27 November 2023 , 23:58
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Princess Diana’s final gift to Prince Harry is a point of contention.
In The Crown, the late princess can be seen instructing a member of Dodi Al Fayed’s team to run out and buy a birthday present for her youngest son. The drama shows Diana writing “Happy Birthday Harry, Love, Mummy,” on a PlayStation she planned to give to Harry. Tragically, she never get to wish her son a happy 13th birthday, as she died the very next day.
Conversely, Harry said in his bombshell memoir Spare, that his late mother bought him an X-Box, not a PlayStation, days before she died. Harry's 13th birthday was on September 15, 1997, just two weeks after his mum lost her life following a car crash in Paris.
Writing in Spare, the Duke of Sussex said he was handed a present by his aunt, Diana's sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale.
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Prince Diana cuddling Harry about the Royal Yacht Britannia (Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images)
Princess Diana and Prince Harry at Highgrove (Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images)Recounting the day, he described how he tore at the wrapping paper, peered inside and saw he had received an Xbox.
According to Harry, Aunt Sarah revealed that Diana had bought the game console for him shortly before her death, while she was in Paris.
In Spare, he wrote: "That's the story, anyway. It's appeared in many accounts of my life, as gospel, and I have no idea if it's true."
"As a defence mechanism, most likely, my memory was no longer recording things quite as it once did," he continued.
As it turns out, Harry couldn’t have received an X-Box from his late mother on his 13th birthday, as the console wasn’t available to buy until four years later.
Speaking of the scene on The Crown, the drama's creator Peter Morgan revealed he hadn't read Harry's memoir prior to working on the final series. In a chat with Variety, he said: "I’ve not read a word of it. Not that I wouldn’t be interested. But I didn’t want his voice to inhabit my thinking too much. I’ve got a lot of sympathy with him, a lot of sympathy. But I didn’t want to read his book."