Who are the van Straubenzees, Princes Harry and William’s long-time friends? William just gave an MBE to Claire, whose late son Henry was Harry’s best friend, while Thomas was William’s best man

On May 8, Prince William got to present an MBE to Claire van Straubenzee – the mother of his and Prince Harry’s close childhood friends Thomas, Henry and Charlie van Straubenzee. According to The Telegraph, William was “keen to conduct the investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle due to his personal links with Claire van Straubenzee and her family”. It’s common knowledge that the estranged princes lost their mother Princess Diana in a car accident, but fewer people may know that they tragically lost their friend Henry van Straubenzee in the same way back in 2002. The van Straubenzees have been described as a “second family” to William and Harry, with some royal watchers even speculating that the van Straubenzee brothers could exert a positive influence on the princes’ now strained relationship. So just who are the van Straubenzees, and how far back do their connections to Princes William and Harry go? Here’s everything we know. Henry van Straubenzee and Prince Harry were best friends at school While both princes were childhood friends of Henry, Prince Harry was particularly close to the middle van Straubenzee son. the two were in the same year at Ludgrove, the boarding school they attended in Berkshire, southeast England. According to Prince Harry writing in his memoir Spare, Henry was the only boy who asked him about his mother after she died in the car crash in Paris in the summer of 1997. Five years later, in 2002, Harry and Henry graduated from secondary school (by that time, Harry was at Eton and Henry at Harrow). In December of that year, Henry was killed near Ludgrove at the age of 18. Just like Diana, he was a passenger in a fatal car accident. Harry also mentions in Spare that, “just like mummy”, his friend wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Princes William and Harry are patrons of the Henry van Straubenzee Memorial Fund In the wake of their son’s death, Claire and Alex van Straubenzee set up the Henry van Straubenzee Memorial Fund (HvSMF) in 2007. Henry was on his gap year when he died, and had been planning to spend part of the year teaching at a school in Uganda, in East Africa. As a result, the memorial fund has helped out the school ever since. The princes became patrons of the charity in 2009 – the brothers’ only joint patronage to date, according to UK media. However, the van Straubenzees’ celebration of Claire’s MBE was described as “bittersweet” in the British press, coming “just weeks after Claire and Alex van Straubenzee’s announcement that they are closing their charity by the end of the year”. This means that the one tenuous link between the estranged princes – their joint patronage – is also about to be severed. According to the HvSMF website, the fund has completed more than 1,800 separate projects in Uganda since 2003, and has invested the equivalent of US$4.37 million through the generosity of grant-making organisations, friends and family. The van Straubenzee family writes that, in memory of Henry, they hope to have “changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ugandan children, who have now had a good education and the opportunity of a better life”. William and Harry, and Thomas and Charlie van Straubenzee, officiated at each other’s weddings Henry van Straubenzee’s younger brother Charlie was Prince Harry’s best man at his wedding to Meghan Markle in May 2018. In turn, when Charlie married Daisy Jenks in August that same year, Harry served as the best man. Among the revelations in Spare, Harry said the royal family lied both about him being William’s best man in 2011, and about William being Harry’s best man in 2018. Instead, according to Harry, Thomas van Straubenzee and another friend delivered the traditional speech at Prince William’s wedding to Kate Middleton, while Harry “acted as a mere compère and introduced them”. Best man Charlie reportedly took the opportunity to roast his old friend Harry – mentioning, among other things, that the older boy was a tyrannical dormitory monitor at Ludgrove, who “nicked my teddy bear and chucked it out onto the roof”. Charlie also reportedly made touching remarks about witnessing Harry endure the loss of his mother, Princess Diana, and mentioned how happy she would have been for Harry and Meghan on their wedding day.