Essential lessons Prince George won’t be learning at school
How does one train to become king or queen? As Prince George heads back to school this week, Kerry Parnell reveals what goes on in the most exclusive apprenticeship in the world
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If you thought training to be a doctor took time and commitment, spare a thought for the future kings and queens of the British monarchy — one prince has been in training for 70 years and the other 37.
On the plus side, nobody can say Prince Charles and Prince William aren’t prepared for their future careers. And now Prince George has joined their exclusive club of monarchs-in-waiting. Let’s hope he didn’t fancy being a pop star, or indeed a ballet dancer — because if his parents haven’t imparted the news about his future role yet, his classmates almost certainly will have.
But what goes into training a monarch? What lessons do they have to learn and — more importantly — who teaches them?
The answer changes depending on the generation. When the Queen was a princess, she and her parents never dreamt she would take the throne, being third in line after her uncle, Edward VIII and father Prince Albert — and expected to be pushed further down. Initially, she lived a carefree childhood. But after the abdication of Edward, it was deemed vital the young princess start learning about the job she would eventually take.
Elizabeth, who up until then had been schooled at home, was sent to study constitutional history at Eton with provost, Sir Henry Marten. There she learnt about history and royal rules, through the stories of her relatives and during World War II her father George VI started taking her into his confidence, including her in royal business.
Elizabeth also began to develop her famous reserve. She would later say: “I’ve been trained since childhood never to show emotion in public.”
It is no coincidence that each direct heir to the throne also becomes the quietest in the family — Elizabeth was much more mature than sister Princess Margaret, Charles meeker than nearest siblings Princess Anne and Prince Andrew, William became better behaved than Prince Harry and it is playing out with his children — George is growing more reserved than his spirited sister Princess Charlotte.
Charles at least got to go to school — the Queen and Prince Philip decided to give him a relatively normal education at pre-prep school Hill House, followed by Cheam and then Gordonstoun in Scotland, which he described as “Colditz in kilts”.
Not that they expected him to learn much. According to biographer Ingrid Seward, Philip told Charles: “I’m only going to bother if you’re permanently bottom. I really couldn’t care less where you are. Just stay in the middle, that’s all I ask.”
Charles was miserable throughout his school years — mainly because he stood out. When he heard he had been made Prince of Wales while watching TV at school, he recalled: “I remember being acutely embarrassed … I think for a little boy of nine it was rather bewildering. All the others turned and looked at me in amazement.”
As for the rest of his training, he was taught etiquette and how to be royal by his grandmother, the Queen Mother, with whom he was very close.
“My grandmother has been the most wonderful example of fun, laughter, warmth, infinite security and, above all else, exquisite taste,” Charles said.
Meanwhile, two more generations have embarked on their slow journey to the throne.
Diana, Princess of Wales, wanted William and Harry to have as normal a childhood as possible.
“I’ve chosen all the schools,” she told biographer Andrew Morton. “Charles wanted them to be governessed and I said ‘no, they’ve got to go out if they’re going to survive when they’re adults’.”
William went to Wetherby pre-prep, Ludgrove and Eton, where insiders say he was at first a lively and naughty child, but slowly became more responsible, probably as he realised his future. According to Morton, William had no idea he would be king until his classmates told him so.
“His innocence of his position was soon ended by fellow pupils, who left him in no doubt who he was,” he wrote in William and Catherine: Their Lives, Their Wedding.
“On one occasion a classmate reportedly asked him, ‘don’t you know the Queen?’
“William looked at him and replied: ‘Don’t you mean Granny?’
Diana said at the time: “He’s appallingly embarrassed by the whole thing. He’s very uncomfortable about that.”
As for the rest of his training, the Queen Mother took him under her wing, as she had done Charles, giving him preferential treatment and always inviting him to sit next to her, rather than Harry, who felt left out. Journalist Jeremy Paxman said: “William often told her that he didn’t really want to be king and then Harry would say, ‘if you don’t want the job I’ll have it’.”
As a schoolboy, the Queen would invite William to Windsor Castle, where she would give him king lessons, says royal historian Robert Lacey. “When William became a teenager, she would have him at Windsor Castle and would open the state boxes and guide him through papers,” he told People magazine. “It was William’s constitutional education.”
William later told the BBC the Queen is “the best role model I could have” and that she offers “more of a soft influencing, modest kind of guidance”.
Diana had given him altogether different lessons. “I take them round homelessness projects, I’ve taken William and Harry to people dying of AIDS … I’ve taken the children to all sorts of areas where I’m not sure anyone of that age in this family has been before,” she told journalist Martin Bashir in 1995. “And they have a knowledge — they may never use it, but the seed is there, and I hope it will grow because knowledge is power.”
Now, as William, like his father, has taken on more royal duties from the Queen, it’s his turn to shape his son into a future monarch. And he’s taken much of his mother’s training to heart.
In 2016 he told the BBC that he and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, hadn’t yet informed George he would be king.
“As far as we are concerned … we are a normal family,” he said. “I love my children in the same way any father does, and I hope George loves me the same any son does to his father. We are very normal in that sense. There’ll be a time and a place to bring George up and understand how he fits in in the world. But right now it’s just a case of keeping a secure, stable environment around him and showing as much love as I can as a father.”
William and Catherine chose an even more egalitarian school to enrol George in, as well as Charlotte, who starts this week — St Thomas’s Battersea, whose motto is “Be Kind”. It is at St Thomas’s that George will be able to explore his love of ballet, with weekly ballet classes on the curriculum this term.
Experts say they are certain George knows his future by now — if he didn’t, his primary school mates would tell him. After all, he invited the whole class to his football-themed birthday party in Kensington Palace in July.
Brittani Barger, deputy editor of Royal Central, says William and Catherine are preparing George for his future in a more nurturing way: “The Duke and Duchess are very big on mental health and I think that will play a strong part in how they prepare George as an heir. They will be very conscious about how they tell them, what they allow them to do and when, and will be in tune with their children’s mental health.”
Ingrid Seward agrees, saying they are keeping George’s royal education “as casual as possible”. “After all they don’t know what will have happened to the world by the time George potentially becomes king.”
Originally published as Essential lessons Prince George won’t be learning at school
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