LONDON (Reuter) - Princess Diana`s violent death is a terrible tragedy for the royal family and will hit ordinary Britons hard - but above all it could shatter the lives of her two young sons. The Paris car crash in the early hours of Sunday morning deprived the world of a fairy tale princess, Britain of an icon and Princes William and Harry of a loving and adored mother. William, second in line to the throne after his father, Prince Charles, was his mother`s confidant and her adviser. He was woken in the early hours by Charles to be told of his mother`s death. Only 15, the pin-up prince had matured beyond his years as he coped with his parent`s acrimonious divorce played out on the front pages of the world`s press, his own adolescence and the daily difficulites of modern royal life. He and his mother, who was only 20 when he was born, had a particularly close relationship even though nannies played a large part in his upbringing. She took him and Harry to Disneyland and to meet homeless people to give a view of the world outside his gilded cage. Diana was outraged when Charles hired hearty Tiggy Legge-Bourke to look after the princes to ease the boys` pain over the divorce. It was blond, blue-eyed William whom the 36-year-old princess credited with the idea of auctioning her designer dresses which earned millions for charity earlier this year. He was deeply affected by events leading to his parent`s divorce and comforted his mother during many difficult moments. Three years older than his brother Harry, William also acted as a protecter to his quieter sibling from the harsher criticisms of the royal family. He was a pillar of support for Harry during their parents` separation and divorce.

Diana had always hoped to give her sons as normal a life as possible. She lavished affection on them and broke royal tradition by publicly displaying emotion towards them. William was once reported to have pushed paper tissues under the bathroom door to his weeping mother after she rowed with Prince Charles. He comforted her when her adulterous affair with cavalry officer James Hewitt hit the rocks. Like Diana, he detested the lengths to which the press would go to capture his mother at work and play. The media was persuaded to leave him alone when he began his education at Eton College, one of Britain`s top private schools. Diana was devoted to her sons, as they were to her. In a recent interview with the French daily Le Monde, she said they were the only reason she remained in Britain, and complained about the ferocious press which hounded her constantly and pardoned nothing. Criticised as the "hooligan prince" when he was a young boy for his tearaway antics, Prince William, known as Wills, was quickly hailed as the future star of the Royal Family.

As the popularity of the Royal Family diminished in the aftermath of the royal divorce and a series of scandals, the well-mannered, intelligent prince was dubbed "a winner" by royal watchers. Ironically it was also William who was said to be most concerned about his mother`s relationship with Dodi Al Fayed, who was killed with her in Paris. Diana had been scheduled to return to Britain on Sunday. "William is horrified at speculation that her new relationship is so intense it may end in marriage," a source close to the royal family told the News of the World newspaper. William and Harry had accompanied their mother on her first holiday with Al Fayed earlier this summer, when news first broke about the blossoming romance. "He now feels that he was taking part in a kind of test to see how he`d react to the Fayed family," the newspaper added.