Louis All hail LOVABLE! THE
Impish. Oozing confidence. Bursting with charisma — and he’s only just one. Why the littlest prince is capturing our hearts (and revelling in the freedoms of being child No3)
YOU KNOW who stole the show last week when the younger royals gathered for a polo match?
Nope, not little Archie, who, as is your privilege when you’re two months old, slept during the whole thing. Besides, you couldn’t see much of him beyond the back of his head. The star of the whole event was, of course, Prince Louis, who, at a year old, is already up for larks.
He sucked his thumb, put on sunglasses to show off, ran out of his mother’s arms in a bid for liberty and, while blowing kisses to Auntie Meghan, tried to make Archie laugh. He was confident, perky and in charge of all he surveyed. He was, in short, a dote.
The world took one look at the pictures and went ‘Aaaw!’ You could practically feel the gross happiness index take a nudge up.
A toddler who has learned to play is the happiest creature on earth. J.M. Barrie observed in one of the Peter Pan books that ‘it’s all downhill from the age of two’.
So Louis is in his prime, then, with no trace of self-consciousness, no notion of being bothered by cameras: just a happy little creature. And being happy himself, he spreads happiness around him.
His mother, Kate, has never looked so effortlessly cheerful as when she was pulling faces to make him laugh. She is in the enviable third child situation: she’s produced the heir and the spare with George and Charlotte; Louis has no dynastic purpose beyond being himself.
And Kate has maximised his cuteness, with the old-fashioned clothes and those fabulous T-bar shoes. Some observers take a dim view of a royal child-style that is apparently unchanged since the Sixties. Well, it suits chubby Louis, who looks gorgeous in rompers and a mini polo shirt. It’s a socially conservative style, but he is terrifically photogenic.
He has a disarming effect on the whole royal family. Prince Charles looked besotted at his 70th birthday celebrations last year when Louis leant forward in the family photo to grab his face.
ON THE balcony at Buckingham Palace last month, he melted when his grandson waved at him. A toddler has no sense of who is grand and who isn’t; he just sees his Grandpa. And it has a humanising effect on a Prince who often seems painfully self-conscious.
The same goes for William, who can come across as prickly and guarded; not when your little boy reaches over to jump into your arms when you’re in full military