Diana, Princess of Wales, left a number of enduring legacies: her charitable foundation; the humanitarian programs she helped support; the memories that linger for millions of people, whether they knew her initmately, met her once or admired her from afar. But the most poignant reminder of the priness is her sons: William, 15, and his younger brother, Harry, 13.

William, in particular, is eerily like his mother. In his public arrearances, his head tilted to one side and his eyes looking guardedly at the world, he acts exactly as Diana did in her early public life.

And like his mother, who initially found her official duties almost unendurable, he has not been eager to occupy center stage. Diana herself acknowledged her son’s reluctance to be in the spotlight just tow months before her death last August, when she told Tina Brown, editor of The New Yoker, “Charles suggested that [William] might go to Hong Kong [for ceremonies marking the end of British rule there], but he said, ‘Mummy, must I? I just don’t feel ready.’”

Tragically, William’s first formal royal duty after his mother’s death was far more difficult: With the eyes of the world upon him, he marched with Harry, Prince Charles, Prince Philip and Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, through the streets of London behind Diana’s coffin.

The young brothers entered Westminster Abbey with utter composure. But they broke down once they were inside. As Elton John sang his tribute to their mother, Harry buried his face in his hands and sobbed. William cried openly as well. They seemed beyond comforting.

Yet they have found comfort- and from a surprising source: their father, Charles, who had been castigated for years in the British popular press for being a cold parent. In the days after Diana’s death, Charles and Harry’s hand as father and son made regular appearances to view the thousands of bougets left in her memory. And at first public engagement, three weeks after Dian’s death, Prince Charles gave a speech that was unprecedented in its emotion an candor. “The public expressions and the warmth of that support has helped quite enormously, and I can’t tell you how touched both the boys and myself are We are immensly grateful,” he said. “I’m unbelievably proud of William and Harry. They have been quite remarkable.”

It was a speech that Diana herself could have given.

Charles’s talk also represented on fo the very few times in recent months when attention has been focused on the princes. In the wake of Diana’s death, newpaper editors have held to their agreement not to photograph or purpose William and Harry. It’s known, though, that Willima has gone back to Eton College. He’s a good student and is continuing to study hard. Harry is in his last year at Ludgrove, his prep school, and is likely to attend Radley, a less well-known institution than Eton.

Officials at both schools lend a sympathetic ear when they boys require it; Harry’s headmaster, Gerald Barber, and his wife, Janet, have been especially understanding in thei day-to-day dealings with him. Harry has also recieved support from Diana’s sisers; one of them, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, visited Harry at Ludgrove last September with the present Diana had told him he would get on his 13th birthday- a computer play station.

Earl Spencer, Diana’s brother, whose passionate speech at her funeral made it clear that he inteded to be an influence in the boy’s lives, is also in contact with them; last Novemer he took William to lunch in London. But though Earl Spencer visits Britian regularly, he lives in South Aferica, so his effect on the children is sporadic for now. And his recent divorce, which was dogged by reporters of infadelity, left some observers wondering just how much of an influence he should be.

Of course, Charles himself has ebdured has share of scandal; for years he’s had a mistress, Camille Parker Bowles. When Diana was alive, she stressed that Parker Bowles should have nothing to do with the boys, and Charles’s advisers have kept to that arrangement. “Things might change,” says a member of the royal circle, “but right now the princes have still never met Mrs. Parker Bowles.”

The closest person William and Harry have to a surrogate mother is Alexandrea (Tiggy) Legge-Bourke, their former nanny. After having left the family because Diana thought the caregiver was getting too close to the children, Legge-Bourke has returned; both Charles and the queen thought she should play a long term part in filling the gap left by the princess’s death. She spent several weekends comforting both princes at Balmoral, the royal esate in Scotland, and she accompanied Harry when Charles took him to South Africa on a nine-day official trip.

In South Africa Harry met President Nelson Mandela, went to a concert by the British pop group the Spice Grils- and suffered through probably the most embarrssingly funny incident of his young official life. When he and his father visited a remot Zulu village, 21 young women danced, topless, for their guests. At first Harry didnt know where to look, but then he broke into a shy smile and began tapping his feet to the beat of the accopanying music. Maintaining his dignity- in a delicate crosscultural situation, under the eyes of 70 television camereas and photographers- was a remarkable achievement.

There’s no doubt that the trauma of their mother’s premature death and the experience of being on show in front of millions at her funeral had made both Wills and Harry seem older than their years. They appear to be less childish and more ready to take on a life of duty, the kind of life they have been prepared for since they were big enough to walk.

For William, the burden is especially a heavy one; he knoew he will not only have to take on the monarchy in the 21st century but will have to live up to his mother’s wishes. Diana recognized the need for William to see outside the confines of the palaces; through her visits to hospitals and charitable organizations, she tried to show him and his brother the real world that they might not otherwise only have glimpsed through the tinted windows of a royal limousine. If William was to be successful as a king, she believed, he would have to be different from the kind of public figure who is stultified by tradition and protocol.

Yet if Diana knew a difficult task lay ahead for her son- being a modern monarch in a world dominated by an intrusive media- she also had absolute confidence that he could do it. “I try to din (it) into him all the time... how he must understand and handle it,” she once said. “I think he has it. I think he understands.”

William would surely be happy to know that. In fact, William and Harry, in the coming years, will undoubtedly be both comforted and grieved by their memories of the mother who they knew not as a glittering princess in shimmering gowns and tiaras but as a sensible guardian who laughed and enjoyed life with them in happy times and made them feel better when times were sad.

McCall’s 1998 by Adam Helliker