Prince Andrew has revealed his sadness at how his failed marriage to Sarah Ferguson never matched up to the enduring union shared by his parents.
The prince made the remarkably candid admission in a rare television interview broadcast on Saturday (AEDT) in Britain to mark the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh's 60th wedding anniversary on Tuesday.
The 47-year-old father of two said his parents were disappointed at his 1992 separation from the Duchess of York, whom he married in a glittering wedding six years earlier at Westminster Abbey.
He said he believed the secret to his parent's marriage - the longest of any reigning monarch - was "partnership, discipline (and) a commitment to each other".
"A view that - a slightly old-fashioned view now - that marriage ... was something that was done with the sole intention of being together for the rest of one's life," the prince says in the ITN documentary titled, The Queen: 60 Years on Marriage.
"[They] recognise the fact that marriage is a partnership between two people, compromises have to be met on both sides, life has to continue and in that life there has to be an element of discipline.
"That's a wonderful thing to say and, sadly I haven't been able to live up to that as much as my parents.
"But I still have worked in my own way at that partnership, because I believe fundamentally that the family is the most important thing in life."
Prince Andrew and the Duchess of York have two teenage children, Beatrice, 19, and Eugenie, 17.
While the couple split in 1992, the family of four all shared the same house in England until 2004. Neither Prince Andrew nor the duchess has remarried.
Prince Andrew said that even as a royal he believed he had a relatively "normal" family upbringing, with two parents trying to juggle their home life with their royal jobs.
"They never ever forgot their parental responsibilities," he said.
"I remember being read to by my father on regular occasions."
But he said he feared Britain was "losing its family values", something which was of great concern to his parents.
The documentary was broadcast a day after the Duchess of York also spoke out about her ill-fated marriage.
The 48-year-old duchess revealed how she was blinded by love when she married and not prepared for the pressure her new life in the royal spotlight would bring.
"I loved my prince, I loved my boy so much that nothing was going to stop me walking down that aisle with him because he was the love of my life," she said while launching a range of children's advice books covering issues including divorce and grief.
"If it (meant) putting up with the glare of the publicity then I wanted to do it, because I felt that he was worth it. I still think he was worth it."
The duchess said it took her a long time to get used to life as a royal bride.
"It's a huge public stage, you have to have that sense of duty," she said.
"I don't think I really understood that. I went in blindly with love."
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