The Duchess of Sussex picked a meaningful tone to celebrate her husband’s 42nd birthday
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NEED TO KNOW
- Meghan Markle shared a tribute to Prince Harry on social media in honor of his 42nd birthday on Sept. 15
- The slideshow featured never-before-seen photos of Harry and his children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet
- The clip was set to an acoustic cover of Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best,” a song that has a connection to Harry’s late mother, Princess Diana
Meghan Markle’s birthday tribute to Prince Harry included a subtle connection to his late mother, Princess Diana.
On Tuesday, Sept. 15, the Duchess of Sussex celebrated her husband’s 42nd birthday with a heartwarming social media post. The clip featured never-before-seen photos of Harry with his wife and their children, Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5.
The slideshow was set to an acoustic cover of “Simply the Best” by the husband-and-wife duo The Hound + The Fox. Tina Turner’s 1989 version of the song, which is titled simply “The Best,” was a favorite of Diana, who used to play it in the car when she drove Harry and his brother, Prince William, to school.
It was Prince William, 44, who shared the musical memory during a December 2021 episode of Apple Fitness+’s Time to Walk series, in which he chose three favorite songs to play while taking listeners on a walk around the Sandringham estate.
“When I was younger, Harry and I, we were at boarding school. And my mother used to play all sorts of songs to kind of while away the anxiety of going back to school,” William recalled. “And one of the songs I massively remember and has stuck with me all this time, and I still, to this day, still quite enjoy secretly, is Tina Turner’s ‘The Best’ because sitting in the backseat, singing away, it felt like a real family moment. And my mother, she’d be driving along, singing at the top of her voice. And we’d even get the policeman in the car; he’d be occasionally singing along, as well.”
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“You’d be singing and listening to the music right the way out into the gates of school, when they dropped you off,” he continued. “And, and that’s when reality kind of sunk in that you really were going back to school because before that, you’re lost in songs. You’ll want to play it again just to keep that family moment going.”
“When I listen to it now, it takes me back to those car rides and brings back lots of memories of my mother,” he added.
Prince William and Prince Harry both attended boarding school at Eton, the prestigious all-boys school where William’s eldest, Prince George, just started his first year earlier this month. Only William was there in 1997, however, when Diana died in a car accident in Paris; the school’s rigorous schedule and proximity to his extended family at Windsor Castle are said to have greatly helped the young prince manage the emotional time.
“Eton was a much-needed haven for William,” royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith previously told PEOPLE. “It will give George a rigorous education that he will need for his role.”
Credit: Anwar Hussein/WireImage
Prince Harry, however, struggled to find his way at Eton, recounting in his 2023 memoir, Spare, that starting his time at the elite school came as a “profound shock.”
“Shock must’ve been part of its original charter, even perhaps a part of the instructions given to its first architects by the school’s founder, my ancestor Henry VI. He deemed Eton some sort of holy shrine, a sacred temple, and to that end he wanted it to overwhelm the senses, so visitors would feel like meek, abased pilgrims,” Harry wrote. “In my case, mission accomplished.”
The brothers’ rift has grown since Prince Harry and Meghan stepped back as working royals and moved to California in 2020.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex recently returned to the U.K., with plans to establish a private, non-royal home base in Britain. However, royal experts warn that the divide between the princes won’t be easily resolved simply because there is far less physical distance between them.
“It’s clearly incredibly difficult. The trust has broken down,” Ailsa Anderson, the late Queen Elizabeth’s press secretary, tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story. “Let’s hope it’s not broken completely, and there’s a chink in the armor on both sides and there could be some sort of reconciliation. But that’s not happening anytime soon.”
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Some wonder whether next year’s 30th anniversary of Diana’s death could eventually provide an opportunity for reconciliation.
“Diana would have hated all this,” says royal author Simon Vigar. “[She] would have banged their heads together and wouldn’t have allowed [the rift] to happen.”
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