Prince George at Eton: How William and Kate are Changing Royal Childhood
How the upcoming move to Eton marks a new chapter for the Wales children.
As Prince George prepares to start his senior school journey at Eton College, much attention is going to shift onto the Wales children. Many royal commentators, myself included, have discussed what a significant moment this is, not just as a seminal point for a future king but in the journey of the current Prince and Princess of Wales. We have seen the children really grow in front of our eyes. This week, I spoke to prominent royal commentator Afua Hagan where we reflected on these facts. In our extended interview, I declared that the three children almost represent different elements of the monarchy to a degree.
Prince George represents duty, stability and the future. We are seeing him grow quickly, becoming more confident, adventurous and involved with his parents as he does so. Princess Charlotte represents the poise and elegance of the institution. On walkabouts the 11-year-old carries herself as though she were 16. Her natural charm is plain for the world to see and she has showcased her incredible ability to support all the family members, whether that’s playing a piano duet with her mother at Christmas or helping her elder brother cope with the blazing heat at Wimbledon. Meanwhile, Prince Louis represents the levity and unpredictability that may come alongside the palace trappings. The public loves nothing more than to see him in his element at any Jubilee concert or Trooping the Colour balcony appearance. He has given us all the moments that we all love and live for.
When their children start a new chapter like enrolling in a new school, parents might feel a sense of uncertainty or, at the very least, unease at what lies ahead, but with the Wales children, their Royal Highnesses appear to have given their brood as strong a foundation as they possibly could. For Prince William, Eton might evoke an unstable time in his life as he thinks back to how his mother and father were symbolically at war with each other. For the heir and his younger sibling Prince Harry, they effectively grew up in a broken home.
The most private, intimate details and every ounce of dirty laundry of the unhappiness of their parents’ marriage was laid out for the entire world to practically feast upon. For George, Charlotte and Louis it is the complete opposite. Here is their father who cancelled several royal engagements to literally rush to be by his wife’s side after her abdominal surgery and later when she received her cancer diagnosis. Time and time again, Prince William and Catherine have shown just how strong their bond is, contrary to the Prince’s own childhood of stress.
Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis will always be able to support each other in their ‘spare-ship.'
Then there’s the case of the extended family. When Princess Catherine announced that her chemotherapy treatment finished after a gruelling nine months, we saw beautiful images of the family spending the summer of 2024 walking through the picturesque woods and the coast of Norfolk, potentially around Anmer Hall. Alongside the family of five, the video also contains the significant presence of Catherine’s parents, Carole and Michael Middleton as they happily played board games with their grandchildren. Such free and familial moments of candour would have been unthinkable when William and Harry were growing up. Although it’s clear that both William and Harry are still close with the Spencer side of their family, there was always the impression they appeared more formal and distant than the Wales children enjoy today.
Diana came from an aristocratic heritage with a stately manor and a large estate of Althorp. She also came from a broken home with the bitter divorce of her parents. The Middletons provide a completely different dynamic with their upper-middle-class background, a dynamic more in line with the average British family. Carole and Michael met when they both worked as ground crew for British Airways – Carol a flight attendant, Michael as a flight dispatcher - before later building the Party Pieces business. Catherine’s parents provide that grounding and more down-to-earth presence in the lives of their children. That complete maternal family infrastructure outside the confines of the institution is one of the Wales children’s greatest strengths.
The three Wales children also have a naturally different family dynamic, which may enable the monarchy to learn from lessons of the past. In his bombshell memoir, Spare, we learned much of Prince Harry’s childhood resentments towards Prince William when it came to alleged preferential treatment. Some of the examples that he cited – including the much-discussed lack of a breakfast sausage – may sound to some less like constitutional hierarchy and more in line with the everyday indignities of being a younger sibling. But beneath this sits an older royal problem as it’s undeniable that a number of ‘spares’ have struggled with the inevitable position and the isolation it entails.
Like Prince Harry, growing up thinking he was simply second best, Princess Margaret also felt a similar way with her sister Queen Elizabeth II (although she dealt with the challenges somewhat differently). But the Wales children are lucky because they have strength in numbers. Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis will always be able to support each other in their ‘spare-ship,’ as I like to put it, and they will always have each other to lean on for guidance with complete understanding of each other’s position, a dynamic that Harry never had as the sole younger sibling to the heir.
In our interview, Afua hopes that the future might be different for the Wales children. In the future, Prince George will eventually marry and have his own children, and the public spotlight will once again shift. She remarked: “When it comes to the time of Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, if they decide they want a different life for themselves, if they decide that, you know, Princess Charlotte wants to go and be a dentist in Venezuela or Prince Louis wants to wrestle alligators in Australia, I could absolutely imagine them doing that.” She added: “I hope that the monarchy can modernize enough to allow them to do that in a way that's healthy and in a way that's supported.”
Of course, the future remains unwritten, so to speak, and we can never know how events might play out. But the greatest inheritance that William may ultimately give George is not just a stable Crown, which will one day pass to him, but a stable and supportive family alongside it, something he didn’t necessarily have. In the age of a slimmed-down and streamlined Monarchy, as the spotlight shifts maybe Charlotte and Louis will have more freedom to decide not just how best to support their brother, but what kind of life they want for themselves. What is clear, however, is that the Wales children have the makings of a very bright future indeed.
