George photos reveal the one gift he will never be allowed to have
One simple thing about Prince George’s debut at Wimbledon on Sunday shows why his childhood is already over.
Royals
Don't miss out on the headlines from Royals. Followed categories will be added to My News.
COMMENT
Of the great successes of the Victorian era, a time when piano legs were hidden out of fears of the licentious thoughts they might conjure up and yet the Queen kept herself busy ‘adoring’ her Teutonic looker of a husband, was the end of child labour.
“Dark Satanic mills” had sprung up across the British landscape, spewing coal dust and demanding a ready supply of workers. Who better than children, small, cheap and easily kept in line?
By the time the dour Victoria passed away in 1901, decades of campaigning meant that the practice had largely been stamped up and the majority of children were educated until the age of 12.
For more than a century now, piano legs have been freed and children are not expected to labour away and yet, has anyone told the royal family?
In 2022, the House of Windsor is still happily putting kids to work. Just ask Prince George.
While other boys and girls his age were probably spending their Sunday playing Fortnite and lolling about getting rice cake crumbs in the couch cushions, the year four student was busy learning the ropes of his future grown up job.
Sunday, of course, was the men’s final of Wimbledon and so William and Kate, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge put on their professional clobber and trotted along to catch all the Centre Court action as they do year in and year out. However this time around, they brought a special guest star with them, none other than their son, the world’s most famous eight-year-old.
The kid, it must be noted, generally looked pleased as punch as he watched Novak Djovic beat Nick Kyrgios, and learnt, as Twitter quickly pointed out, approximately 37 new swear words.
The issue here is that Sunday was one of the hottest days of the year so far in the UK, with the mercury reaching 29.5 degrees. While, on a day when most Brits were probably stretching out in a park in their unmentionables, licking dripping ice creams and letting their skin frazzle, George was instead, baking in the sun – in a suit.
In what other context would the world not blink at a little boy being forced to cook in the heat in a suit?
As veteran royal correspondent Robert Jobson pointed out on Twitter, “I know there is a strict dress code in the Royal Box at @Wimbledon & his mum & dad are very respectful of such things, but did Prince George really have to wear a suit and tie in that heat? Surely a smart polo shirt and chinos would have been fine, he’s only 8!”
I know there is a strict dress code in the Royal Box at @Wimbledon & his mum & dad are very respectful of such things, but did Prince George really have to wear a suit and tie in that heat? Surely a smart polo shirt and chinos would have been fine, he’s only 8!
— Robert Jobson (@theroyaleditor) July 11, 2022
According to the Sun, the prince did not enjoy the sweltering conditions, saying to his father at one point, “[It’s] too hot” as the prince stroked his son’s hair.
“Oh you’re hot, are you?” William said. “It’s very warm today [ …] It’ll be fine.”
No, ‘let’s take your jacket off’ or ‘how about loosening your tie?’ The expectation was obvious: Maintaining a suitably polished image while on the job trumped whatever discomfort he might have been.
Because let’s make no bones about this: George going to Wimbledon might have been a jolly (or a “treat” as Kate put it) for the boy but it was also very much work.
While his great great great grandmother Victoria might have presided over the era that saw the end of child labour, that largesse does not seem to extend to the youngest members of the House of Windsor.
To be born royal, even in 2022, means that you will be expected to toil away and suffer some amount of personal ill-ease or disquiet in service of the Crown.
William and Kate have banged the drum again and again since their son was born in 2013 about giving him, and his sister Princess Charlotte and brother Prince Louis, an ostensibly ‘normal’ upbringing. There are M & S t-shirts and trips to the supermarket and the Saturday soccer games, all supposedly to give the Cambridges kids the chance to enjoy the sort of routinely quotidian childhood millions of other British youngsters get.
But that very noble and sensible quest of George’s parents can only go so far before reality intrudes; George will be king one day and William and Kate also have a responsibility to start to prepare their son for the one and only job he will likely ever hold.
The last 12 months have seen a very marked shift in the duke and duchess’ approach to their son and introducing him to life in the spotlight, with the couple having taken their little boy to the Euro 2020 semi-final and final, popped him in a carriage with his siblings for Trooping the Colour and now taking centre stage at Wimbledon.
It is no coincidence that George is starting to learn the ropes of public life at the same age that his father was too.
No sane parent would dress their child in a lightweight woollen suit to spend a day in the hot spring sun. To do so would verge on the brink of child cruelty.
However, the Cambridges’, as the parents of the 64th monarch of Great Britain, don’t have that option and it wasn’t his comfort that was their key priority here. George was on the clock, so to speak, therefore he would roll up in his work uniform. The very same uniform he will don for the term of his natural life.
(He’s probably the only kid in his class with a tie collection and who has mastered both the Windsor and the half-Windsor knots.)
The expectations of George even while his age is still in the single digits (he will turn nine-years-old on the 22nd of July) are unlike those of any other child in the world.
The poor bloody kid.
To some degree, the same holds for Charlotte and Louis.
In early June, it was not just George who got the joy (cough) of tagging along with his parents for an official engagement in Wales but the young princess too, marking the beginning of a new chapter in their careers. And it’s deeply uncomfortable to admit but, George and Charlotte already have exactly that – careers.
George by dint of genetic lottery will have to dedicate his life to the throne but Charlotte and Louis, out of abject necessity, might have to too.
In 20 years from now, the only working members of the royal family left, aside from William and Kate and possibly a doddery King Charles and Queen Camilla, will be Prince Edward and his wife Sophie, Countess of Wessex, both in their late 70s.
Everything will rest on a 20-something George.
While William was allowed to spend his first decade of adulthood at university, training in the armed services and then working as a search and rescue chopper pilot, the chance of George getting to enjoy such similar latitude seems impossible.
The monarchy is going to not only need the young prince to join the working royal ranks much much earlier than the Duke of Cambridge but Charlotte and Louis too.
The sad fact is, there is no one else.
One clear consequence of Grandpa Charles’ obsession with a slimmed-down royal family is that the only people left to help keep the monarchy afloat two decades from now will be his Cambridge grandchildren.
The problem is, when the Prince of Wales floated his vision for a lean monarchy in 2012 during the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, he was very clearly factoring in his other son, Prince Harry and whatever wife he would ultimately finagle to join the royal ranks. The royal family would have two adored sons, two glamorous duchesses and a host of cute kids who could be wheeled out for photo ops.
What this rubric failed to account for was, obviously, Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, deciding they did not want to tractably play along and instead high-tailed it to California and the comforting embrace of Oprah and Netflix’s millions.
When William was George’s age, his grandma, grandfather, father, mother, aunt, two uncles, and at least five of the Queen’s cousins were all frontline royal workers.
George will not have the same extended workforce of HRHs to turn to help him shoulder the burden; all he will have will be his siblings.
Charlotte already has been pressed into service. In 2019, she took part in her first walkabout after the family’s usual pilgrimage to St Mary Magdalene church at Sandringham, the four-year-old looked awkward and a tad befuddled by the hugging, gift-giving outpouring of reams of strangers. Understably too.
In June, when William, Kate and George went to Cardiff for the day, Charlotte was there too, having to shake hands and stand around while her parents made small talk.
While George’s royal training has clearly begun, so too has hers.
The Cambridge children might be growing up surrounded by ponies and Range Rovers and extended jaunts to Mustique but there is one thing they will always be denied to some degree: Choice.
Not over where he lives, what he does every day, and what his purpose in life will be.
Definitely for George and very possible for Charlotte and Louis too, their futures have largely already been written and I’m not sure any quantity of strawberries and cream could ever really make up for that.
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as George photos reveal the one gift he will never be allowed to have
British royal drops unexpected family detail
Mike Tindall has revealed a detail about his royal in-laws – and it’s in stark contrast to Meghan Markle’s claim in her Netflix series.
Megan’s ex-bodyguard breaks silence on Duchess’ royal feud
Meghan Markle’s former bodyguard, who worked with her in the years leading up to the explosive royal rift, has given an incredible insider’s account of how it all went down.