Prince Harry Says Royal Work ‘Killed My Mom’ In Shocking Speech

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It’s been nearly six years since Prince Harry stepped down as a working royal.

And based on his latest comments about that decision, he still has no regrets.

Harry and wife Meghan Markle are currently touring Australia, and the Duke made some surprisingly candid remarks about family, grief, and duty at one recent stop.

“I was like, ‘I don’t want this job. I don’t want this role — wherever this is headed, I don’t like it,’” Harry told a crowd at the InterEdge Summit during the third day of his tour.

“I was very much against it, and I stuck my head in the sand for years and years,” he continued (via Page Six), adding:

“And also, what would my mum want me to do? And that really changed my own perspective.”

“In my experience, loss is disorienting at any age,” Harry told the audience. “Grief does not disappear because we ignore it.”

Harry went on to explain that he was forever changed by the experience of mourning his mother with the eyes of the world watching his every move.

“Experiencing that as a kid while in a goldfish bowl under constant surveillance, yes, that will have its challenges. And without purpose, it can break you,” he said.

The Duke of Sussex added that he’s felt “lost, betrayed or completely powerless” many times since, but his sense of purpose has remained with him.

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This, of course, is not the first time that Harry has spoken publicly about the grief he endured in the wake of his mother’s passing.

In 2017, Harry gave an interview to The Telegraph that he nearly had a “complete breakdown” years after Diana’s death.

“I can safely say that losing my mom at the age of 12, and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years, has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but my work as well,” he said at the time.

As for stepping away from royal work, Harry has suggested in the past that the decision was made somewhat easier by the fact that as younger brother to the heir, he had no expectation of ever ascending to the throne.

“I took no offense, I felt nothing about it, any of it,” he wrote in his 2023 memoir.

“Every boy and girl, at least once, imagines themselves as a prince or a princess. Therefore, Spare or no Spare, it wasn’t half bad to actually be one.”

Prince Harry Says Royal Work ‘Killed My Mom’ In Shocking Speech was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.