Prince Harry opened up about missing late mom Princess Diana while speaking in the Netherlands on Thursday, his first formal engagement and overseas trip since his wife Meghan Markle gave birth to their first child earlier this week.
The couple’s son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, was born on Monday. Harry and Meghan debuted the baby at a small press photo call at Windsor Castle two days later and the Duke of Sussex jetted off to the Hague the following morning to spend a few hours at the Hague to attend a presentation for the 2020 Invictus Games, which will be held in the city, before returning to the U.K. Harry is a royal patron of the annual international Paralympic-style event for wounded and ill veterans and military servicemen and women.
Former soldier and would-be competitor Dennis van der Stroon met with Harry and told the press that that they about family and losing a mother. Diana died in a car crash in Paris in 1997 at age 36.
“He said missing a mother is like missing some kind of security, how you need that as a son and it falls away when you lose your mother,” van der Stroon said about Harry.
The former soldier also said the duke “talked about how having a small child was his new focus and new goal” and that Harry also “said he was just amazed by the miracles in the world, and how his child has made a lot of people happy.”
“He also told me he’s really happy that his son is so far very quiet” he added.
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Harry’s friend JJ Chalmers, a former Royal Marine and Invictus Games medalist, said the new dad described fatherhood as “amazing” but “hard work,” adding, “He said that [Archie] slept for the first 24 hours like all babies do…and then he woke up.”
At the event, Harry wore a jacket embroidered with the words “Invictus Family Daddy” and “I Am Daddy” highlighted in yellow. He also received gifts for Archie, including an Invictus Games onesie from Princess Margriet of the Netherlands.
“I see the guy with a buzzing smile on his face still,” Chalmers said. “Like any father he lights up even more when he speaks about his son and how proud he is of his wife and what she’s doing right now in his absence.”