Although he grew up a prince, Diana did all she could to expose her boys to life outside the palace. They stood in line at Disney World and took public transportation. “I want my boys to have an understanding of people’s emotions, their insecurities, people’s distress and their hopes and dreams,” she said. And now that he and Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, 40, are parents to son Archie Mountbatten-Windsor and daughter Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, it seems they hope to give their children many of those same values. After graduating from Eton, Prince Harry spent his gap year visiting Africa and Argentina. He worked on a cattle station in Australia and at an orphanage in Lesotho. “In 2004, I was 19 and went traveling in my gap year,” he shared. “I had a fantastic time in Australia, Argentina and Botswana, but in the end, the thing that had the greatest impact on me was the two months I spent working in Lesotho.” He was so taken with the children who had been orphaned, in 2006, he and his friend Prince Seeiso co-founded Sentebale, a charity to help the most vulnerable children in Lesotho get the support they need to lead healthy and productive lives. The Prince spent a decade working in the Armed Forces and conducted two tours of duty to Afghanistan with the British Army. In 2013, he created The Invictus Games, an international multi-sport event, where wounded service people take part in a variety of sports. He even enlisted his granny, Queen Elizabeth II, to appear in a video about the games’ friendly rivalry between the United States and the United Kingdom. He also refused to shy away from revealing his decades-long struggles with grief and depression after he lost his mother. “I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12 and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but also my work as well,” Prince Harry shared with Bryony Gordon in her Mad World podcast. In May 2021, Harry bravely revealed more of his mental health struggles in The Me You Can’t See, a docuseries about mental health that he co-produced with Oprah. “I always wanted to be normal, as opposed to ‘Prince’ Harry ” he shared in the series. “It was a puzzling life.” In honor of Harry’s birthday on September 15, click to the gallery to see 45 throwback photos of Prince Harry, one of the most compassionate princes in recent memory. Next, see royal wedding cakes through the years.
