A monarch can confer or remove an HRH style. William, once he becomes king, could still choose to restore the style to his mother posthumously. Whether he ever would, of course, is another question entirely.
And after all these years, the gesture may mean something very different.
Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, has written about the issue in his memoir Swan Song. He recalled that after Diana’s death, Queen Elizabeth II offered to restore the HRH style.
Spencer ultimately turned it down on his sister’s behalf.
He wrote that Diana had been deeply hurt by losing the title when her marriage ended and felt that restoring it after her death would be an empty consolation. In his view, the title should never have been taken away in the first place.
That decision also adds another layer to William’s childhood promise.
What he had imagined as a loving gesture from a son to his mother had become, by then, something much more complicated. (Justin Tallis, Pool Photo via AP, file)