Prince William hid grief over Diana's death to 'protect himself' Mrs Henney said of the Duke: "I think he has an innate sense of self-protection. If you ask him a personal question, he will be as honest as he wants to be, but you will never get down into the real root of William because that's how he protects himself. Junor claims that the grief the Duke and Prince Harry shared drew them even closer to one another. The Duke, who is now an RAF search and rescue helicopter pilot, also grew much closer to his grandmother, the Queen, in the period after his mother's death, she says. "He [the Duke] visited the Queen weekly at Windsor Castle, which was just over the bridge from Eton; indeed, he became particularly close to her during this period," writes Junor. But what probably helped the boys more than anything was having each other. They are such very good friends that the people who work for them now find it hard to think of them as separate entities. Their closeness owes much to having grown up not knowing whom they could trust, who would be there next week, and who would be gone. What they could always be certain of was each other; and from a young age, they'd come to rely on each other, almost to parent one another. After losing their mother, the bond between them became their lifeline, and they clung to it. And despite being the younger brother, Harry was as much a support to William as the other way round. The biography, serialised in the Daily Mail, also claims that the Duke and the Duchess of Cornwall have gradually become closer following a strained relationship in the years immediately after his mother's death. She claims that the path to reconciliation began with a half-hour one-to-one encounter at St James's Palace which ended with the Duchess leaving and saying: "I need a drink."