheeks when she visited the Field of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey.
Sat alongside the then Duchess of Cornwall and Duchess of Cambridge, the Queen was overwhelmed by emotion during the service, where she and other members of the Royal Family paid their respects to those who had fallen in the service of war efforts.
The 2002 event was poignant for the royal as she took on her late mother’s role at the ceremony, held in memory of Britain’s war heroes.
Her Majesty was also seen brushing away a tear almost two decades later during the Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph in 2019.
Public displays of emotion are also not an unfamiliar concept to Kate, Princess of Wales, who in 2023 was captured becoming extremely teary while watching Tunisia’s Jabeur take on the Czech Republic’s Markéta Vondrousova for the Venus Rosewater Dish at Wimbledon.
Throughout the match, the royal, who is a huge tennis fan and also patron of the All England Club, cheered, applauded and grinned as the Czech player became the first-ever unseeded Grand Slam champion.
Kate also seemed to empathise with Jabeur, who was openly crying after losing the match – her second Wimbledon final loss in a row.
And the princess, too, wiped tears from her eyes as she watched the conclusion of the match from the Royal Box.
When Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, passed away early at Windsor Castle in April 2021, aged 99, his funeral service had to be scaled down due to coronavirus restrictions.
Of the 30 mourners who gathered to commemorate the late Philip at St George’s Chapel, there was one extremely touching moment captured in the pews – his beloved granddaughter, Princess Beatrice, was seen fighting back tears.
Looked up to as the patriarch of his family, Prince Philip became a mentor for younger royals who continued to turn to him over the years and was said to have shared a close bond with all of his grandchildren.
Beatrice was so overcome with sorrow in a heartbreaking moment that was recorded during the memorial service that she had to conceal her teary face with the order of service. This gave her a quick opportunity to gather herself away from the cameras.
Following the death of Prince Philip, Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh, broke down in tears as she opened up about his sad demise during an emotional BBC interview.
Becoming extremely tearful when discussing her dear father-in-law, the Duchess said that the late Duke of Edinburgh’s passing had left a ‘giant-sized hole in our lives’ during an interview with Naga Munchetty at St James’s Palace in June of the same year.
In 2014, the Duchess cried when she returned to Frimley Park Hospital and reunited with the midwife who saved her life during her terrifying delivery to Lady Louise in 2003.
The Duchess, then 38, had suffered an acute placental abruption and was reportedly just 15 minutes away from dying in the emergency room, with her husband Edward unable to attend because he was in Mauritius for an official visit.
However, she managed to give birth to Louise, who weighed just 4lb 9oz, after an emergency C-section, but she had to be moved away from Sophie almost immediately for specialist care.
Complications from her early birth left Lady Louise with esotropia – a condition which means that both eyes do not look in the same direction – and reportedly ‘completely reshaped’ her mother’s personality.
The Duchess wept as she met the Head of Midwifery, Ms Price, who was attending the delivery of both her children.
She said: ‘I want to say well done to everyone for your fundraising and for all the work you do to help thousands of families – your service is the difference between life and death.’
When the late Queen tragically passed away aged 96 in September 2022, the world watched with bated breath to see how the Royal Family would publicly react to the death of the longest-reigning monarch in British history.
Following the State funeral at Westminster Abbey, Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, was seen to be extremely upset at the Committal Service in Windsor. She even had a trail of tears visible on her cheek, and as thousands of mourners lay flowers outside of Balmoral Castle to pay their respects and commemorate the late Queen, Zara Tindall also seemed visibly emotional as she tearfully surveyed the sea of tributes.
Likewise, for Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, maintaining a traditional Royal face of endurance proved almost impossible during the funeral of his wife of 64 years, the Duchess of Kent, held at Westminster Cathedral last month.
While the 89-year-old put on a dignified and sombre display as he strode behind the coffin, one special picture poignantly caught the anguish on the Duke’s face as he watched his wife’s coffin being carried away by pallbearers.
After the image of the Duke circulated online, it was followed by an extraordinary outpouring of empathy, as people sent their most profound condolences to the Royal Family while expressing how sorrowful the image made them feel.
It seems that gone are the days of the Royals driving an emotional space between the people and the Royal Family, as they instead strive to showcase that emotions can and should be assumed.
Indeed, as Prince William himself once stressed, while the British stiff upper lip can be ‘great’ and sometimes required ‘when times are really hard’, a balance, as was so poignantly demonstrated by the late Princess Diana.
‘We’ve got to relax a little bit and be able to talk about our emotions because we’re not robots, ‘ the future King said during a frank discussion caught in a BBC documentary, A Royal Team Talk: Tackling Mental Health.
He is a compassionate man who makes an excellent husband, parent, and future king.
Princess Diana described how the young Prince William would comfort her by pushing tissues under the bathroom door and saying, ‘It will be alright, mummy, it will be alright. I’ll look after you,’ when she cried after arguments with Prince Charles.
This anecdote emphasises the close bond she shared with her son and the complicated emotional burden she bore.
A strong monarch protects and empowers his subjects because he knows that leading them to a future of harmony and prosperity will be his greatest legacy, not controlling them. When the time comes, William will be a great king.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 