In honor of his 40th birthday, royal experts are recalling Prince Harry's younger years, when he was known to get in a bit of trouble and, as a result, was called "Henry" by his mother, the late Princess Diana.
As the Daily Mail's Harry Howard recalls in a recent column, the Duke of Sussex was christened Prince Henry Charles Albert David by the Archbishop of Canterbury in December 1984.
Despite Henry being his official, "real" name, Princess Diana and then-Prince Charles reportedly "made it clear very early on that their newborn son would be known as Harry."
That didn't stop Prince Harry's mother, Princess Diana, from referring to the young royal as "Henry" when he got into a bit of trouble, which reportedly was something of a frequent occurrence during his childhood.
"Former police bodyguard Ken Wharfe recalled how he would regularly hear Diana scolding Harry with the words: 'Henry, no!'" Howard writes, adding that now-King Charles "once revealed" that Prince Harry was called his official name "when he had been 'very, very naughty."
The Daily Mail writer went on to detail several instances in which Prince Harry was somewhat of a troublemaker during his childhood, including a time when the young royal reportedly "forged his nanny's handwriting in an attempt to trick his family's chef, Darren McGrady, into making him pizza for dinner instead of roast chicken."
"Harry also famously stuck his tongue out at photographers from the back of his family's car after being taken to see the newborn Princess Beatrice in 1988," Howard reports. "And, when he was 5 or 6, he wandered out of the grounds of Kensington Palace before using a police radio Inspector Wharfe had given him and saying from the nearby Kensington High Street: 'I'm outside Tower Records.'"
Prince Harry was just 12 years old when his mom, Princess Diana, tragically lost her life in a car accident in Paris in 1997. In his tell-all memoir Spare, the royal opened up about his biggest "regret" when it came to his mom—rushing what turned out to be their last phone call.
"I wished I'd dug deep, told my mother all the things weighing on my heart, especially my regret over the last time we'd spoken on the phone," Prince Harry wrote. “She'd called early in the evening, the night of the crash, but I was running around with Willy and my cousins and didn't want to stop playing.
"So I'd been short with her. Impatient to get back to my games, I'd rushed Mummy off the phone," he continued. "I wished I'd apologized for it. I wished I'd searched for the words to describe how much I loved her."
