GROWING UP ROYAL
Today’s royals are being raised with one foot in tradition and the other in fun
Afew weeks from now, 4-year-old Princess Charlotte will start her day just like school children around the world. She’ll put on her new uniform, zip up her backpack and smile for the camera – her mum, Duchess Kate, is usually the one taking the pictures –before she heads off for her first day at school. The outgoing little princess is joining her 6-year-old brother George for the first time at Thomas’s Battersea, a $34,000-a-year private school some five kilometres from the family’s Kensington Palace home. “She can’t wait to be with George at big school,” says an insider. “She is so excited about it all.”
And with two years of experience there already, George is ready to show his sister the royal ropes. “They are close in age, and they spend so much time together,” says the insider. “Play dates [with outsiders] can be tricky, so they learn to lean on each other.”
It’s a unique bond forged by birth and strengthened by the extraordinary experience of growing up in the world’s most famous family. Today’s royal children – led by third-in-line to the throne George, fourth-inline Charlotte, their 1-year-old brother Louis and their new cousin, 3-month-old Archie – are experiencing a childhood like none before, with both modern and traditional building blocks.
Just a few generations ago, the thought of future kings and queens attending school alongside their subjects was unheard of – Queen Elizabeth was exclusively homeschooled in the palace –and no monarch-intraining would ever have been spotted hurtling down a public bouncy slide, as the Cambridge children did in Berkshire in July.
Even the most traditional royal events, such as Archie’s christening in July, get a contemporary spin, with Meghan and Harry opting to share photos on Instagram. But while both couples’ parenting styles may be modern, their desire to give their children a normal upbringing isn’t. “Even the Queen in the ’50s said she wanted her children brought up as normally as possible,” says biographer Ingrid Seward, author of Royal Children. “But it’s a fantasy [to say that].”
Of course, the kids have the same interests as millions of other children their age. William has said George is a fan of The Lion King and How to Train Your Dragon, and Charlotte loves dancing and “all things pink and sparkly’’, says the insider. At home, avid gardener Kate “is outside with the children all the time”, says a royal source, and the family are also regulars at the Hurlingham Club, where Will and Kate play tennis while the children make use of the playground. “The Cambridge kids are really lively,” says another source. “You can see Kate is a great mum. Clearly the kids are having fun.”
For his part, William, who practises “active listening” by speaking to them at eye level, “is very much the modern dad,” says Seward. So is Harry, who was
spotted nuzzling Archie’s head after a polo match in July, an outing that also offered the first look at Meghan in ‘mum’ mode. “She was doting on him, there’s no doubt about that,” an onlooker says.
The scene was worlds away from how William and Harry’s dad, Prince Charles, 70, grew up. Charles and his sister, Anne, were toddlers when their mother became Queen and would see her only at two appointed ‘meetings’ each day. When her younger sons Andrew and Edward were born in the 1960s, she managed more time at home but “it was still a nanny-dominated world”, says Seward. Royal tours also proved to be difficult for the young children, with the Queen and husband Prince Philip travelling for months at a time without their kids. “People didn’t travel with their children then,” says Seward. “There wasn’t so much communication – the nanny would ring up and announce to Charles, ‘Mummy’s on the phone from Australia’.”
That all changed when Princess Diana came on the scene, showering her sons with affection and bringing a nearly 1-year-old Prince William on tour, a first for a royal baby. William and Kate followed Diana’s lead when they took George on tour Down Under
when he was just 9 months old, and Harry and Meghan will do the same this year when they take Archie on their royal tour of Africa.
They are also making sure the kids’ grandparents have important roles in their lives. George and Charlotte were under the watchful eye of Kate’s parents, Mike and Carole Middleton, at a charity sailing race on August 8, and Meghan’s mum, Doria Ragland, is a regular guest at the family’s Frogmore Cottage home in Windsor, where Archie charms visitors. “He’s a happy baby,” says a source. “He has lovely, puffy little legs and tufts of reddish hair. He’s really adorable.”
For now, both couples are navigating a path that allows their kids to grow up as normally as possible while also preparing them for their roles within the royal family.
“George is more reserved and Charlotte is more outgoing,” says the insider. “He’s the heir and one day might be King.” Both personalities were on view at the sailing race, with Charlotte playfully poking out her tongue at one point. “Kate just handled it wonderfully,” says a longtime royal observer. “She just laughed and it was really lovely to see. For once you looked at them and thought, ‘They’re a family’, rather than ‘the royal family’.”