Category: Prince George of Cambridge

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Scandal: Prince George, Charlotte & Louis all use ‘Wales’ as a surname at school

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For most of this year, there’s been an endless amount of discourse about the Duchess of Sussex’s surname. Within With Love, Meghan, she told Mindy Kaling that “I’m Sussex now” when Mindy referred to her as “Meghan Markle.” Meghan told People Mag that she and her family (including Archie and Lili) use Sussex as their surname and they consider it their shared family name. Palace insiders and protocol police have been ripping out their hair and wailing like banshees for months. Even in Meghan’s interview with Emily Chang last week, Chang once again asked Meghan to clarify the Sussex surname situation. Everyone acted as if it was completely unheard-of for a royal or titled family to use their ducal/earldom/whatever title as a surname. Well, as part of People Magazine’s “no sh-t, Sherlock” royal coverage, they slipped in a fun little story about what names Prince George, Prince Louis and Princess Charlotte use at school. You’re not going to believe this, you guys.

Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis are off to a new school year, but they won’t be using their royal titles in the classroom. Prince William and Kate Middleton’s three children are known to their teachers and friends at school as George Wales, Charlotte Wales and Louis Wales, with the surname taken from their parents’ titles as the Prince and Princess of Wales.

Though the children all received prince or princess titles and His or Her Royal Highness styling at birth, going by their first name and the surname of Wales is a more informal address that allows them to blend in with the student body.

When a last name is necessary, it’s tradition within the royal family for children to use their parents’ titles as the basis for their last name. Prince William and Prince Harry were similarly called William Wales and Harry Wales while at school and in the military, as their father, the future King Charles, was then the Prince of Wales.

However, Prince George, 12, Princess Charlotte, 10, and Prince Louis, 7, didn’t always go by the last name of Wales in the classroom. Queen Elizabeth made William and Kate the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge when they wed in 2011, and the couple’s children were previously called George Cambridge, Charlotte Cambridge and Louis Cambridge at school. When Prince George started school at Thomas’s Battersea in September 2017, a close look at the name tag on his backpack showed said “George Cambridge.”

Last names are a bit tricky within the British royal family, and in 1960, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip decided that their direct descendants would have the last name of Mountbatten-Windsor. The royal couple tacked “Mountbatten” onto the British royal family’s official surname of Windsor, which was adopted by King George V in 1917.

However, it became a custom within the family for later generations of children with royal titles to use their parents’ titles as the inspiration for their surname. As Prince William was called William Wales, his cousins, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, used York as their last name as their father, Prince Andrew, is the Duke of York.

[From People]

I already knew this, as did anyone with even a passing interest in British royalty. Harry and William both used “Wales” as a surname when they were in school and in the military. Beatrice and Eugenie both used York as a surname. When QEII died, there were stories updating the titles of the Wales kids and specifying that they were no longer “of Cambridge” but now “of Wales.” And yet, it was a five-alarm fire when Meghan called herself Meg Sussex, and said that her children use Sussex as a surname. Gee, I wonder why? In any case, I certainly hope that we get at least twenty huffy Daily Mail columns about how using “Wales” as a surname is a slap in the face to QEII, and how NO ONE would ever dream of using their title as a last name OR a married name.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

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Prince George of Cambridge

People: Prince George needs Forest Lodge to live ‘as normal a life as possible’

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People Magazine’s cover story this week is Prince George at 12: The Boy Who Will Be King. This perhaps would have been more fitting on or around his twelfth birthday more than a month ago, but I think the timing suggests that Kensington Palace understands that the Forest Lodge news landed poorly. This is their pivot: see, Prince William and Kate are so focused on the best way to raise the heir, look at what a normal kid he is, see, that’s our REAL job! I also doubt that People Mag would have felt empowered to put a literal child on their cover unless they got the nod (if not explicit permission) from Kensington Palace. Well, enjoy some highlights about “the boy who will be king.” This actually made me feel sorry for George, btw.

George met veterans on VE Day: “This was the first sign of George taking on future duties,” Russell Myers of The Mirror tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “Even though he is so young, he seems to have grown in confidence over the last couple of years.” For observers, the moment highlighted how William and Kate, both 43, have been carefully preparing their eldest son for the throne. “It’s a slow game, and it gets him used to it on the couple’s terms rather than anybody else’s,” a palace insider says.

George is serious: “He comes across as a serious chap,” the insider adds. “To have the world’s eyes on you, especially when you’re so young, is demanding.” Yet those who know him well say he also has a playful streak.

He does the right things: “He does the right things at the right moment, as any 12-year-old would—and that’s all that matters,” says a source close to the palace.

George has never been to boarding schools: Following a summer in which his mother has been regaining strength nearly a year after chemotherapy, George is returning to Lambrook School in September for his final year alongside Charlotte and Louis. Unlike previous heirs, he has always attended coed day schools. “That chimes with William wanting to do things in a more modern way, putting all three children in the same school,” says royal author Sally Bedell Smith. “It’s a new direction — groundbreaking for the royal family.”

But will he go to Eton next year? But a pivotal decision lies ahead: where he will continue his education next year. For most royal watchers, Eton College — the all-boys boarding school where William thrived — is the front-runner, conveniently close to the family’s new home, Forest Lodge, in Windsor Great Park, where they plan to settle by year’s end.

Forest Lodge is important to George!! William and Kate have anchored themselves in Windsor, determined to give their children as normal a life as possible. At Forest Lodge, they plan to maintain the routines that matter most: school drop-offs and pickups, sports games and everyday family moments — all without live-in staff.

The importance of the Middletons: George’s home life mirrors the happy country-centered childhood Kate enjoyed. Living just 30 minutes away, Kate’s hands-on parents, Carole and Michael, play an unusually prominent role in shaping the life of a future King. “Kate’s family has set the pace, and William has been very happy to take the lead from them,” says royal author Robert Lacey. “Many decisions they’ve made echo Middleton decisions.”

What happens if King Charles passes in the next few years: With King Charles, 76, still undergoing treatment for an undisclosed cancer, questions about the future are inevitable. If George becomes heir to the throne before finishing school, any bestowal of the title Prince of Wales may be delayed by William. “They would want him to focus on having freedom before giving him any royal titles,” the insider says. Adds Lacey: “I imagine that when William talks to George about things like this, he uses words like ‘destiny’ rather than ‘duty.’ ‘Duty’ has a sense of being trapped; ‘destiny’ has a sense of choice.”

A normal kid: “He is the most normal 12-year-old future monarch we have ever had,” says the close palace insider. “And that is a very good thing.”

[From People]

I actually think Sweden’s Princess Estelle is probably the most “normal” yet prepared future monarch – Estelle’s parents seem to be doing a great job of letting her be a kid, but also preparing her for her future role, and including her on all kinds of state events. As for George… this piece absolutely felt like George’s parents using him as a human deflection shield when they got bad press for the Forest Lodge move. The explicit mention of Forest Lodge as part of George’s “normal” life says it all (to me). Yeah, I do feel sorry for those kids.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Kensington Palace.

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Mail: Prince George sent megayacht staffers out to fetch food from McDonald’s

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After Prince William and Kate’s appearance at the Wimbledon men’s final, they flew on a private plane to Greece, where they were quickly whisked away to a mega-yacht. They enjoyed what was probably about 10 to 12 days on the yacht, touring around Greek islands. At first, there were just Greek outlets covering the Wales family’s trip, but last week, the Daily Mail finally picked up the story. Now the Mail has a weird/funny update: the megayacht apparently dropped anchor somewhere in Greece so staffers could fetch a Big Mac for Prince George.

In the rarefied world of super yachting, no request is too outlandish – particularly if it comes from a future King. Sailing around the Greek islands with his family last month, the Prince and Princess of Wales’s eldest son George, 12, apparently fancied something off menu. The royals had just left Kefalonia and were heading south in the Ionian Sea towards another island, Zakynthos. After dropping anchor some distance from the shore, a tender boat was despatched on a special mission.

It seems something had tickled young George’s fancy. Sources remain tight-lipped about quite what it was – though one said tantalisingly: ‘George required a specific dietary item which led to the tender going ashore in Zakynthos to purchase it. Nothing extravagant, just something particular.’

It is hard to conceive of what it was that couldn’t be rustled up by the superyacht’s chef. And presumably the kitchen received plenty of forewarning about the children’s likes and dislikes. Hard to imagine the yacht running out of ketchup, say, or chicken nuggets.

George is said to have a penchant for spaghetti carbonara, a straightforward dish by any standards. He and sister Charlotte, ten, are also partial to curry. Again, easily prepared. Perhaps as some locals on Zakynthos have half-jokingly speculated, George fancied a fast food treat. They point out that it is one of only a handful of Greek islands that boasts a McDonald’s restaurant. What’s more it is close to the shore in the town of Laganas on the south of the island.

‘It is company policy not to divulge any information regarding our clients,’ said the manager.

A mystery indeed. In truth, while Princess Diana was known to indulge William and Harry with burgers and KFC, it is something Kate has avoided.

[From The Daily Mail]

Did you guys ever watch Triangle of Sadness? I watched it when it was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director a few years ago. I hated that movie, but I have to admit, there are parts of the film which I still think about today. It’s about rich people on a yacht, and then the yacht sinks and a new social hierarchy is built among the survivors. Anyway, it’s a very “rich people on a yacht” thing to send staff out to gather McDonald’s food for the passengers. I’m not sure why George is being singled out either, other than the fact that he’s the heir’s heir and there’s always a vested interest in singling out George. But surely, it’s far more likely that all of the kids got some McDonald’s as a special vacation treat while they were hanging out on a borrowed mega-yacht? It’s also far more likely that William and Kate were the ones asking staffers to do this.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Josh Shinner/Kensington Palace.

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Prince George turns 12 years old with a new birthday portrait by Josh Shinner

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Today is Prince George’s 12th birthday. Happy birthday to him. Reportedly, George is on vacation with his family and his Middleton grandparents in Greece. They’re possibly sailing around on a private yacht, having flown to Greece on a private plane. But George’s parents still have extensive staff, and so someone at Kensington Palace posted this year’s birthday portrait of George. KP won’t let the Princess of Wales photograph the heir anymore, right? Not after last year’s manipulated-photo catastrophe. So they organized a photoshoot with Josh Shinner, who has been taking a lot of photos of the Wales family in the past year.

Speaking of the Wales family’s luxury vacation in Greece, there’s a renewed conversation these days about whether George and his father should continue to fly on the same private plane/helicopter. Prince William and George are the next two people in the line of succession, and there are “protocols” about air travel. Protocols which William has mostly ignored for years.

As Prince George turns 12 today, his parents have been urged to take care to ensure the safety of the future king. A former pilot of the royal helicopters has confirmed that George’s father, Prince William, stopped travelling with the then-Prince Charles when he was 12.

Talking about Charles, Princess Diana and their sons, former pilot Graham Laurie said: ‘Interestingly, we flew all four – the Prince, the Princess, Prince William and Prince Harry, up until Prince William was 12 years old. After that, he had to have a separate aircraft and we could only fly all four together when they were young with the written permission of Her Majesty. When William became 12, he would fly normally in a 125 from Northolt and we would fly the 146 out with the other three on.’

Royal author Robert Jobson reported that the King had raised objections to William, a qualified helicopter pilot, flying the family to Norfolk – where they have a holiday home, Anmer Hall ‘One recent source of disagreement is William’s stubborn refusal to take his father’s advice on safeguarding the succession,’ he wrote in Catherine, the Princess of Wales: A Biography of the Future Queen, published in 2024. ‘Earlier this year, the King had raised concerns with his son about the wisdom of William using his helicopter to fly his entire family around the country.’

A friend of William and Catherine tells me: ‘William is a skilled pilot and loves flying but George must travel separately now.’ A Kensington Palace spokesman tells me: ‘We don’t comment on travel.’

[From The Daily Mail]

I wonder how this works for a family obsessed with flying privately. Is William just going to chopper himself around and make Kate travel with the kids separately? Probably.

KP also released a short video with all three kids for George’s birthday.

12 today! ???? pic.twitter.com/UqYj4Y97QM

— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) July 22, 2025

Happy 12th Birthday to Prince George! ????

????Josh Shinner pic.twitter.com/L7hAZXOkDw

— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) July 22, 2025

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images and Josh Shinner/Kensington Palace.

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Princess Kate wore a blue Roksanda to the 2025 Wimbledon men’s final

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The Prince and Princess of Wales attended the Wimbledon men’s singles final together, with their two older children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte. The final was between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, and it genuinely looks like both George and Charlotte are huge Alcaraz fans and they were sort of disappointed when Sinner won. Still, when Sinner visited the Royal Box after his win, Charlotte did ask him to sign a tennis ball. Reportedly, she asked him to sign it for Louis, who apparently isn’t allowed at Wimbledon. People suggested that Louis is too young for the Royal Box? Sure. But they also know that Louis can’t sit still for three-plus hours.

As for fashion… there’s some confusion about why George and William were in ties and jackets… that is the dress code for the Royal Box for men and boys. All men have to wear a tie and jacket of some variety. Now, do I think William and George both should have worn light linen suits given the heat? Sure. Kate wore a blue Roksanda dress, which is new-to-us. It’s pretty. It emphasized her thinness more than anything else she’s worn recently. The Daniella Draper necklace was way too “heavy” for this dress. She also wore and carried an LK Bennett hat, plus Cartier earrings and Ralph Lauren shoes.

A word about the meet-and-greet in the Royal Box for Jannik Sinner…in the old, pre-pandemic days, the champion’s visit to the Royal Box was more of a receiving line where the champion could also speak to some of the other people who attended the final, like tennis legends and celebrities. There was a famous moment when Andy Murray won his second Wimbledon title in 2016 and he greeted Benedict Cumberbatch and asked if Bendy was making another season of Sherlock. But in the past few years, they’ve basically roped off the area so the champion can only speak to Kate and her children. It’s the weirdest thing – champions should be able to speak to other people in the Royal Box besides Kate and the kids.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

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DM: After an extended battle, Prince George will definitely go to Eton next year

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For the better part of two years, Prince William and Kate’s fight over their children’s education has spilled out in the British media. The Princess of Wales has, in my opinion, been briefing the press and publicly lobbying her husband and father-in-law for the chance to send Prince George to a coeducational school and a non-boarding school. Kate really, really does not want to send George to Eton, but she really doesn’t want her oldest to go to any all-boy boarding school whatsoever. It was a battle which Kate was destined to lose. Of course, I’ve always thought that Kate would probably get her way on Charlotte and Louis’s education – she might have to send George to Eton, but her two youngest might end up at Marlborough or some other coed school. In any case, we’ve heard about this fight for so long. Even back in April, the papers were still saying that William and Kate were arguing over schools. Well, now it’s been settled?

Rumours have been swirling for months about which senior school the Prince and Princess of Wales will choose for young Prince George. Now I hear the Royal couple have at long last agreed on their choice, with a well-placed source telling me ‘all roads lead to Eton’.

Although William and Kate were spotted looking around a number of top schools, Eton and rival Marlborough College were clear front-runners. Eton – the alma mater of Prince William, where fees are more than £63,000 a year – is conveniently near the family home in Windsor.

Meanwhile, Kate is known to have flourished at Marlborough, and the co-ed school would allow Princess Charlotte to join her elder brother, right at Trooping the Colour last week. But now insiders tell me there is a ‘smugness’ emanating from Eton about a forthcoming announcement. ‘It was like, ‘I know something and the people at Eton know something, but I’m not going to tell you’. That was after William and Kate visited Eton,’ says my source.

George, 11, is currently at Lambrook School in Berkshire, as are both his siblings, and is not due to start anywhere new until September 2026. Last week, this newspaper revealed two pupils there allegedly sexually assaulted another on a school trip. The Royal children were not involved, and their parents were not thought to be aware of it.

[From The Daily Mail’s Talk of the Town]

So, William won the fight. George will go to Eton. I’ve always believed that would be the case at the end of the day, but Kate really did put in a surprising amount of effort to stop it. It’s strange that, with all of these years of stories about the education fight, no one ever stopped and really examined whether Kate has a point and whether she has every reason to be concerned about the environment of Eton, and how George might thrive in a less rigid coed environment.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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Royalist: ‘The entire fate of the royal family’ rests on the Wales kids’ shoulders

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The British media was full of Trooping the Colour stories centered on the Wales children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis. Louis gets too much attention from the British media, and that’s been true for years, since Prince William and Kate started bringing him to public events before he was ready. The ages of these kids are 11 (12 in five weeks), 10 and 7 years old. Whenever the conversation is centered on these kids, I feel a wave of gratitude that Prince Harry was able to get his kids out of this system, and that Archie and Lili aren’t being used as the Wales kids scapegoats. Well, would you like a story about how the fate of the monarchy rests on these kids’ shoulders?

The Trooping the Colour parade in London threatened to fall flat. King Charles, ailing with cancer, presided over a seriously reduced royal family, riding in a carriage rather than on horseback amid failing health on Saturday.

After the departures of Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, Prince Andrew, Princess Beatrice, Princess Eugenie, and various other minor royals, the royal balcony, sparsely populated with just 14 souls, looked a pale shadow of itself under Queen Elizabeth II, when it would be crammed with eccentric uncles and batty aunts with wild hair. Dysfunctional though the family was, it at least spoke to the most essential of royal requirements: fecundity.

Thank God, then, for the three young Wales children: George, Charlotte, and Louis, on whose slender shoulders it is no exaggeration to say the entire fate of the royal family now rests.

…It was the royal children—especially Prince Louis—who stole the spotlight. The 7-year-old, sporting a cheeky gap-toothed grin, was full of mischief. Throughout the procession, he beamed at his older brother and enthusiastically waved to the crowds from the Buckingham Palace balcony—so much so that Prince George had to eventually gently tap him to signal it was time to cut it out.

Even as the royal family turned to go inside after the Royal Air Force flypast, Louis cheekily raised his arm for one last wave to the crowd.

The children were all over the royals’ social media and newspaper front pages in the United Kingdom on Sunday, and royal planners will no doubt be heaving a sigh of relief that the next generation of royal stars appears to have been born.

[From The Daily Beast]

This is such an unsettling way to talk about little kids – “George, Charlotte, and Louis, on whose slender shoulders it is no exaggeration to say the entire fate of the royal family now rests.” What’s even worse is that not only are the kids being positioned as the sole saviors of the monarchy, they’re also being used as lil’ human shields by their own parents. For years, these kids have been brought out to take the heat off of William and Kate for various reasons, reasons usually involving laziness.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.