Diana, Princess of Wales, raised her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, with much love and expressions of that love. Such demonstration is unusual for the royal family. The queen and their father will likely hold great influence in their lives to understand their duties, and others will help.
As Jerry White, director of the Landmine Survivors Network in Washington, emerged from Kensington Palace after a meeting with Diana's staff the day before the funeral, he chanced upon a somber threesome--Prince Charles and his sons, William, 15, and Harry, almost 13, just arrived from Balmoral. One of Diana's bodyguards, recognizing White from Diana's recent trip to Bosnia, made the introductions. It was a brief meeting, but White was struck by how much William resembled his mother, both in looks and disposition. "His sweetness and mannerisms are like Diana's," White says. "He had a kind spirit and a kind smile. It was deja vu. His mother was in him."
White's is a common perception, one that Diana herself believed to be true. "When you discover you can give joy to people... there is nothing quite like it," she told The New Yorker. "William has begun to understand that, too. And I am hoping it will grow in him." As Earl Spencer made ringingly clear at the funeral, he and the rest of Diana's "blood family" will do all in their power to make her wishes for her children come true.
It will not be an easy task. As eloquent as Earl Spencer may have been, say royal observers, the fate of the boys--some say the monarchy--is coded into their royal DNA. "The only thing the royals have going for them now is William and Harry," says one royal expert, noting that some public opinion polls sug- gest that Britain's citizens would prefer to see the crown bypass Charles and go directly to William. With such high stakes, adds another royal correspon- dent, "The Spencers are not going to succeed in taking the boys over. William could be the next king, and however much he loves his uncle and his aunts [Diana's sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes], he knows what his destiny is. So the Queen and the Prince of Wales will be integral to his upbringing now."
That may not be as dire a sentence as some claim. While Charles, who has been described as the offspring of a remote mother and critical father, is jarringly stiff in public, he has a gentle side as well. He and the boys have read (Kipling's stories), ridden, fished, hunted and watched videos together. "They always used to say Diana was the tactile one, but privately Charles also was," says Brian Hoey, author of 13 books on the Windsors. "He used to kiss the boys good night and bathe them when they were little--which no father of the royal family has done in centuries."
The transition to Charles as primary caregiver was evident instantly. At the conclusion of Diana's burial on the Spencers' Althorp estate, Charles took the boys home with him to Highgrove. There, he pleaded with the media to give his children some privacy "so they can come to terms with their loss and prepare for the future." In an apparent change of heart, the British press seemed to agree; one newspaper, The Independent, vowed that it would never again carry photos of William and Harry in private situations. To help care for the boys, Charles also brought back Alexandra "Tiggy" Legge-Bourke, 31, their former nanny. Diana had little affection for Legge-Bourke (her mother is a lady-in-waiting to Princess Anne) and once reportedly was upset with her for calling them "my babies" and hugging them in public. But at this point, says Hoey, "Tiggy will be a fixture in the Prince of Wales's household for the foreseeable future." Also ready to help is Emilie van Cutsem, 51, the wife of one of Charles's oldest friends, millionaire landowner Hugh van Cutsem. According to many accounts, Emilie is a woman Diana resented, in part because Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles were said to meet secretly at the van Cut- sems' manor near Sandringham.
The short-term prospect for the boys is that they will resume school (William has already missed opening day). No matter their exalted titles, "adolescents hate to be different and hate to have attention on them," says Julie Stokes, director of Winston's Wish, a Gloucester counseling program for bereaved children. "Getting-back-to-normal rituals will help." For Harry, that means returning to Ludgrove, a Berkshire prep school where Janet Barber, wife of the headmaster, Gerald Barber, is expected to offer him a nurturing hand.
William, the better student of the two as well as a budding artist, will return to Eton, an exclusive school of 1,300 students where he shares the four-story ivy-covered Manor House with 49 other boys, aged 14 to 18. His housemaster, Andrew Gailey, 42, a man admired for his charm and scholarship, and Gailey's wife, Shauna, are expected to be very supportive of the young prince. The Gaileys, who reportedly helped William through his parents' divorce, are no strangers to pain. They lived through a scare 10 years ago when Shauna, who has fully recovered, was diagnosed with leukemia.
Also expected to rally around William at Eton are several close friends who came with him in 1995 from Ludgrove. They include Andrew Charlton, son of a solicitor with a banking corporation, and Johnny Richards, who shares Wil- liam's love of rugby. One close pal is Nicholas Knatchbull, a year older, who was reportedly put in Manor House specifically to provide William with a long-standing friend.
At Eton, William can temporarily lose himself in the joys and challenges that many teenagers face. He has a series of exams later this school year that he must pass in order to eventually qualify for university. Known to leave com- petitors in the dust at Chelsea's F1 go-cart track, where he held the track record, he hopes to get his driver's license when he turns 17. Like the other kids, as soon as classes are over, he is quick to shed his uniform and change into jeans and sneakers. He is a fan of video games and mountain bikes, and the evolution of his taste in pinups from the Barbi twins to Baywatch's Pamela Lee to Cindy Crawford has been minutely chronicled, as has his taste in music (most recently, Pulp and Oasis). As for girls: He is interested, but shy--a situation complicated by his becoming a teen idol. "He's not bad looking, goes on lots of nice holidays, goes to posh parties," Kate Thornton, then-editor of the teen mag Smash Hits, told PEOPLE last year. "He's ideal boyfriend material."
Ultimately, of course, neither William nor Harry will have what one thinks of as a normal life. They are hugely wealthy--they stand to inherit $30 million from Diana--and live with bodyguards always at the ready. And as royals they have the pressure of shouldering a nation's woes. But already, says counselor Julie Stokes, each has shown he has the makings of a capable and compassionate leader. "The last thing you want a child who is grieving to do is look after someone else, but when William and Harry did their walkabout the day before the funeral, that's exactly what they were doing," she says. "They were taking care of the people."
