Prince Harry's heart-breaking belief about his mother, Prince Diana's death

Prince Harry believed Princess Diana had faked her death to escape scrutiny.

The Duke of Sussex was just 12 years old when his mother died in a car crash in Paris and when the tragic news was broken to him, he was convinced the princess had played a "trick" on the world and the accident was a "diversion" for her to run away and go into hiding.

He said: "With nothing to do but roam the castle and talk to myself, a suspicion took hold, which then became a firm belief. This was all a trick.

"And for once the trick wasn’t being played by the people around me, or the press, but by Mummy. Her life’s been miserable, she’s been hounded, harassed, lied about, lied to. So she’s staged an accident as a diversion and run away.”

After the princess' death, "matrons" at Harry's school asked him to write a "final" letter to his mother, but he still believed she was still alive.

He wrote in his new memoir Spare: “I have a vague memory of wanting to protest that she was still alive, and yet not doing so, for fear they’d think I was mad.”

Years later, Harry asked his press secretary to review secret police files on the crash, which also killed Diana's boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, and chauffeur Henri Paul, and was horrified to realise paparazzi were on the scene.

He wrote: “There were lights around her, auras, almost halos. As I realised their true origin, my stomach clenched. Flashes. They were [paparazzi photo] flashes.

“I hadn’t been aware, before this moment, that the last thing Mummy saw on this earth was a flashbulb.”

During the Rugby World Cup in 2007, Harry and his brother Prince William drove through the tunnel where the crash had taken place, and afterwards they discussed the inquest into Diana's death, which they branded a "joke" and an "insult".

Photo / Getty

He wrote: "Afterwards, we talked about the crash, for the first time ever. We talked about the recent inquest. A joke, we both agreed. The final written report was an insult. Fanciful, riddled with basic factual errors and gaping logical holes. It raised more questions than it answered.”

The pair decided to call for the inquiry to be reopened but "were talked out of it by the powers that be."

Elsewhere, the 38-year-old prince spoke of his regret that he "rushed" Diana off the phone in their last conversation because he was busy playing with his cousins.

He wrote: “I wished I’d searched for the words to describe how much I loved her. I didn’t know that search would take decades."

Prince Harry dedicated his memoir to Princess Diana - who was killed in a car crash in 1997 aged 36 - as well as his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and their children Archie, three, and 20-month-old Lili.

In the acknowledgments section of the book, he writes: "For Meg and Archie and Lili.  And, of course, my mother."

Harry recently claimed that his mother would be "sad" about the rift between himself and his elder brother Prince William, 40, if she were still alive and claimed he had felt her presence "much more" in recent times.

In a clip from his interview on Good Morning America he said: "I think she would be sad. I think she'd be looking at it long term to know that there are certain things that we need to go through to be able to heal the relationship. I have felt the presence of my mum more so in the last two years than I have in the last 30."

In Spare, Harry revealed he turned to a woman who "claimed to have powers" in a bid to connect with Diana.

He recalled being told: "You’re living the life she couldn’t. You’re living the life she wanted for you."

- Bang! Showbiz