‘Oppressive’: Prince George’s 10th birthday reveals sad fate awaiting young royal
The little prince turned ten over the weekend, with a new photo released to mark the occasion – but the bland shot hides a grim truth.
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What in god’s name do you get as a birthday present for a kid who is one day going to inherit, among many other things, all the dolphins in UK waters, the most valuable stamp collection in the world, racehorses by the dozen and so many grand masters that he could tank the international art market on a whim? (What a laaaarrrf!)
A family-size box of Maltesers and a Smiggle gift card just aren’t going to cut it, are they?
Over the weekend, a certain someone, namely Prince George, hit double digits, an occasion that was marked by his parents William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales doing their usual party trick of putting out a new photo of their child looking exceedingly clean. (I really hope that seconds after photographer Millie Pilkington released the shutter, George was running across a boggy bit of lawn playing Chase-The-Footman).
This new photo is so lacking in anything of real interest that I doubt even George’s grandparents, King Charles and former Party Pieces royalty Michael and Carole Middleton, did more than affectionately stick it on the fridge next to those takeaway pizza menus before getting on with their days. (Respectively: Being the 40th anointed monarch and keeping Queen Camilla away from the Debenhams sale; trying to get a decent tee time).
But the thing about this image is not what it shows, but what it represents.
For years, we the public were treated to annual doses of super-duper cutesy, oh-my-ovaries photos of George, from pudgy baby to rambunctious toddler to adorable little boy.
It was cognitively impossible to quite comprehend that this little tyke all done up in Petit Bateau would one day be responsible for an institution older than pretty much every nation in the world, bar a few.
(Just to blow your mind a bit: What is now the British monarchy had been going for more than 400 years before Johannes Gutenberg got his cracking idea for the printing press, and even longer if you date things back to Alfred the Great, the ninth century’s answer to Ryan Gosling. It had been ticking over for more than 500 years before anyone came up with the concept of a ‘newspaper’ and had been chugging along for more than 700 years before the Earl of Sandwich invented I’m sure you can guess what).
However, what is evident in this new George shot is that the boy is perilously on the cusp of tweendom – and what once seemed like a remote, so-far-down-the-track-notion is now becoming a painful and very real present reality.
For one thing, the poor kid knows exactly what lies ahead for him.
It was in the northern summer of 2020 when George, at age seven, was reportedly sat down by his mother and father for a life-changing conversation.
According to Robert Lacey’s Battle of Brothers, it was at this point in time “that his parents went into more detail about what the little prince’s life of future royal ‘service and duty’ would particularly involve”.
The Waleses, he writes, had “decided that they would not broach the ‘king’ subject with their [son] until a controlled moment of their choice – reflecting William’s unhappiness at the haphazard fashion in which the whole business of his royal destiny had buzzed around his head from the start”. (So too Charles, who has said of coming to grips with his fate, “It’s something that dawns on you with the most ghastly inexorable sense”).
The weight of what is to come and the abject lack of choice that George has over such fundamental parts of his life as his career, where he will live and his religion are just the beginning of the bad news.
Because what comes next for first King William V and then later King George VII is simple – a great, bloody slog. A great, bloody slog to keep the British crown a going concern and not just a chapter in history textbooks.
It was a hell of a lot easier to sell the rabble on a hereditary monarchy when they were busy tilling fields to eke out a few turnips and trying not to get the bubonic plague, but the arrival of modernity was quite the spoke in the monarchical wheel.
Ironically, it was about this point in history – from the beginning of the 1700s – that also brought with it the advent of the Georges (I, II, III and IV) and from then on until the most recent crop of Georges (V and VI) in the 20th century, there has been a profound shift in the public psyche when it comes to the monarchy.
No longer would the proletariat blithely accept that just having a title made some weak-
chinned, under-educated chap who speaks passable French automatically one’s better; instead, the institution has faced an ever-growing tide of pesky questions about what function it serves in 20 and 21st century life.
It will fall to George to find an answer to that, which can keep things going into the 22nd century.
However, it will be nothing short of an Everest-like uphill battle.
Take a look at the polling, and even a primary-school aged prince might need a restorative Twix to cheer himself up.
While overall there has been little change in the total number of Brits who think the monarchy is a smashing idea (from 61 per cent in 2011 to 58 per cent now), where things enter uh-oh territory is when you look at the precipitous drop in support among the kids.
In 2011, 50 per cent of 18-24-year-olds agreed that the monarchy was a good thing, but today, that sits at only 32 per cent.
Back then, in 2011, even with the UK enjoying the collective high that was the union of a prince to his roller disco-organising inamorata, 59 per cent of the 18-24 demographic wanted to keep the monarchy. Today, that sits at 36 per cent, which is to say, it has come dangerously close to halving.
If this rate of decrease continues, George should consider loading as many Rembrandts into the back seat of his miniature Aston Martin (inherited from his father and uncle) in preparation for funding his future exile in Paraguay. (“Yo solía ser un príncipe” or “I used to be a prince” might not be a bad bit of vocab for the kid to pick up).
Finding some way – any way – to arrest this decline will fall to William, but even more so George.
Even before he accedes, as a teenager and 20-something, The Firm will need him to be flying the Buckingham Palace banner as energetically and vociferously as his pasty arms will allow.
The kid does not look like he will even get much of a reprieve until then, with even his parents unable to stave off the demands of his position for much longer.
The Mail on Sunday has reported that the next two years will see the remaining working members of Crown Inc collect their passports and head to Heathrow en masse to undertake an international mission to keep the Commonwealth glued together.
Specifically, the King, Queen and the Prince and Princess of Wales are set to have a go at some “soft diplomacy” in an effort to “protect relations with countries such as Australia which want to go it alone”. (The koalas of Taronga Zoo should be prepared to be cuddled repeatedly for the cameras in the years to come).
Already this year, September will see William jet into New York to visit the Times Square M&M store, take in a Wicked matinee and attend the annual Earthshot Prize innovation summit.
Then, come November, it’s Singapore’s turn for a Wales onslaught, with the prince and princess descending for Earthshot Week and as much chilli crab as they can eat.
However, William and Kate might be travelling en famille with “the prospect”, according to the Mail, that the three Wales kids – George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis – could also be a part of this international goodwill offensive.
So, just what every child wants – to spend their precious school holidays shaking hands with retirees in Tamworth or being shepherded around the Royal Easter Show while a contingent of besuited British press record their every blink and yawn.
Already, the last 12 months have required George to occupy a much more public and official role than his father or even grandfather had to at the same age.
The last year has seen him take part in his great-grandmother’s State Funeral, serve as page during the coronation and notch him his first golden carriage ride. How George has found the requisite time to devote to Minecraft like every other kid his age, I’ll never know.
The shrinking roster of working members of the royal family and the reputational blows of the last few years (oh those spares, their egos and their foibles measured by the metric tonne) mean that the picture-perfect Wales children could well find themselves being wheeled out with increasing frequency.
William and Kate might do so through gritted teeth and with plenty of reservations, what with their obsession for the amorphous concept of a ‘normal’ family life, but at the end of the day the monarchy’s number one goal is survival.
Survival that could mean three kids who might end up being shunted out the front door for events, tours and rope lines with greater regularity than anyone, their parents included, might have hoped.
Survival that means the weight of responsibility on George’s shoulders is already such that it would make a well-rounded adult want to hide under the doona for a bit.
George’s life will be a grand and historic one, one that will, if he wants, allow him to play a part in history, diplomacy and in impacting the sales of commemorative tea towels. I imagine that could be profoundly fulfilling and meaningful, but it is also one that carries with it an unimaginable burden.
So I hope the prince enjoyed his cake, his party and his presents. I hope the footmen even let him win chasies for once. Because what comes next is a can-never-quit job that will be, to my mind anyway, onerous, overwhelming and oppressive.
And there are no number of Rembrandts that can truly make up for that.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as ‘Oppressive’: Prince George’s 10th birthday reveals sad fate awaiting young royal
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