For many years, it was a steadfast Royal custom that the members of the Firm should strictly uphold a ‘stiff upper lip’ and steer clear of showing emotion in public.

However, Prince William, who experienced the tragic loss of his mother, Princess Diana, at the tender age of 15, has consciously chosen to depart from this outdated standard.

His deliberate acceptance of emotional expression was recently highlighted by poignant footage showing the future King moved to tears as he spoke with a grieving mother, whose husband died by suicide shortly after their one-year-old son passed away.

During an emotionally charged discussion for World Mental Health Day, the Prince of Wales had his voice crack and his eyes closed tightly as Rhian Mannings shared her wish that her late husband, Paul, had opened up about his feelings.

‘I think that’s what the hardest thing is… we would have been OK,’ she said.

William’s choice to set aside Royal stoicism aligns with his late mother’s empathy and is likewise reflected by other Royals during significant moments of vulnerability.

Princess Diana, often hailed as the ‘People’s Princess,’ was beloved around the world for her extraordinary capacity to connect with others and her touching empathy.

When the Princess of Wales visited Ashworth Hospice in Liverpool in 1992, she became overwhelmed with emotion, with powerful images showing her fighting back tears as she left the building.

However, while she was no doubt moved by her visit, the circumstances surrounding that day were later suggested to have had a profound impact on her outward tears.

The visit came just days after Andrew Morton’s explosive book, Diana: Her True Story, was published to the world, in which Diana herself detailed her mental health struggles and indeed the breakdown of her marriage to King Charles. 

Last year, former Palace press secretary, Dickie Arbiter, who worked for the Royal Family from 1998 to 2000, revealed that Diana had experienced acute anxiety surrounding the press coverage of the book, which sold more than five million copies that year.

Speaking to The Telegraph, he recalled: ‘Diana called me at 5am asking what she should do, and I told her it couldn’t be undone now.’

He also advised the Princess to keep a low profile ahead of her visit to Ashworth Hospice, adding: ‘[I told her to] just to keep schtum, not answer her phone, and I would accompany her on her next engagement two days later to keep people at bay.’

Then, in December the following year, Diana was pictured looking tearful once again as she arrived for a gala concert at The Equinox in Leicester Square. 

Just one month later, the late Princess announced her retirement from official duties. It was to be the finale of an incredibly poignant year in the breakdown of her and King Charles’ marriage.

Now, more than 40 years on, Diana’s son appears to have echoed his beloved mother’s human touch and empathetic nature.

When a young Prince William, accompanied by his 12-year-old brother Harry, walked behind their mothers coffin following her tragic death, the grieving young boys never succumbed to their emotions publicly and appeared incredibly composed.

In an interview conducted in 2023, Prince Harry revealed that both him and William were unable to show any emotion when they met the vast sea of mourners who had gathered at Kensington Palace to commemorate Diana.

In a clip from ITV’s Harry: The Interview, he told presenter Tom Bradby: ‘Everyone thought and felt like they knew our mum, and the two closest people to her, the two most loved people by her, were unable to show any emotion in that moment’.

But when William spoke to bereaved Ms Mannings about her late husband Paul at her home in Cardiff in an interview broadcast this week, his emotions were laid out bare as the Prince struggled to hide his anguish during their devastating discussion.

At one point, Ms Mannings, who lost her husband to suicide just five days after their one-year-old son George died, gently asked the Royal: ‘Are you OK?’

Shaking his head and holding her hand, the Prince replied: ‘I’m sorry. It’s just it’s hard to ask these questions that I… ‘

‘No, it’s fine. It’s just you’ve got children,’ Mrs Mannings told him gently.

‘I know, I know… It is…’ the royal trailed off.

 ‘It’s hard… And you’ve experienced loss yourself,’ she reassured him.

‘It’s ok,’ William replied.

‘Life can throw you these awful curve balls, but by talking about it by, you know, having hope you can continue,’ she added.

William, who by now has managed to pull himself together, agreed, saying: ‘The best way to prevent suicide is to talk about it. Talk about it early, talk about it with your loved ones, those you trust, your friends. So thank you for talking about it.’

Like father, like son, King Charles has also appeared to have become less fearful about showcasing his true emotions publicly in recent years. 

A particularly striking image showed a visibly emotional King Charles watching from the Royal Box after his horse, named ‘Desert Hero’, bred by the late Queen, won the King George V Stakes at the Royal Ascot in 2023. 

The King appeared to wipe away a tear as he watched his first win as monarch – and the first without his beloved mother. He also seemed to find it difficult to contain his emotions as he collected the trophy, knocking it over as Camilla looked on. 

Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams said that the win had been a ‘deeply emotional experience’ for Charles because it was ‘an event which his mother loved so much’. 

Then, this summer, King Charles was again moved to tears by the powerful first-hand testimony of VJ veterans as they spoke at a service of remembrance to mark 80 years since the end of the Second World War.

Charles and Camilla appeared to be visibly emotional after Captain Yavar Abbas went ‘briefly off-script’ to salute ‘my brave King’ for attending despite ongoing cancer treatment.

The 104-year-old said that he himself had been ‘rid of it for 25 years and counting’, before reading an except from his war diary, which he wrote while serving in the 11th Sikh regiment of the British Indian Army.

His comments were met with applause from the guests, while Camilla’s eyes were red from crying.

Certainly, while the ‘stiff upper lip’ mentality has traditionally been adopted by the royals in the face of personal loss, the King has been a lot more open in sharing his emotions, particularly following the death of his mother, body language expert Judi James previously told The Mail. 

‘The Queen led the country through the war, where stoicism and emotional resilience might have been vital for survival,’ Judi told FEMAIL.

‘Charles has inherited a country coming out of an epidemic and also a country much more in touch with the subject of mental health, meaning emotional displays might create empathy with his public.’ 

Indeed, Queen Camilla also appears to have embraced a withdrawal from the traditional stoicism typically favoured historically. 

 Last year, tears were seen welling up in her eyes as a D-Day veteran bravely recounted the horror of losing his best friend on the beaches of Normandy. 

Charles and Camilla joined the Prince of Wales, leading UK politicians and veterans at a major event in Portsmouth, where the King gave his first public speech since being diagnosed with cancer.

He told the crowd: ‘The stories of courage, resilience and solidarity we have heard today and throughout our lives cannot fail to move us, to inspire us and to remind us of what we owe to that great wartime generation.’

The first time the late Queen Elizabeth II cried in public was on December 11, 1997, in Portsmouth, when her beloved HMY Britannia was decommissioned.

It was a shocking sight for royal watchers to witness, having become so accustomed to her stoic manner.

Dressed in an all-red ensemble, a photograph from the event shows Her Majesty wiping a tear from her cheek as she said goodbye to her luxury yacht when the costs of the aged vehicle came too great to maintain.

Just a month prior, the Monarch had received a wealth of public criticism after maintaining a stiff upper lip attitude following the death of her former daughter-in-law, Princess Diana.

While the Queen rarely put a foot wrong during her 70-year reign, her response to Diana’s death the week before was one of the few episodes most experts now regard as a mistake.

 Tony Blair later claimed credit for persuading the Queen to return to London and pay a public tribute to the princess to satisfy the public demand.

Historian Dominic Sandbrook said of Blair’s intervention: ‘He understood this, the new sentimentalism that this wasn’t a sort of stiff-upper-lip 1950’s country anymore.

‘That the sort of ritual display of empathy, which he was very good at, and the Queen wasn’t very good at, that was an important part of our political culture that’s becoming.

In keeping with a shift towards more displays of public compassion, the late Queen also showed profound sadness on Remembrance Sunday in 2002.

Tears were seen collecting on the Monarch’s cheeks when she visited the Field of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey.

Sat alongside the then Duchess of Cornwall and Duchess of Cambridge, the Queen was overcome by emotion during the service where she and other members of the Royal Family paid their respect to those who had fallen in service of war efforts.

The 2002 event was poignant for the royal as she took on her late mother’s role at the ceremony, held in memory of Britain’s war heroes.

Her Majesty was also seen wiping away a tear almost two decades later during the Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph in 2019.

Public displays of emotion are also not an unfamiliar concept to Kate, Princess of Wales, who in 2023 was captured becoming incredibly tearful while watching Tunisia’s Jabeur take on the Czech Republic’s Markéta Vondrousova for the Venus Rosewater Dish at Wimbledon.

Throughout the match, the royal, who is a huge tennis fan and also patron of the All England Club, cheered, applauded and grinned as the Czech player became the first-ever unseeded Grand Slam champion.

Kate also appeared to empathise with Jabeur, who was openly weeping after losing the match – her second losing Wimbledon final in a row.

And the princess, too, wiped tears from her eyes as she watched the conclusion of the match from the Royal Box.

When Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, passed away early at Windsor Castle in April 2021 aged 99, his funeral service had to be scaled down due to coronavirus restrictions. 

Of the 30 mourners who gathered to commemorate the late Philip at St George’s Chapel, there was one particularly emotional moment captured in the pews – his beloved granddaughter, Princess Beatrice was seen fighting back tears.

Looked up to as the patriarch of his family, Prince Philip became a mentor for younger royals who continued to turn to him over the years and was said to have shared a close bond with all of his grandchildren.

In a heartbreaking moment captured during the memorial service, Beatrice eventually became so overwhelmed by emotion that she was forced to cover her tearful face with the order of service, having a brief moment to collect herself away from the eyes of the cameras.

 Following the death of Prince Philip, Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh, broke down in tears as she opened up about his tragic passing during an emotional BBC interview.

Becoming incredibly tearful when discussing her beloved father-in-law, the Duchess said that the late Duke of Edinburgh’s passing had left a ‘giant-sized hole in our lives’ during an interview with Naga Munchetty at St James’s Palace in June of the same year.

In 2014, the Duchess wept when she returned to Frimley Park Hospital and reunited with the midwife who saved her life during her terrifying childbirth to Lady Louise in 2003.

The Duchess, then 38, had suffered an acute placental abruption and was reportedly just 15 minutes away from dying in the emergency room, with her husband Edward unable to attend because he was in Mauritius for an official visit.

However she managed to give birth to Louise, who weighed just 4lb 9oz, after an emergency C-section, but she had to be transferred away from Sophie almost immediately for specialist care.

Complications from her early birth left Lady Louise with esotropia – a condition which means that both eyes do not look in the same direction – and reportedly ‘completely reshaped’ her mother’s character.

The Duchess wept as she met the Head of Midwifery Ms Price who was present for the birth of both her children.

She said: ‘I want to say well done to everyone for your fundraising and for all the work you do to help thousands of families – your service is the difference between life and death.

When the late Queen tragically died aged 96 in September 2022, the world watched with baited breath to see how the Royal Family would publicly respond to the death of the longest-reigning monarch in British history.

At the Committal Service in Windsor after the State funeral at Westminster Abbey, Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, was seen to be incredibly emotional and even had a trail of tears clearly showing on her cheek.

And as thousands of mourners lay flowers outside of Balmoral Castle to pay their respects and commemorate the late Queen, Zara Tindall also appeared visibly emotional as she tearfully analysed the sea of tributes.

Likewise, for Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, maintaining a traditional Royal face of stoicism proved almost near impossible during the funeral of his wife of 64 years, the Duchess of Kent, held at Westminster Cathedral last month.

While the 89-year-old put on a dignified and sombre display as he walked behind the coffin, one particular photograph poignantly captured the grief on the Dukes face as he watched his wife’s casket being carried away by pallbearers. 

After the image of the Duke circulated online, it was followed by an incredible outpouring of sympathy, as individuals sent their deepest condolences to the Royal Family while expressing how sorrowful the photo made them feel. 

It seems that gone are the days of the Royals driving an emotional distance between the public and Royal Family as they instead seek to showcase should emotions can and should be embraced. 

Indeed, as Prince William himself once stressed, while the British stiff upper lip can be ‘great’ and occasionally required ‘when times are really hard’, a balance, as was so poignantly shown by the late Princess Diana, is vital. 

‘We’ve got to relax a little bit and be able to talk about our emotions because we’re not robots’, the future King stated during a candid conversation captured in BBC documentary, A Royal Team Talk: Tackling Mental Health.