Prince Harry has opened up about the days following the death of his beloved mother, Princess Diana.
In his upcoming memoir, Spare, which is set to hit shelves on January 10, the Duke of Sussex, 38, details how his aunt, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, gave him a memento: a lock of his mother's hair.
After King Charles and Diana's sisters had gone to France to identify Diana's body, Harry recalls being reunited with his father and aunties in London.
When they met with their Aunt Sarah, Harry said she handed both he and William a little blue box which each contained a lock of Diana's iconic blonde hair.
But Harry said he didn't believe the hair belonged to his mother, and convinced himself it was someone else's so he wouldn't have to come to terms with the reality of her death.
Who is Lady Sarah McCorquodale?
Lady Sarah, 67, is the eldest of Diana's three siblings and wildly rumoured to be the cleverest, according to Town & Country.
She became a Lady in 1975 after her grandfather died and her father became the eighth Earl Spencer.
She gave evidence at the 2007 inquest into Princess Diana's death, which resulted in a jury ruling that Diana and her companion, Dodi Al Fayed, were unlawfully killed by their driver Henri Paul and the convoy of paparazzi that followed their car in the Paris tunnel.
Lady Sarah was also president of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, which raised £100 million for various charities before it closed at the end of 2012.
When did Lady Sarah date Prince Charles?
Lady Sarah dated Prince Charles when she was in her early 20s.
The couple were pictured together at polo matches and on a skiing trip to Switzerland.
But the relationship was short and sweet. She reportedly said toTime magazine in 1978, "There is no chance of my marrying him. I'm not in love with him. And I wouldn't marry anyone I didn't love whether he were the dustman or the King of England."
However, it was through Sarah that Charles and Diana first met, at a shooting party in 1977 at the Spencer family home in Althorp, when she was 16 and he was 29.
After the couple's engagement in 1981, she said: "I introduced them, I'm cupid."
Is she close with William and Harry?
The boys have enjoyed a close relationship with their aunt since they were small, with Sarah and her children often accompanying them and their mother on summer holidays.
It is said that William and Catherine are close to Lady Sarah, with whom they spent a weekend on the 16th anniversary of Diana's death.
She also attended their wedding in April 2011, as well as was also the funeral of William's childhood nanny, Olga Powell, in 2012.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge also attended the wedding of Lady Sarah’s eldest daughter Emily, the Duke’s cousin, in 2012.
Lady Sarah was invited to Harry's wedding in May 2018, where her sister, Lady Jane Fellowes, gave a Bible reading.
Before the ceremony, Kensington Palace said Harry was "keen to involve his mother’s family in his wedding”.
The statement from the palace added: "Prince Harry and Ms. Markle both feel honoured that Lady Jane will be representing her family and helping to celebrate the memory of the late Princess on the wedding day."
Lady Sarah and her sister Jane attended the unveiling of a new statue of Lady Diana in Kensington Palace on July 1, 2021, which would have been the late princess' birthday.
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