’Grim viewing’: New video reveals sad reality facing Prince George and his siblings
The Wales family have appeared in public twice in just two days, revealing something truly grim about the royal kids’ futures.
COMMENT
You’ve been lied to. I’ve been lied to. We have all been lied to.
For centuries, the impressionable minds of small children have been stuffed with idiotic tropes about wolves and axemen and malicious older women. (The Brothers Grimm et al have a lot to answer for).
One of the most pernicious: If a prince turns up to rescue you, then you are set. To be royal, the underlying message goes, is to have things truly and utterly made.
What codswallop. Balderdash. Absolute bull***t.
If you want to truly understand the reality of royal life, ignore anything involving a twittering bluebird or some blandly attractive heir turning up on a stead, and instead take this short video from over the weekend.
It stars three princes, two princesses and enough military hardware to retake the Orkney Islands. (The archipelago off the coast of Scotland could become a self-governing Norwegian
territory).
The clip makes for some grim viewing: There are Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis along with their parents William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales being forced out in the rain during their precious school holidays to be gawped at by large crowds that had been roped off like frisky farm animals.
The Prince and Princess of Wales were joined by Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis to tour the RAF C17 aircraft which transported Queen Elizabeth on her final journey down from Scotland at RAF Fairford!
— The Royal Watcher (@saadsalman719) July 14, 2023
🔗 https://t.co/z7kad3i81Spic.twitter.com/BOHxDsPmJU
Specifically, the family was at the Royal International Air Tattoo where they stood about in an enormous transporter aircraft and George was allowed to have a go at raising the ramp.
Look at photos of the outing, and while the prince and princess are in sparkling ‘on’ mode, their kids look far from thrilled to be there.
It might have been the first week of their two-month break, when most of their classmates at Lambrook School were playing Minecraft or getting set to jet off to Turks and Caicos or simply getting biscuit crumbs all over a Jasper Conran sofa, but here were the Wales three, working.
Because make no mistake, this was a working day for the family.
So too was the appearance, two days later, of William, Kate, George and Charlotte at Wimbledon for the Men’s Finals, where the four appeared in the Royal Box.
While gloriously overdosing on sunshine and strawberries sounds like a hell of a lot more fun than glumly reviewing the latest surface-to-air missiles in the drizzle (or whatever else the Waleses did at the Tattoo), again, this was a day on the royal clock.
Tiny suits were worn, hands were shaken and members of the public had been carefully arranged in lines for the royal troop to press the flesh.
For George especially, this is all just a taste of what is to come.
The Prince and Princess of Wales’ kids might get to live in three different magnificent stately homes and have been given tennis lessons by Roger Federer (seriously), but they have and will be denied something that millions of Australian kids can happily take for granted.
Choice.
Choice over how and where and why they live and work and love.
What the airshow and Wimbledon outings really drive home is that already, the young princes and princess are expected to help out with the family business.
This Saturday, the future King George VII will turn ten, and already there has been a flurry of stories in the UK press praising William and Kate’s parenting like they are the Dr Spocks of the ducal set.
The Prince and Princess of Wales, you see, are just deadset keen on their kids growing up as unaffected by their circumstances as possible, which is why Louis wasn’t allowed to borrow the Bayeux tapestry to make a fort in the downstairs drawing room.
It’s all presented as being nigh-on idyllic, not least by the prince and princess themselves who have made their oh-so-“normal” family a fundamental part of their brand.
Remember in April 2021 when, to mark William and Kate’s ten-year wedding anniversary, they put out an atmospheric, dusky-hued video showing the family all cavorting on a windswept beach and gathered around a bonfire? The end result was a clip that was like the bastard child of Enid Blyton and the marketing arm of BP.
However, no matter how enthusiastically William and Kate and their communications and social media outfits might try to sell this image, I think the reality leaves a certain lingering unpleasant taste in one’s mouth.
George might know that other boys aren’t carried aloft to the park in a sedan chair like he is, but nor does that make his childhood “normal”. The kid has been working since he was less than one.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday this weekend, the paper’s assistant editor Kate Mansey revealed that at only seven months old, George was trotted out by his parents at a drinks do at Kensington Palace to “introduce the little chap” where he “held out a pudgy hand for [her] to shake”. One handshake down, 89685868 to go, Georgie.
At nine months old, he took part in his first engagement, joining a specifically convened playdate at Wellington’s Government House during the family’s tour of New Zealand.
In 2016, at age three, the prince undertook what was his first official engagement in the UK, also appearing at the same Air Tattoo.
William and Kate, a former royal aide told Mansey, “had the idea that they would introduce him early so that it wouldn’t be a shock to the system when one day he had to step out onto the world stage”.
But just because they are getting George used to being an object of fascination and scrutiny doesn’t mean it would be any less upsetting or unpleasant.
Since he was six and Charlotte was only four, Christmas morning hasn’t meant being allowed to scoff a Twix before breakfast, unmolested by nanny, but instead having to run the gauntlet of hundreds of strangers and the media.
In 2019, the little prince and princess joined their parents for the royal family’s usual church service, after which they got their first taste of a rope line.
The pictures make for uncomfortable viewing, because even when the princess was still at preschool she was being expected to perform for crowds.
Here are George and Charlotte being forced to shake hands with strangers and being involuntarily hugged by pensioners. No wonder they look disconcerted and uneasy.
And they could have eight or nine decades of this to go. If Prince Louis is still working at the same age his great-grandfather Prince Philip was, then he will still be politely shaking hands with the unwashed masses in the year 2115.
Interestingly, a second report, also by the Mail’s Mansey, came out over the weekend and claimed that George would have much more freedom as an adult and would not be expected to serve in the armed forces like his father, uncle, grandfather, great-grandmother and great-grandfather all did.
A long-time friend of William’s told Mansey: “In theory, there is nothing to stop George from pursuing a career as an astronaut, for example, if that’s what he wants, and then becoming King later”.
“The rules are different now, he wouldn’t necessarily have to follow the old formula of going into the military and then Royal life,” the friend claimed.
The key words here are “in theory”.
“In theory” Queen Camilla could turn up to her next engagements wearing Crocs and toting a cold roadie; “in theory” Princess Anne could be a guest judge on FBoy Island and “in theory” Prince Harry might finally twig why his family has all left the WhatsApp chat.
Just because something is possible, doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.
The royal family is already so slimmed down it needs a high-calorie, high-fat protein shake, stat.
The death of Her late Majesty last year means that there are more than 600 charities which are now without patron, a load that the already reduced number of working members of the royal family will be unlikely to absorb. (Earlier this year a review was launched into the hundreds and hundreds of organisations officially supported by Queen Elizabeth, King Charles and Queen Camilla and which is still ongoing).
By the time the Wales kids are adults, the vast majority of royal work will be done by only their parents and great-uncle and great-aunt Edward and Sophie, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, who will be pushing 70. (Charles and Camilla will both be near 90).
It’s hard to ignore clues that George is already aware of how fundamentally abnormal his life really is.
So even if George had his heart set on visiting Mars or Charlotte wanted to spend her days pumping stomachs in an Essex emergency department, they may well be out of luck.
They, along with Louis, are it. There will be no one else to carry the royal can into the 22nd century aside from them and their families.
Everything will rest on their shoulders and that may well mean, practically, they will have no option but to join the ranks of official representatives of the crown.
It’s impossible to see them as anything but largely stuck, lumped with a fate, a life and a job not of their own choosing.
A fellow member at the exclusive, members-only West London Hurlingham Club, where George and Charlotte have tennis lessons, described the young future king to the Mail as “lots of fun but sensible”.
“George isn’t timid as such, but you will see him hang back while Charlotte and Louis rush forwards. He takes his time. He’s more cautious,” the member said.
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.
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