What awaits the new prince?
TORONTO — Huzzah! It’s a boy!
Well played, Wills and Kate. You have produced an heir destined to lead the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and all loyal subjects therein.
Your son will also conceivably (that’s a pun I guess) be the head of the Commonwealth and nominal head of state for countries as diverse and geographically spread as Canada and New Zealand, the Solomon Islands and Australia, Sri Lanka, Tuvalu, New Guinea and plenty of places in between.
If that sounds like a helluva business card, just be grateful he is now part of the House of Mountbatten-Windsor rather than the alternative.
Your little boy’s great grand father, Prince Philip the Duke Of Edinburgh, was once a member of the House of Schleswig-Holste-in-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, a branch of the House of Oldenburg and had been a prince of Greece and Denmark.
However, Philip, a few months before his marriage, showed his famously practical streak. He renounced his princely titles and adopted the surname Mountbatten, one the baby would have inherited if the whole scheme hadn’t been junked in 1960.
So much for nomenclature. What sort of world awaits this young scion and future participant in Europe’s game of thrones?
Just last week the King of Belgium decided to call it a day at the age of 79 and abdicated power to his 53-year-old son Philippe. The new king’s role is largely ceremonial, but there are some potential challenges on the horizon with the main one being securing a role of relevancy for himself and his family.
Dutch Crown Prince WillemAlexander knows the feeling well. He became Europe’s youngest monarch after his mother, Queen Beatrix, abdicated the throne last April.
Beatrix signed the official act of abdication in Amsterdam and, in doing so, put herself out of a job by making her eldest son the first Dutch king in more than 100 years.
Queen Beatrix ended her 33-year reign as thousands of revellers dressed in orange cheered outside the Royal Palace in the Dutch capital and millions more watched on television.
Which is quite a change from the days they used to cut off royal heads in Europe as a way of showing a change at the top.
With her abdication, the former queen becomes plain Princess Beatrix and her son takes the monicker of King Willem-Alexander.
Still, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, you are part of a new generation of royal parents and have plenty of other changes to attend to.
Just how does one balance royal duties with a close relationship with baby. Perhaps the solution to the 21st Century problem of work-life balance is a hands-on approach to parenting with plenty of help from part-time nannies and involved grandparents on both sides. We’ll all be watching, too. It is fair to say that no royal baby in history has spawned such immense social media activity and garnered so much international media attention.
For the past two weeks and more, hordes of journalists have been camped out in front of the central London hospital where the royal birth took place. As soon as news broke of the Duchess going into the early stages of labour on July 22, more than 200 tweets a minute were being posted that featured the words “Kate” and “labour.”
Now that happy moment has arrived and the guns have saluted along the Embankment, the notice has been posted outside Buckingham Palace and all the gifts are rolling in, we all pause to get ready for a new royal future.
As much of a sign of anything about the different world this young baby will inherit, here’s a final fact.
Within hours of Kate’s early stages of labour, but a full 10 days before the birth, the royal child already had a 900word Wikipedia page.
No doubt a royal Twitter handle will be following anytime soon.