The baby was born at 4:24pm in the Lindo Wing of Saint Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, where Princess Diana had given birth to her sons William and Harry, and weighed 8 pounds. The next day, the Duke and Duchess leave the hospital under the photographers’ flashes while the little prince is sound asleep.
After Queen Elizabeth – who was expecting the birth in Balmoral – visited the baby in Kensington Place, the baby’s first names were released: George, Alexander, Louis, Prince of Cambridge. The christening will be celebrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury on 23 October 2013 in the Royal Chapel of Saint James’s Palace rather than the Buckingham Music Room. It was a wish of Prince William, as this is where Princess Diana’s remains lay before her burial.
As is Anglican tradition among the Windsors, the baby will have no fewer than seven godparents: Hugh Grosvenor (now the Duke of Westminster), Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton (private secretary to Princes William and Harry), Julia Samuel (friend of the late Princess Diana), William van Cutsem (boyfriend of Prince William), Oliver Baker (friend of the Cambridges since the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland) and Zara Phillips, cousin of Prince William and daughter of Princess Anne.
Like his father, young Prince George will accompany his parents on a trip to Australia and New Zealand when he was just eight months old. It was Princess Diana who, in 1982, ordered Prince William to be taken for an extended stay in Oceania. A decision eventually endorsed by Elizabeth II, totally at odds with royal custom. The Empress herself sometimes stayed for nearly six months with the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles and Princess Anne, who undertook the good care of her nanny and grandparents, King George VI. and Queen Elizabeth, were entrusted. Since then it would have been unthinkable that a small, still uneducated prince would not come along on the journey. In 1988, Sarah Fergsuon, Duchess of York, was hit hard after leaving her six-week-old daughter Princess Beatrice in England to visit Australia with Prince Andrew and then spend a private stay with her sister Jane.
Prince George soon became the Windsors’ little star. The broadcast footage of the always immaculately dressed little prince is met with great enthusiasm. He was educated in kindergarten at the Montessori Westacre School near the family’s second home in Norfolk, Anmer Hall, before going to primary school at the private Thomas Battersea School in London.
From his birth, Prince George and then Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis benefited from the presence of a governess of Spanish origin, Maria Teresa Turrion Borrallo, a graduate of the very exclusive Norland College in Bath. Single and now 54 years old, she’s clearly another member of the family.
As a young child, George was less boisterous in public than his brother Louis. He knew his great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, whom he called Gangan. Shortly before the Queen’s death, George moved with his family to Adelaide Cottage on the Windsor Estate and is now educated at the private Lambrook School. Currently, the Prince and Princess of Wales’ three children are not in boarding schools as was the case with Princes William and Harry from primary school. We urge Eton to continue Prince George’s studies. Although his parents want him to live as normal a life as possible because of his status, Prince George is already associated with important court events such as Trooping the Color and Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee, and has traveled to Germany, Poland, Canada, New Zealand and Australia in an official capacity.
Despite being the eldest of the siblings, it seems it’s his sister Princess Charlotte who is setting the pace. It’s not uncommon for the little girl to slip discreetly up to him during a ceremony to do this or that. The Prince and Princess of Wales spend as much time as possible being with their children, exercising, going for walks, attending sporting events or even cooking together.
As he did not know his paternal grandmother Princess Diana, he will be raised in her memory, as explained by Prince William. Carole and Michael Middleton are very present grandparents, something they’ve been accused of for a while. Charles’ entourage grumbled that George didn’t see his paternal grandfather that often.
As a five-time grandfather, King Charles III. Apparently closer to the children of Wales (he says his little darling is the joking Prince Louis) than to Prince Harry, who lives in California. At his coronation on May 6th in Westminster Abbey, the ruler chose Prince George as his page of honor. A symbolic task that the prince mastered with flying colors.
George of Wales, now second in line to the throne, will one day ascend the throne as George VII.