Prince William said walking behind the Queen's casket reminded him of Princess Diana's funeral

• The royal family processed behind Queen Elizabeth's casket on Wednesday.
• Prince William said the experience reminded him of Princess Diana's funeral.

Prince William has said Queen Elizabeth's remembrance services have brought back memories of Princess Diana's funeral.

On Wednesday, members of the royal family processed behind Queen Elizabeth's casket as it made its journey from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall.

The late Queen, who died on September 8 at 96 after a 70-year reign, will lie in state until her funeral on Monday, September 19.

King Charles III walked directly behind his mother's coffin, and he was accompanied by his siblings and his sons, Prince William and Prince Harry.

The brothers walked side by side, which was a marked changed from their lineup at Prince Philip's funeral in 2021.

The royals looked solemn as they marched behind the Queen, but the walk was apparently particularly emotional for Prince William, according to Roya Nikkhah, the royal editor for The Sunday Times.

Nikkhah tweeted that while looking at flowers left by the public in Sandringham on Thursday, the new Prince of Wales said he was reminded of his mother's 1997 funeral.

Queen Elizabeth kept Prince William and Prince Harry out of the public eye at Balmoral in the immediate aftermath of Diana's death, which Princess Anne said was "exactly the right thing" in a recently unearthed interview with ITV News.

But the princes attended her funeral in London, and they chose to walk behind Diana's casket during its one-mile procession to Westminster Abbey on September 6, 1997.

William was 15 at the time, and Harry was just 12.

They walked with their father, Charles; their grandfather, Prince Philip; and Diana's brother, Earl Spencer.

Prince Philip promised William and Harry that he would walk with them if they chose to make the journey.

According to a tweet from Nikkhah, William said that processing behind Queen Elizabeth "brought back memories" of the march to Diana's funeral in 1997.

The Prince of Wales also told well-wishers at Sandringham that the march was "very difficult," as Nikkhah tweeted.

William's comments on Thursday aren't the first time he's opened up about how challenging it was to process behind his mother's coffin.

In the BBC's documentary "Diana, 7 Days," William said it "wasn't an easy decision, it was a collective family decision to do that," when speaking of the walk, going on to say that "there is that balance between duty and family, and that's what we had to do."

He added that he had to find the balance "between me being Prince William and having to do my bit versus the private William who just wanted to go into a room and cry, who'd lost his mother."

William said in the same documentary that he wanted to make sure he would become someone Diana would be "proud" of after her death.

"It'll either make or break you," he said of his mother's death. "I wanted it to make me. I wanted her to be proud of the person I would become."

Representatives for the Prince of Wales did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.