How Prince Harry Honored His Mother In His Coat Of Arms

When Princess Diana — one of the most popular and beloved members of the British royal family — was tragically killed in a car accident in 1997, it hit the whole world hard and sent her country into mourning. Her televised funeral was viewed by around 2.5 billion people worldwide, making it one of the most-viewed events in history. However, it hit no one harder than her sons, Prince William, Prince of Wales, and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, who were 15 years old and 12 years old, respectively, at the time. Seeing the two young boys trail their mother's coffin at her funeral provoked an outpouring of sympathy from across the globe, and the tragedy of her death is something the pair will, unfortunately, have to live with forever. 

While she was alive, Diana was incredibly close to both sons, and they've worked to pay tribute to her ever since her untimely death. Harry, in particular, has honored her in numerous ways in the years since her death, even more so as he has grown into a mature adult. While this can sometimes take the form of charity work — something which Diana was well-known for — Harry also decided to honor her in a much more subtle way in 2002 when he was crafting his coat of arms. 

On his 18th birthday in 2002, five years after the death of his mother, Princess Diana, Prince Harry was granted his own coat of arms — a personal heraldic design granted to each member of the royal family. Harry had the opportunity to help design his specific coat of arms, which gave him an opportunity to incorporate his mother's memory into the emblem that he would bear for life (per Hello!). 

The design, which consists of a lion and a unicorn on either side of the center shield, has the unusual distinction of honoring Harry's mother's side of the family. He did so by incorporating nine small red escallops (seashells) into the coat of arms — three each on the collars of the lion, the unicorn, and the shield. The coat of arms of Diana's family, the Spencers, includes three white escallops down the middle of the shield.

Harry's coat of arms is similar to the one sported by his brother Prince William before the tragic death of their grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, when William became the Prince of Wales and heir to the throne. William's original coat of arms — which he adopted four years before Harry, on his own 18th birthday — consisted of three red escallops: one on each collar, rather than Harry's three on each. Since he became the Prince of Wales, William's coat of arms has reverted back to the traditional emblem, with no escallops whatsoever. 

When Prince Harry's wife, Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, became a member of the royal family upon her marriage to Harry in 2018, she also received her own coat of arms. And, like her husband, hers breaks with tradition as well. According to Insider, a coat of arms is not meant to diverge that drastically from the reigning monarch, who at that time was Queen Elizabeth II. Only small details are meant to differ to reflect each person's individuality. However, Meghan made more than a few small changes to reflect her distinction within the royal family. 

Most notably, Meghan's coat of arms replaced the unicorn with a songbird, and made the background to her shield blue, in reference to the Pacific Ocean off the coast of her native California. The golden rays across the shield are also meant to represent California's sunshine, and the added poppies beneath the emblem are an allusion to California's state flower. Of course, the coat of arms itself may have perhaps been an early indication of the many differences between the royal family that she and Harry would experience in the years since its original design.