DARK SHADOW

Prince William Opens Up About Toll of His Parents’ Divorce

The father-of-three has long avoided talking about what overshadowed his own childhood.

Prince William has made a rare comment on what his childhood was like with divorced parents, revealing that he’s trying not to parent his own children in the same way.

During the Oct. 3 episode of Eugene Levy’s series The Reluctant Traveler, the Prince of Wales admitted that his desire for his three children—Prince George, 12, Princess Charlotte, 10, and Prince Louis, 7, whom he shares with his wife Kate Middleton—to have a “happy, healthy, stable home” stemmed from his own childhood experiences.

“I think it’s really important that that atmosphere is created at home,” he said. “You have to have that warmth, that feeling of safety, security, love.”

He explained that he got to experience that atmosphere in his own childhood; however, it didn’t last long.

“My parents got divorced at 8, so that lasted a short period of time,” he said.

Eleven years after the late Princess Diana married now-King Charles III, the couple announced their separation in 1992, officially finalizing their divorce four years later in 1996. However, their marriage was strained for years before their separation, thanks to—as Princess Diana put it—“three of us” being in the marriage, referencing then-Prince Charles’s affair with his now-wife Camilla Parker Bowles.

“You take that and you learn from it and you try and make sure you don’t do the same mistakes as your parents,” Prince William told the Schitt’s Creek star. “I think we all try and do that and I just want to do what’s best for my children, but I know that the drama and the stress when you’re small really affects you when you’re older.”

Prince William also reflected on the “media” cyclone that he said enveloped his childhood and his parents’ divorce—a regular source of complaints from him and from Prince Harry, whom he failed to mention by name. His complaint about “the media” will be aired on one of the world’s largest streaming platforms.

“The media were so insatiable back then. It’s hard to think of it now, but they were much more insatiable,” he said. “They wanted every bit of detail they could absorb, and they were in everything, literally everywhere. They would know things, they’d be everywhere.”

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Learning from the lessons of his past, he’s working now to make sure his kids don’t face what he had to, he said.

“If you let that creep in, the damage it can do to your family life is something that I vowed would never happen to my family,” he admitted. “And so, I take a very strong line about where I think that line is and those who overstep it, I’ll fight against.”

Now, he’s looking to “create a world in which my son is proud of what we do, a world and a job that actually does impact people’s lives for the better.”

He caveated his statement though, with noting that he wants “change for good” on his agenda so his children don’t have to deal with some of the things him and his brother, Prince Harry, had to.

“I hope we don’t go back to some of the practices in the past, that Harry and I had to grow up with—and I’ll do everything I can to make sure we don’t regress in that situation," he said.

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