In honor of Diana

Matt Lauer 'Today' anchor • Profile

Matt Lauer: Your mom used to say that one of her main concerns for you two was that you live as normal lives as possible.
Prince William: Um-hm.
Prince Harry: Um-hm
Matt Lauer: So ten years later do you think she would be happy or saddened by the state of normalcy?
Prince Harry: I think she'd be happy in the way that we're going about it but slightly unhappy about the way the other people were going about it as in saying, "Look: you're not normal, so stop trying to be normal," which is very much what we get a lot.  You know it's like stop trying to be normal. You've got certain responsibilities.  Which obviously we do and we know we have certain responsibilities. But within our private lives and within certain other parts of our life we want to be as normal as possible.  And yes it's hard because to a certain respect we never will be normal.
Prince William: You may be abnormal.  I'm pretty normal.

For them, "normal" will always be a relative term. Prince William, 24, heir to the British throne, the future king of England. Harry, his kid brother, 22, also known as Harry, Prince of the United Kingdom.

They are the grandsons of Queen Elizabeth, sons of Prince Charles and, of course, the late Princess Diana. The world has watched them grow from babes in their mother's arms, to proper English schoolboys, to grief stricken young men walking with their father behind Diana's casket. But they've never done an interview together for an American, never sat down and answered unscripted questions -- until now.

Meet two brothers, down to earth, at ease, and constantly ribbing each other.

Matt Lauer: Let me talk a little bit about your image in terms of in the United States separately.
Prince William: We have an image? That's news to me.
Prince Harry: It can't be good.
Matt Lauer: All right, William, you're seen probably as studious, thoughtful, dutiful, proper.
Prince Harry: Was that "dutiful" or "beautiful"?
Prince William: Proper.
Matt Lauer: Dutiful.
Prince William: And beautiful.
Matt Lauer: Dutiful and beautiful.
Prince William: Just, just…
Matt Lauer: So Harry, how close is that in describing your brother?
Prince William: Now, be honest.  Don't just come out and go "It's all rubbish."
Prince Harry: Well, I think it’s, you can't really ask me because I'm his brother, so I see a different side of him.  But, you know…  
Matt Lauer: So how would you describe him?
Prince Harry: No, you don't want to know that. No, I'm sure that's fantastic that the American people think that of William.  I think there's, I mean, as long, as long as we want to be fools, we can…
Matt Lauer: Well, what is the thing that -- that people should know about William that they don't know?
Prince William: Just a legend.
Prince Harry: No, I don't know. He enjoys himself more than people think.  You know, he works very hard.  He's definitely the more intelligent one of the two of us.
Prince Harry: As I'm sure that's the next point that's going to come up.
Matt Lauer: I wasn't going to say that at all.
Prince Harry: What do you mean "don't put myself down"?  You're knocking me down the whole time!
Matt Lauer: So are you telling me, William, that Harry is not a little more volatile, carefree, a bit of a wild thing?
Prince William: Oh, he's a wild thing, all right.  Yeah.

William and Harry met with Matt in April, at Clarence House, their official residence in London. They discussed their life in the media fishbowl, their friendships and their love lives. But for them, the most important thing to discuss, the reason they agreed to talk, is the memory of their mother, Diana, and their plans to commemorate the 10th anniversary of her death.

Matt Lauer: As I was leaving the States telling people I coming to talk to you, as you're about to mark the tenth anniversary of your mom's death I can't tell you how many people said, "Wow, has it been ten years?"  That it seems like two years or it seems like three years.  How has the time gone by for you two?
Prince Harry: Personally really, really slowly actually. It's weird because I think when she passed away there was never that time, there was never that sort of lull. There was never that sort of peace and quiet for any of us due to the fact that her face was always splattered on the paper the whole time. Over the last ten years I personally feel as though she has been, she’s always there.  She's always been a constant reminder to both of us and everybody else. And therefore I think when you're being reminded about it does take a lot longer and it's a lot slower.
Matt Lauer: Does it feel the same way for you?
Prince William: Yeah. I mean, again just for my personal opinion when you knew somebody or someone that important to you, you always think about you know.  I mean, straight after it happened we were always thinking about it. Not a day goes by when I don't think about it once in the day.  And so for us it’s been very slow and it's a lot, it has been a long time.

A long time that began for William and Harry on the last night of August 1997.  In Paris, Diana was riding in a hired car, being chased by paparazzi.  Her chauffeur, who was drunk, drove much too fast.  The car smashed into a concrete pillar.  Princess Diana, beautiful, glamorous --  their mom -- was dead at 36.

Since then, William and Harry have lived through a decade of obsessive media coverage, of endless conspiracy theories, of official and unofficial inquiries that continue to this day.

Prince Harry: You know when people think about it they think about her death.  They think about you know how wrong it was. They think whatever happened.  I don't know, for me personally what happened you know that night, whatever happened in that tunnel --  no one will ever know.  And I'm sure people will always think about it the whole time.
Matt Lauer: Have you stopped wondering?
Prince Harry: I'll never stop wondering about that.
Matt Lauer: So then in some ways you probably understand the public fascination with this inquiry.
Prince William: Yeah, but at the same time there's a lot of people feeding it, and unnecessarily, I might add.  You know -- to the whole sort of conspiracy side of things.  And there's always rumors and stuff that were brought up the whole time.
Matt Lauer: Do you see a time in your own imagination when this cycle of fascination ends?
Prince Harry: I can't really see it ever ending.  I think that maybe certain sort of times when there's going to be peace and quiet when there's actually nothing to write about or when they're working towards something new.  But I think people will always have a fascination about her. 
Matt Lauer: As we come to the tenth anniversary, obviously the people will still write things.  But people will also stop at ten years and re-examine her life and probably her death.  So in some ways is this your attempt this summer to take charge of that, to kind of get it under your own control?
Prince William: Yeah, basically; we always wanted to do something for her.

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