Royalist: The Wales kids are already fulfilling their prescribed ‘personas’

It’s somewhat uncomfortable to watch royal reporters focus so much attention and interest on Prince William and Kate’s three children. Prince George will turn 10 years old in July, and Charlotte and Louis just turned 8 and 5 years old respectively. Over the past two years, William and Kate went from “how dare you photograph our children” to putting their kids front-and-center at events and photo-ops. The kids were all included during coronation weekend, and the kids all went to Trooping the Colour (for the second year in a row). All the kids were included in last year’s Jubbly celebrations, which didn’t go too well. You would have thought, following the widespread commentary on Louis’s behavior last year, Will and Kate would have decided to pull their kids back from the spotlight. They did not, and I think that speaks volumes about them. Anyway, the Daily Beast’s Royalist column calls the Wales kids the new “royal superstars” while proclaiming Will and Kate to be amazing parents. Sure. Some highlights:

The kids are already fulfilling their prescribed roles: In the carriages and on the balcony, it was undoubtedly the royal children who were the media stars. They slipped easily into what are rapidly becoming their public personas—George, the future king, was composed and dutiful, his sister Charlotte was attentive and sweet, while young Louis delighted in playing the joker, pulling faces and gesticulating extravagantly towards the crowd—making everyone, even his parents, laugh.

Royal biographer Tom Quinn on the kids’ upbringing & education: “It is not surprising that the kids are probably being sent to Eton. And it just shows the weight of tradition and expectation in the royal family. Royal child rearing hasn’t changed much in 650 years—basically they get someone else to do it for them and try to make their children grow up and mature as quickly as possible while seeing very little of them. But the Cambridge children are different in that their mother is the first royal mother to have had a warm and affectionate childhood. But even Kate can’t escape all the royal traditions, and it now looks like they will eventually be sent to boarding school after all.”

Quinn on the kids’ boarding school future: “Diana used to jokingly say, ‘I wonder what would happen if I sent the boys to Holland Park comprehensive.’ There is not really much choice. It’s a bit like everything to do with royal life. It’s like being in [British jail] Wormwood Scrubs—just with golden taps.”

Quinn on Kate’s subversive parenting style: “I have heard that Kate has been very good at both accepting the way the system works, but also slightly subversively modifying it. She insisted that William was involved in bedtime, reading to the kids and bathing them, and they split the school run. She doesn’t like the press attention on the children but having not suffered it herself as a child she has a less emotional attitude. She believes she can control it in such a way that they will not be damaged by it. And to be fair, it has worked—the paparazzi don’t hang around the school gates anymore. They are allowed some freedom.”

No full-time housekeeper!! The Daily Beast also understands from sources that the children—and William—are expected to do regular chores, such as emptying the dishwasher, and tidy up around the house, and that they do not have a full time housekeeper specifically because Kate wants them to experience as much normality as possible, with her own middle class upbringing as the blueprint.

Quinn on Prince Harry’s concerns about William’s younger kids turning into the “spare”: “The child most in danger from life in the gilded cage is Louis,” he says. “My sources say George is already treated differently, not by his parents, but by other people and that Louis seems to play up to get attention. Louis already seems remarkably like Harry—the joker—and it may be that he will struggle as much as Harry did to find a role in the royal family. I can understand why Harry fears for the children but his fears are based to some extent on his own childhood which was far more damaging than the childhoods of the Cambridge kids are likely to be. But it will still be very difficult for Louis and Charlotte.”

Christopher Andersen on Will & Kate as parents: “Everything hinges on what the parents do to offset this sense of being special that history has bestowed upon George, Charlotte, and Louis. The sad truth is that Elizabeth II and Prince Philip were lousy parents. The king has described his mother as cold, aloof and unfeeling, and his father as a bully. In contrast to the way she treated Charles and Anne, which was largely to ignore them, Elizabeth doted on, pampered, and indulged Andrew and Edward. In Andrew’s case especially, the results are painfully obvious. William and Kate stand in strong contrast to the king’s parents. They are very much hands-on and doing their very best not to spoil them. Kate is obviously largely to be thanked for this. Don’t forget, she is truly the very first commoner destined to be queen. She is descended from coal miners, and her mother, a former flight attendant, grew up partly in a public housing project. You can see in the way that they actually seem to be paying close attention to the children—unlike the royal parents that have preceded them—that William and Kate aren’t about to let them get away with anything. They are disciplining their kids, but they are doing it with love. I hope the three will turn out relatively unspoiled. Of course, history takes some bizarre, even grotesque, turns, so who really knows.”

[From The Daily Beast]

Andersen totally skips over how Charles behaved as a parent, and what Diana tried to do as a mother to an heir and a spare. While none of these “royal biographers” want to admit it, Prince Harry gave the definitive record of Charles and Diana’s parenting, Charles especially – as a man ill-equipped to handle fatherhood, as a man too consumed with his mistress to actually raise his sons. We’ll see if history repeats itself with William, who (in my opinion) turned out a lot like his father. As for Kate insisting on the kids doing chores and all of that… like, I do think Kate tries to impose her “middle class values,” but it’s also perfectly clear that Will and Kate have always treated George differently, that George is “special” and they reinforce that constantly, at Charlotte and Louis’s expense. It’s also clear that Will and Kate are always willing to use their kids as little human deflection shields – Kate can’t work, she has to be home for the school run, the kids were why they were late to the coronation, don’t ask why Will and Kate disappear for months at a time and rarely do more than one event a week, don’t you know they’re parents!!

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.