Kate Middleton’s shock $600,000 Prince George gift
The Princess of Wales has reportedly ditched tradition and is considering a much more radical future for her son to the tune of $600,000.
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Sometimes I don’t know how Kate, the Princess of Wales does it. Here she is, laid up in her sick bed, recovering from abdominal surgery and, without even getting out from under the downy goose feather duvet, is managing to upset the establishment apple cart.
At the heart of the deeply entrenched class system (subjugating the lower orders since 1066!) are the small cadre of public schools which educate the wee Araminta and Hugos of the quality. Sons of the nobility and upwardly mobile hedge fund classes are punted off to get the requisite education at one of two schools to prepare them to assume their place at the zenith of society, politics and the economy; daughters learn to play hockey and flirt with bulimia. There will be muddy sports fields.
Then in wanders Kate, the closest thing the royal family has ever had to someone who is middle class, and now the next Queen could be about to chuck much of this out the window.
Young Prince George, future King and 10-year-old who already has too many ties next to his Aston Villa stripes, will be starting secondary school in September. The million dollar question, quite literally, is which school the princess and husband Prince William choose for their precious son and one-day throne-sitter?
Sound the breaking news alert!
This week there was movement on this front of a magnitude that I’m surprised that CNN didn’t break into their usual programming of wringing their hands about the imminent end of global democracy and the rise of our AI overlords.
Not only are the first and second original school options now out, but the new contender is a school that has produced famous thinkers and activists, but not a single, solitary Tory resident of 10 Downing Street. Gasp!
Top of the Wales’ school list had been Eton, legendary manufacturer of Prime Ministers (20), George Orwell and Bear Grylls. Bolstering the idea that the famed institution would be the prince and princess’s choice was that it’s not only where William and brother Prince Harry were educated, but also the fact that Kate did not attend last year’s Earthshot Prize in Singapore so she could support her son as he took the entrance exams for the 583-year-old school. (It came into being the same year that the printing press was invented and 52 years before Columbus pitched up to nick the Americas.)
The King’s sons’ alma mater has reportedly suffered a reversal in fortune and is no longer the bookies’ choice.
The next option that cropped up was Kate’s old school, the co-ed Marlborough, which she toured solo last year and then subsequently with William. It seemed a shoe-in for a while there with its willingness to let boys and girls conjugate Latin verbs and suffer the travails of adolescent acne in proximity to one another. So progressive.
Things had reportedly progressed with George having been “allocated a ‘house’ in a safe location and given a housemaster should he take up a place”.
Except now this week the Mail has reported that the Princess has nixed the idea of Marlborough because it has become “too flashy”.
“The 2024 version of Marlborough may be quite different from how Kate remembers it,” a source told the Mail. “It’s become a little more jet-set. Lots of parents have villas in Ibiza, chalets in Verbier or a private jet, which isn’t Kate’s style. She prefers understated wealth.”
Thus we get to the latest story out of the UK, and welcome to the Georgie Stakes, the much lesser known Northamptonshire school, Oundle.
The school’s ethos sounds like it would be music to the Waleses’ ears with students taking “individual and collective action towards environmental sustainability” and being taught to be ambitious “but never arrogant”. (That is even though the fees are about $87,000-a-year, even before anyone has bought a pair of navy blue socks or a single copy of Animal Farm, which works out at more than $600,000 in tuition alone. Per child.)
If George, and later Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, are enrolled as boarders, they face
“set meal times and curfews” and being assigned “chores and tasks”.
As one old Oudlian told the Telegraph, ‘elitist braying’ is just not done amongst alumni.
Said the old boy: “It’s not a place that’s full of really posh or rich kids, or people fighting to be top dog … whereas some schools only churn out politicians and high-flying bankers.”
Famous graduates include thinker Richard Dawkins, Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer of Iron Maiden and feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez.
Ditching schools famed for their upper crust graduates or because they are deemed to be too into displays of wealth might sound odd given that the royal family owns palaces, plural, is worth billions and has an art collection that would make the Louvre weep with jealousy.
But, one of the many paradoxes of the House of Windsor is the degree to which they downplay their riches. The late Queen enjoyed $9 boxes of chocolates and heated her rooms using a $50 bar heater, King Charles has been having his suits re-mended and been re-wearing them since the 1970s and Princess Anne has been eeking out the same bottle of Revlon’s Charlie since she was a deb.
A school that turns out less elitist little Lord Faunterloys and is more into teaching their student how to manage a compost heap sounds far more in line with William and Kate’s whole approach to raising a future monarch.
There is also very possibly a more cool-headed element to this. George’s job, for decades likely, will be to serve as a unifying figure of nationhood, both as a man who can jovially open Norfolk agricultural fairs, and as a totemic symbol of the state. (Nothing like considering the inherent duality of kingship on a weekend.)
Therefore, it would serve George to have more of a notion about what ‘the people’ are all about that is more meaningful than peering out at them from the back seat of the family’s armour-plated Audi station wagon. This is a project that William and Kate have been working on since his birth, occasionally dragging him through a Waitrose to buy sun dried tomatoes or flying on a budget airline to see Gan Gan in Scotland.
Choosing a school like Oundle would fit with that goal. The school sounds like it’s far more egalitarian and its students came from a more socio-economically diverse range of backgrounds than Eton or the private jet flying families of Marlborough.
Further upping the appeal of the institution is that unlike Eton, choosing Oundle would mean that Kate could send all three of her kids to the same school, a boon not only for drop-offs but also for sibling camaraderie and togetherness.
The support of the ever-hard working Princess Anne and Prince Edward has proven indispensable to the King, even more so now while he is being treated for cancer. There is stepping up and then there is the Princess Royal, a woman who thinks ‘ego’ belongs in the same place as vegan sausage rolls and gong workshops – the bin.
Photos of her from this week off on a blustery official trip to a national coast-watch station down near the Isle of Wight sum up her tremendous, unflagging support for her brother and his reign.
Princess Anne is the Royal Patron of the national coast watch. The event today is celebrating its 30th anniversary. @Bournemouthechopic.twitter.com/U8GZqXHvDv
— Erin Rhodes (@ERhodesjourno) February 14, 2024
A generation down, the loss of Harry from his palace co-pilot position after the intercontinental ballistic missile of Megxit was launched, continues to impact William, most especially in the moral support department.
The loss of Harry, on top of being the only remaining one of the late Queen’s eight grandchildren to be a working member of the royal family, has compounded the practical and psychological burden on him.
For William and Kate, the decision to keep their kids together at school could go a long way to ensuring they reach adulthood as a tight unit who will have the foundations in place for them to provide each other with a lifetime of succour and willingness to agree on some sort of equitable rota for investitures.
I have to say, if this Oundle reporting by the Mail is borne out, I’m impressed with Kate. A one day Queen ignoring prescribed upper crust conduct in favour of ensuring the UK will have an emotionally balanced, non ‘elitist’ King who knows how to empty a recycling bin? Maybe the Buckingham Palace gift shop has a future yet.
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 Kate Middleton’s shock $600,000 Prince George gift
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