Prince Harry and Prince William adopted for almost a quarter of a decade a “secret code” to be used when they wanted to be really heard and believed by each other, the Duke of Sussex claimed in his memoir Spare. The Prince of Wales recurred to this code in April 2021, while holding a private meeting in Windsor with the Duke of Sussex, Harry wrote. The code is particularly poignant as it refers to William and Harry’s beloved late mother, Princess Diana.
In his memoir, the California-based royal said his brother, who referred to him as “Harold”, told him after the funeral of Prince Philip: “Harold you must listen to me, I just want you to be happy, Harold, I swear, I swear on mummy’s life”.
Harry added: “He stopped. I stopped. Pa stopped. He’d gone there, he’d used the secret code, the universal password, ever since we were boys those three words were to be used only in times of extreme crisis, ‘on mummy’s life’.”
The Duke went on to explain that the code would normally be used “when one of us needed to be heard, to be believed quickly, for times when nothing else would do”.
While it “stopped me cold”, however, Harry revealed on that poignant occasion the code “didn’t work”, adding: “I simply didn’t believe him”.
Speaking to ITV’s Tom Bradby in January, as he was promoting his tell-all book, Harry commented on the excerpt saying: “It is heartbreaking. This whole thing is completely, not just unnecessary, it’s incredibly sad. But there’s a – there’s a way through it, there’s a way out of it. And that’s what I’m focused on now.”
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