At 13, Prince William Felt 'Betrayed' as Princess Diana's Bombshell Interview Disclosed Family Secrets

Prince William faced a moment that would shake his world at the age of 13. His mother, Princess Diana, had done something that left him feeling betrayed and angry. In the year 1995, November, Diana gave a bombshell interview to BBC's Panorama. William watched the interview alone in his housemaster's study at school. What he saw and heard devastated him and scarred him deeply. His mother spoke openly about the troubles in her marriage to Prince Charles. She famously said there were "three of us in this marriage." She openly hinted at Charles' relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles.

She didn't just end it there and went on to admit her affair with James Hewitt. William couldn't comprehend what just happened on the interview, he was in shock and didn't know how to react. He thought his mother went too far. Diana called William an hour after the interview aired. The young prince refused to speak to her. He was too upset, too hurt by what she had done. Robert Lacey, a royal historian, describes the scene in his book. He wrote that when William's housemaster returned, he found the prince "slumped on the sofa, his eyes red with tears." The usually composed William had been pushed to his limit.

Lacey goes on to describe what happened next: "All hell broke loose. He [William] was furious... that she [Diana] had spoken badly of his father, that she had mentioned Hewitt... He started shouting and crying and, when she tried to put her arms around him, he shoved her away." This moment marked a turning point in William's relationship with his mother. He felt she had betrayed him and the royal family. 

The public airing of family secrets was too much for the teenage prince to bear. Diana was deeply affected by William's reaction. She confided in her faith healer, Simone Simmons, two days later. Diana told Simmons that William had been "so angry with her" and had "broken out in rage." She kept asking, "What have I done? What have I done to my children?" as per The Mirror. 

The next morning, William apologized to his mother and gave her flowers. That was a very sweet gesture but Diana could feel in her bones that something had changed and it couldn't be fixed now. William was young but was at the age where he could understand what was going on in his family. The disputes between Diana and Charles had a toll on William and Harry. Diana's interview was a pivotal moment in royal history. It led to Queen Elizabeth II advising Charles and Diana to divorce. Eventually, they got divorced in 1996, as per BBC. William said it "made a major contribution to making my parents' relationship worse" and criticized the BBC's handling of the situation.