How Prince William Plans to 'Do a Diana Reboot' When He Becomes King

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5 days ago

Someday, when Prince William becomes King, he has expressed a desire to do it his own way.
That said, a royal author predicted that his leadership will be a mixture of his grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth, and his mother, the late Princess Diana.
Edward White, who wrote the book Dianaworld: An Obsession released last month, said that the Prince of Wales is 'trying to do a Diana reboot of the monarchy.'Prince William has said himself that he intends to do it his own way when he takes the throne someday—and his approach to being King will, of course, in many ways mirror his father King Charles, but his leadership will also have touches of his late mother, Princess Diana.
Edward White, author of the newly released Dianaworld: An Obsession (which hit shelves April 29), said that William is aiming for a 'Diana reboot of the monarchy' when he takes the top job, with White adding (via Marie Claire) that William's style will likely be a blend of Diana and the late Queen Elizabeth, William's grandmother.
White told The Mirror that Diana raised William in a way that would keep the monarchy relevant: 'Diana said that she was trying to raise a future king that would ensure the monarchy survived into the 21st century—and William is trying to do a Diana reboot of the monarchy, combining the best of his mother and his grandmother,' White said.
William's approach mirrors Diana's in many ways—he is empathetic, action-oriented, and people-focused. William also inherited a passion for some of Diana's chief causes during her royal work, like eradicating homelessness; William launched an initiative, Homewards, in 2023 that seeks to do just that in the U.K., and last year released the ITV documentary Prince William: We Can End Homelessness, about his efforts in the space. In the documentary, the Prince of Wales shared about his mother taking him to shelters as a boy, and that now as an adult, he struggles with 'not doing more.'
'I've spent enough time learning and listening to what people have been through that I feel almost guilty every time I leave,' William said.
Of parallels to Diana—who died in 1997, when William was 15 years old—'She seemed to think that if she wasn't taking the most extreme course of action to remedy a problem, then she wasn't actually taking any action at all,' White told The Mirror.
While in Cape Town, South Africa last November for the fourth iteration of his Earthshot Prize Awards, William explained his philosophy as Prince of Wales (and, someday, King) when he said, 'I can only describe what I'm trying to do, and that's trying to do it differently—and I'm trying to do it for my generation. I'm doing it with maybe a smaller 'r' in the royal, if you like—that's maybe a better way of saying it.'
'It's a reinvention,' Jason Knauf—a former aide who is now CEO of the Earthshot Prize—told The Times recently. 'How do you communicate to the generation that you serve? And it has to be different. It's not change for change's sake, but a question of how you're going to cut through a world where people are consuming things much more in terms of images than anything else.'
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told The Times, 'A question that gets asked when you're in the public eye is: what are they like behind the scenes? What are they like in real life? And to the extent that I'm able to see Prince William in 'real life,' I would say he's exactly the same person. The areas that he's interested in and that he works in, he's very genuinely motivated by.'
Ardern—who met William in 2019—said the future king has 'a very collaborative way of working. There is humility there, which is an extraordinary thing when you're born into a role of this nature.'
That humility, no doubt, has Princess Diana's fingerprints all over it. 'It's difficult to meet anybody who met her and had a bad word to say about her,' White told The Mirror. 'People just instantly liked her. She had amazingly good social skills, she seemed to be very, very likeable, and I think sincerely cared about people. So there's a huge amount to like about her.'
Read the original article on InStyle