Princess Anne said William and Harry would not 'have been able to cope' with Princess Diana's death had the Queen not kept the boys at Balmoral

• Princess Anne said Queen Elizabeth II made the right choice to keep William and Harry at Balmoral in the wake of Princess Diana's death. 
• In a 2017 interview with ITV News released Sunday, Anne strongly agreed with her mother's decision.
• She added that she does not think the boys would "have been able to cope" with the tragedy in London. 

Princess Anne says her mother, Queen Elizabeth II, made the right call keeping Prince William and Prince Harry at Balmoral in the wake of Princess Diana's death in 1997, saying the young boys would not "have been able to cope" with the tragedy in London. 

In a 2017 interview with ITV News that was released Sunday, Anne backed her mother's decision to keep the boys in Scotland following the Princess of Wales' death. 

"My mother did exactly the right thing," Anne said, speaking to ITV News. "It's absolutely extraordinary that any right-minded thinking parent should believe there would have been an alternative to bring those children down here to London in all that hoo-ha."

She continued: "I just don't know how you could think that would have been the better thing to do."

"I don't think either of those two would have been able to cope if they had been anywhere else," Anne added.

Anne went on to call the decision the only good thing that came of the tragedy.

"They had that structure, they had people around them who could understand, give them the time, little time that they had, which was never going to be very much, to try and come — even in a fleeting sense — to terms with what had happened." 

She added: "It's not possible for most people to do that in that space, never mind children at that age." 

—Royal Watcher (@princessannehrh) September 11, 2022

In the same interview, Anne said her mother "led by example," with her children and grandchildren "watching and learning" throughout her unprecedented 70-year reign. 

Princess Anne was among the Queen's children — including Prince Andrew, Prince Edward and newly crowned King Charles III — to walk next to her coffin on Monday during her procession before a royal funeral. Queen Elizabeth II died on Thursday at age 96.