William A Reflection Of ‘Mummy’ Future Of Monarchy Depends On Her Gift Of Sensitivity

He’s a momma’s boy who is now without a mom, a sensitive adolescent who shies from the public glare that pierces and pains him.

Handsome and gangly, an imprint of his mother in face and manner, he stands hesitantly on the cusp of young manhood, and in his hands rest the uncertain future of the British royal family.

“Don’t worry about William,” his mother, Princess Diana, once said in an interview. “He’s all right.” She meant that her elder son was a sensitive, caring, intelligent boy who had all the instincts she cherished.

During his mother’s funeral on Saturday, Prince William, 15, showed the grieving world that Diana knew her son well.

As he walked behind his mother’s coffin from St. James’s Palace to Westminster Abbey, William stuck his head on his chest. He said nothing and looked at no one.

His pain was evident and so was his aversion to public attention. But he managed to keep his emotions buttoned up - until Elton John sang his “good-bye English rose” tribute to Diana inside the Abbey.

Then the tears came. William and his brother Harry cried.

Since his mother’s death, the only time William looked at all at ease in public was on Friday, when he, Harry, 12, and their father, Prince Charles, greeted mourners in London.

Diana did worry about the vulnerability of William, who, after his father, is next in line to the throne. Diana worried about William just as her father, the late John Spencer, worried about his daughter entering the suffocating bosom of the royal family.

“He’s very much like Diana, thank goodness. Diana was the shining light of the royal family,” said Jill Dyer, 53, of London. “I hope William does what comes naturally, as Diana did.”

The public’s sentiments for William - its fears, expectations and respect - intuitively reflect Diana’s.

The “people’s princess” wanted to change the monarchy by making it more open, and she wanted her sons to learn enough about life outside the tight circle of royal purple and protocol to do it.

William, as his future subjects see it, is the future of the monarchy, if there is to be one in 50 years.

“William is the only one who can save the monarchy,” said Hazel Lewthwaite of Ayrshire, Scotland.

William was born William Arthur Philip Louis Windsor on June 21, 1982.

A third-year student in a dormitory with 49 other students at Eton, considered Britain’s most prestigious private school, William had become his mother’s protector and confidant as her marriage with Charles faltered.

When William first went to Eton two years ago, his parents asked the British press to let him grow up without intrusion. By and large, that wish has been granted. But William couldn’t escape the effects of intrusions into his mother’s private life.

Even before his mother’s death, William shielded his more outgoing younger brother from harm and public harassment, striving at the same time to keep Harry from being shunted to the shadows.

At the tender age of 11, Diana’s bodyguards had to restrain William from challenging a group of overly aggressive photographers on skis who were upsetting Diana at an Austrian ski resort.

William consoled his mother when her former lover, former army Maj. James Hewitt, published a book about his affair with Diana three years ago.

Recalling William’s behavior, Diana said, “When (the book) did arrive, the first thing I did was rush down to talk to my children. And William produced a box of chocolates and said, ‘Mummy, I think you’ve been hurt. These are to make you smile again.”’

Diana’s friends say that Diana and William, soul mates from the beginning, usually made each other smile.

William and his brother led two lives.

One was with their mother, who took them shopping so they could see what it was like to stand in line at a checkout counter.

Their second life was to engage in royal pursuits in the countryside with their father. With him they hunted and fished at rural retreats and prepared for their formal royal roles.

With Diana gone, William and Harry would appear to have only one of those lives left.