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Prince George is 7! See new photos
Prince George of Cambridge turned 7 on Wednesday, a significant day for any child, but one that gives royal fans around the world another rare glimpse at a future king.
His parents, Prince William and Duchess Kate of Cambridge, released two new pictures of the third- in- line to the throne, taken as usual by his amateur photographer mother.
“The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are delighted to share two new photographs of Prince George ahead of his seventh birthday tomorrow,” Kensington Palace said in a statement released late Tuesday.
The pictures show George smiling wide and in two different shirts, one a dark olive green polo shirt and the other a camouflage T- shirt. He is standing against a wall in one picture and beside some grass in the other.
The palace said the pictures were taken by Kate earlier in July. The location was not disclosed, but it’s likely they were taken at or near Anmer Hall, the family’s Norfolk country home where the Cambridges have been isolating during the COVID- 19 pandemic.
Will and Kate have released photos of George every year on his birthday, a custom they started for George’s first birthday and have followed for their two younger children, Princess Charlotte, 5, and Prince Louis, 2, on their birthdays.
Even in a royal family, Prince George Alexander Louis occupies a special place: As one of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip’s eight great- grandchildren, he is third in the royal succession, behind his father Prince William, 38, and grandfather Prince Charles the Prince of Wales, 71.
It’s the first time since Queen Victo
ria was on the throne, in the late 19th century, when four generations of direct heirs have been alive – and specially photographed together, as has happened with George and his relatives two times in recent years.
Rare as they are, British royal fans eagerly await new pictures of the little prince, who comes off as especially endearing in the less formal photos of him with his siblings hugging and hanging on to their father.
His parents have been careful in doling out snaps of their children, in part to protect their privacy while growing up. Even these birthday pictures are carefully controlled by the palace, which imposes deadlines, usually Dec. 31, after which the media can’t use them without permission.
The COVID- 19 pandemic, which has locked down Britain for months and sent royals to their various estates and castles to quarantine, has meant even fewer opportunities for anyone to grab by- chance cellphone photos of George out and about or on his way to school, for instance.
Will and Kate have only recently begun to schedule in- person socially distanced public engagements, resorting to Zoom appearances after the country went into lockdown in March. The children have been talked about during these video appearances but not seen.
During the lockdown, they were spotted in April clapping for health care workers outside Anmer Hall, and later in pictures released by the palace in June for Prince William’s 38th birthday.
It is not yet clear when George and
Charlotte will return to their private London school, Thomas’s Battersea. Most British primary schools reopened June 1 by government order.
Thomas’s had a phased reopening, with Charlotte’s class able to attend but not George’s class, according to the Sunday Times and the Daily Mail, so the two are believed to be still at Anmer Hall.
Will and Kate have been homeschooling them in Norfolk, discovering, as have millions of parents, that teaching kids can be harder than they expected.
George, like his father, was born in London’s St. Mary’s Hospital, and even before he made his appearance, he was the world’s most famous baby. A mob of reporters, cameramen and royal fans, some of whom had been there for weeks, jostled in the street in front of the hospital door, shouting questions, cheering and applauding as the couple came out and introduced the new royal heir to a nation giddy with excitement.
“He has a good pair of lungs on him,” William told onlookers, barely audible above the noise of the crowd. “He’s a big boy; he’s quite heavy.” The baby, at that point unnamed, was 8 pounds 6 ounces.
“It was very emotional, it is such a special time; any parent knows what this feeling is like,” Kate added.
George’s birthday falls on a day when his great- granddad, Prince Philip, 99, will be seen in public for the second time in days, as he takes part in a brief, socially distanced ceremony on the Quadrangle at Windsor Castle to turn over the reigns of a military regiment, The Rifles, to George’s step- grandmother, Duchess Camilla of Cornwall.
She will be 85 miles away at Highgrove House, Prince Charles’ country estate, when she takes takes part in the ceremony to become colonel- in- chief of The Rifles.
Philip has been retired since 2017 and seen lately mostly at family events, such as Friday’s surprise wedding of his granddaughter Princess Beatrice of York ( cousin to Prince William) at a royal chapel on the castle estate.