Charity founder who moved Prince William with ‘unexpected tragedy’ opens up about new royal film

A charity founder who moved Prince William with the story of her “unexpected tragedy” has opened up the heartbreaking film.
In the film, the Prince of Wales met with Rhian Mannings MBE at her Cardiff home for a deeply emotional conversation about suicide, close to tears as the 2Wish founder discussed her story.
Aimed at tackling the soaring rate of suicide across Britain, the film has been released on World Mental Health Day as part of a new initiative, The Royal Foundation’s National Suicide Prevention Network.
Speaking to Cameron Walker and Anne Diamond on GB News, she said: “It’s very surreal still. I stayed in touch with Prince William since I met him in 2017 when I spoke to him then around bereavement, and I’ve done some work with the Royal Foundation as well, supporting people who are involved in the sudden death of a child. Unknown 2:13 So I just worked with the Royal foundation. So, yeah, I got an email saying, can Prince William come to your house? I did giggle to myself quite a lot, really, around it, and I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone, like even my best friends. None of them knew, and they were all like, ‘what he just came to your home!?. So it was very surreal, but really special, because he came into my, my life, really where, you know, Paul lived here with me and my son George, and obviously, now I’ve got a new, very different life, and he’s now, you know, came into that and spoke to the children as well. And that’s something that means the absolute world to me.
Rhian also opened up on her tragedy which struck in 2012.
“So back in 2012, my youngest son George died unexpectedly. We left the hospital with nothing but a piece of paper with a couple of phone numbers on, and we came home.
“We tried to come to terms with what we’d experienced, but sadly, it was too much for Paul.
“And five days after George died, Paul walked out of the house and took his own life, leaving myself with my other two children who were two and three at the time.”
She reflected that it was “easy to look back and try and find where this all went wrong”, adding that after her son’s death there was a lot of emotion, with the couple “struggling together”.
“What we really needed was somebody to contact us because we lost George, who was here smiling and laughing, one minute; he died two hours later and nobody, not one person, reached out to us to support us.”
Ms Manning added that it was also having a person who could understand her situation “who may be able to notice some of these signs”, adding that she was “drowning in her grief”.
“Could I have prevented this from happening to my child? I’m here to protect them. And I didn’t protect him.”
She explained that her husband had felt the same way, confiding in her that he felt that he had “failed” the family.
“Of course, I reassured him,” she continued. “But what we needed was somebody who had some experience of working with families who had experienced such loss, someone to sit with us. And that’s what 2Wish does.”
The suicide prevention charity ensures that they work alongside hospitals and the police, allowing the family to sit with their workers and “just talk over a cup of tea”.
“It’s not about counselling at this point,” adding that it was just about someone “showing love and compassion”.
Recounting the time after her son and husband’s death, Ms Mannings said that she “truly” felt no one cared about her, him or George, reducing her baby to “just a statistic”.
After founding the charity, Ms Mannings was awarded an MBE in 2019.