SerpApi.Org
Standing shoulder to shoulder with his mother at RAF Coningsby to mark Armed Forces Day last month, Prince George cut a somewhat different figure to royal duties past. Dressed in a navy suit – and appearing close to his mother’s 5ft 9 inch stature – the boy who will one day become King looked readier than ever to take on the role.
As he approaches his 13th birthday on 22 July, George’s royal future is beginning to take shape – one that will be inspired by, yet wholly different from, that of his father. That likely begins with the celebrations themselves. Princess Diana commissioned a cake shaped like a pair of breasts for Prince William’s 13th birthday, which he was met with – along with supermodels Claudia Schiffer, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell – on his return home from school.
Instead of outré pranks and a childhood played out in the spotlight, the Waleses have sought to raise George outside of the public glare, his appearances limited to a smattering of official events, such as the Trooping of the Colour and King Charles’s coronation and sports outings like Wimbledon and Aston Villa matches (his father’s beloved team).
In the past, people have been quick to describe the royal family as “dysfunctional,” says royal historian Hugo Vickers. “What William and Catherine [The Princess of Wales] are doing with those three children is to make them the least dysfunctional possible. They’ve got the balance just right.”
The first sign of what was to come began with George’s birth in 2013. While the then-Prince Charles had arrived in a suit and a chauffeur-driven car to collect his firstborn heir from hospital 31 years earlier, “when George was born, William arrived in his own car with an open shirt and he negotiated a baby carriage and drove his wife and child home,” Vickers notes.
This casual yet close hands-on parenting has been a continued feature of he and his siblings’ childhoods. At his pre-prep school in Battersea (where George was dubbed ‘PG’), the Waleses did drop-off and pick-up; in September 2022, they moved to Berkshire for more privacy. Live-in staff have been eschewed. Behind closed doors, hobbies have been able to flourish: he is an excellent cricketer, Vickers says, and regularly attends Aston Villa games with family friends, including the Duke of Westminster and the Van Cutsems. George is a budding guitar player – AC/DC is his favourite band, according to his mother, despite his attendance at Taylor Swift’s 2024 Eras Tour (a concession to his little sister, who loves the singer).
As he grows older, however, his parents must foster the relationship between their heir and his future public. At Christmas, William took his eldest to the Passage, a homelessness charity where he too was inaugurated by his mother, Diana; on VE Day last May, he chatted with veterans at a tea party at Buckingham Palace. Insiders say that his parents “always discuss” these appearances with him, and that he is “never pushed” – a gentler introduction to his duties, perhaps, than his father was allowed during his own youth.
“What we see from George is somebody who is very young but has clearly grasped the fact that he’s a future king,” says royal commentator Duncan Larcombe. “The way he behaves in public, the way he waves, the way that he joins his father on events – I think he’s very, very well briefed on what’s going to be expected of him in the future.”
While clearly close with both parents, given the weight of what is to come, George – a skilled cricketer – “will look to his father for inspiration, he’ll look to his father for guidance,” Larcombe adds. “It’s almost certain that George, when he’s a bit older, will go into military service of some description as well, just like William did. So in a way the path that William trod is a path that is being prepared for George to tread as well.”
That continues with George’s education, which, like his father’s, is to continue at Eton. While other schools had been floated, Eton is “near where his parents live, they’re very hands-on, they won’t want to pack him off to a private school and not see him for weeks at a time. This way George can at the very least be home on weekends, and may well be home every night,” Larcombe says.
“Eton is a very good choice,” adds Vickers, who attended between 1964 and 1969. During his time at the school, “we had the odd prince of somewhere; some of the people I later realised were probably very rich, and one or two people were on scholarships, and you never really knew the difference. And that’s actually what’s rather good about that school,” he believes. “George will be treated with civility, I think, but they won’t be overruled by him.”
While he shares the need to follow a royal path like his father, his mother’s family are playing a vital role in shaping the future king, too. The Middletons are “a very nice family,” Vickers says. “And I think William has profited a great deal from the good, solid, sensible family dynamic of the Middletons.” Larcombe agrees that the Waleses are bringing their children up “very much on the Middleton model, where it’s a family of five, close interaction between the parents and the children, and almost middle class in many ways, in terms of the time they spend together… George is almost certainly a product of that tight family unit.” During his mother’s cancer treatment, that meant the family banded together more closely than ever before, entirely away from the cameras; while Diana went through turmoil, those difficulties often played out in public view.
Their closeness with their children has meant being very honest about the Princess of Wales’ health issues. “Sometimes you feel you’re oversharing,” William said last year. “Most of the time, hiding stuff from them doesn’t work… But it’s always a balancing act.” Larcombe notes that George, being the eldest, will be well aware of what is going on; photos showed all three children rallying around their mother after she completed the Three Peaks Challenge earlier this month, in aid of the hospital where she was treated.
He has also experienced estrangement. In his memoir, Prince Harry wrote of his joy at becoming an uncle when George was born – but his years-long rift with William remains unresolved. Harry met with his father, Charles, when he visited the UK this month, but not his brother. While George has met his cousin Archie, it remains unclear whether he has ever met Lilibet.
But experts agree his parents have worked hard to shield George and his siblings from public view and enjoy as normal a childhood as possible. “George is luckier than William was,” Vickers believes. “Catherine’s got a better head on her shoulders than Diana did. Diana was always presenting herself as the great loving mother, when she wasn’t always around to look after them.”
With three among whom to share royal duties, there will be less public focus “on the heir and the spare, as it were, and trying to make one the saintly one and one the rogue,” says Vickers of the split that plagued a young William and Harry.
“They’re really hot on treating their children as equals,” Larcombe says, noting that at the Trooping of the Colour, “William sat next to Louis, not George. Which I thought was a way of saying, ‘George is going to be king, but he’s no more important than you.'”
Still, the intensity of public attention will prove an increasing challenge for the youngest generation in line to the throne. Being an heir today is “definitely worse, [and] much more difficult” than for generations past, Vickers thinks. “In the olden days, the respect that the Royal Family was held in was enormous. And now it’s the metropolitan view that the deference of the past is long gone.” In its place there is instead an army of critics emboldened to share their views – online, onstage and beyond – with bigger platforms than ever before.
With the world watching, Larcombe hopes “there’s scope for George to be himself.” But he seems as prepared as one can be for a role of this magnitude, he adds. “George understands his destiny, and what lies ahead.”
