Recently, a poignant moment between Prince Harry and Queen Letizia has taken TikTok by storm. The Duke of Sussex and the Spanish queen both marked their birthdays on the same day—Harry turning 40 and Letizia celebrating her 52nd.
The two first crossed paths on July 13, 2017, when Prince Harry accompanied Letizia and her husband, King Felipe, to Westminster Abbey to lay a wreath at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior. This meeting held special significance for Harry, occurring just weeks before the 20th anniversary of Princess Diana’s passing. At the time, he was also engaged in a series of emotional interviews reflecting on his grief.
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The TikTok clip featuring this somber encounter has garnered over 16,000 likes and 127,000 views, aptly captioned, “Today Queen Letizia and Prince Harry celebrate their birthdays.” This event marked a rare official duty for Harry during a state visit, coinciding with his candid discussions about his mother’s legacy and death.
Reflecting on the past, Harry shared a deeply personal memory: “My mother had just died, and I had to walk a long way behind her coffin, surrounded by thousands of people watching me while millions more did on television.” He emphasized that children shouldn’t have to endure such experiences.
This meeting with Letizia came just a week before the airing of the ITV documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, where both Harry and Prince William opened up about their loss. In it, Harry recalled his final conversation with Diana, regretting the brevity of their last call. “If I’d known that was the last time I was going to speak to my mother—the things I would have said to her,” he mused.
The emotional dialogue continued a month later in the BBC’s Diana, 7 Days, where Harry recounted how King Charles III informed him of his mother’s death. He highlighted the difficulty of such a moment for a parent, acknowledging his father’s efforts to support him and his brother through their shared grief.