Major problem with Kate pic nobody is talking about

The world is celebrating after Kate’s return to public duties but her comeback has thrown up a major issue no one is talking about.

There is that Golden Age of Hollywood saying: Never work with children or animals.

The exact inverse applies to royalty. The survival of the whole pitiless business demands the regular begetting of small, new HRHs to wrangle into cutesy sailor suits and to offer up into the maw of monarchy. (And the horses? Well, that’s just the fun weekend part.)

This weekend saw Trooping the Colour, the annual ceremonial birthday celebration of the King, an outing which, of course, saw a great walking-on-water comeback of Kate, the Princess of Wales, to public life, albeit briefly.

An added bonus of her appearance was it also meant the addition of her and husband

Prince Wiliam’s three young children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis to the scene.

The global coverage of the event can be broken down thus: 91 per cent was breathlessrhapsodising about Kate and nine per cent was focused on Louis delivering some of his nowroutine antics.

However I think there is a serious story from the day that no one is talking about which is, George. The kid looked miserable interspaced with uncomfortable and a moments a bit thunderous.

The world is celebrating after the Princess of Wales’ return to public duties but her comeback has thrown up a major issue no one is talking about.

Let me throw in a bit of a caveat slash reality check here. Let us factor into this George situation the inherent dreariness and interminable dullness of the event.

Trooping is never going to be any kid’s idea of a fantabulous day out – the starchy suits, the being on show, the watching grown men and women march about in formation in the pelting rain.

Still, though, the photos of the 10-year-old prince that have come out this weekend are really something. While it would be ridiculous to expect him to smile and to really give us practised adult game face, still, he looked, quite simply, unhappy.

Charlotte and Louis, for their parts, didn’t exactly appear overjoyed but the day must surely have meant something entirely different to them.

Trooping, for George, isn’t just some outing that his parents had decreed that he and his brother and sister must attend (with strict instructions about best behaviour having been sternly issued in the car on the way there) but a glimpse into what lies ahead.

Going into Saturday, the primary school-aged prince wasn’t just about to waste a perfectly drizzly summer afternoon having been forcibly wrenched away from his iPad and an endless supply of homemade Twiglets but was being forced to confront his future, a future over which he has precisely zero say.

Prince George and Prince Willian at the FA Cup final earlier this year.

This particular aspect of royalty is one that I find troubling. It’s a hereditary system built on the sheer quirk of one’s birth and which then locks some newborn babe into a lifetime of duty and service.

My point is not about how hard a job it is that George will be required to do – a job that will probably see him do the annual prime ministerial audience conducted via neural link or holographic display – but about choice

Sure, he will one day inherit palaces (seven not counting private residences like Balmoral and Sandringham), several billion dollars, and the seabed rights of the entire UK but choice? He has none.

George as an individual, as a human with tastes, talents and interests does not factor and will never factor much at all. As far as the business of Crown Inc is concerned, the machinery of monarchy just requires a warm body who can sign legislation and host the occasional state visit.

George’s less than cheery turn up at Trooping is not the first time that he has looked like this of late. Earlier this month, William took his son to the FA Cup football final event where, at times, he looked uneasy and a bit troubled.

Britain's Prince George of Wales and his father Prince William attend the English FA Cup final football match between Manchester City and Manchester United. Picture: Ben Stansall / AFP

The Telegraph reported of the outing that the Prince had “looked a little anxious … sucking in his cheeks and adjusting his well-combed hair”. Later however he “appeared to relax somewhat, while still mindful of course that he was on display in front of the packed stands”.

Most football-mad kids, you’d think, would be thrilled to get box seats to the big final while instead it sounds, and looked, like George was only enduring it as best he could.

Maybe all of this has nothing to do with the throne-sitting that awaits him and he is stressed about his mother currently being treated for cancer or he failed his maths test or his parents said “no” to his request to take his favourite footman to school to carry his backpack.

However his childhood is not, and never will be, anything truly like “normal”.

For William and Kate, as parents, they have to now walk the line between protecting George from the PR wolves, and of actually preparing him for his future.

The Waleses are in a massive bind: They can’t maintain the fiction that he is just like every other child reared on skiing holidays in Verbier and organic salmon fingers but nor would they want to overwhelm or overload him.

Bits and pieces have come out about this process.

Respected royal biographer Robert Hardman, author of the best-selling Charles III has previously said of all this.

“William is trying to normalise it. They’re not in denial and there’s a lot of thought being given to it.

“With George, there’s a sense that the priority is that he and his siblings are not put off (royal life), that it’s not scary, that it’s something that they understand and it’s going to be

part of their life. And there’s a belief to make it as unobtrusive and as normal — if you can call it normal — and as pleasant as possible.”

The front lines of public life are already beckoning. The day after George’s glum Trooping

showing, he and Charlotte and Louis issued their first official social media message via the Kensington Palace accounts to wish William a happy Father’s Day.

As King Canute found, you can’t hold back tides or the inevitabilities of royal life. God, I hope that at least Prince George likes horses.

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 Major problem with Kate pic nobody is talking about