While royal children have traditionally been raised in environments that would make most of us feel like we've stumbled into an episode of The Crown, Prince George has experienced what Prince William might call a childhood that's royal "with a smaller r." George, 11, and his family live in a relatively modest four-bedroom home on the Windsor Castle estate, and Prince William and Princess Kate have made deliberate choices to give their children a life that resembles normalcy as much as possible. That being said, one day Prince George will make history by becoming the first King to come from a non-aristocratic mother.
Plenty of past and future monarchs have been born to non-royal moms (Prince William, for example), but Princess Diana wasn't a true commoner as she came from a highly aristocratic family, the Spencers. Kate Middleton, however, grew up in a middle-class household, making her the first commoner mother of a future King.
Her background was actually a source of contention when Kate was dating Prince William, and his friends are said to have poked fun at her for having a mother who used to be a British Airways flight attendant. (Who's having the last laugh now?)
From attending school close to home to taking family beach walks with their dog, George's upbringing has been markedly different from the stiff-upper-lip childhoods of King Charles and his siblings.
Even Princess Diana—who tried her best to give Prince Harry and Prince William experiences beyond palace walls—wasn't able to achieve the same type of freedom with her kids that Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis currently enjoy in Windsor.
According to one royal expert in the recent Channel 5 documentary Prince George: How To Make a Monarch, the Princess of Wales brings a unique perspective to royal parenting since she grew up in a more "normal" family.
India McTaggart, a royal correspondent for the Telegraph, said (via the Mirror) the Princes of Wales has "brought so much from her Middleton upbringing and her family values, that I think has completely informed the way that she is raising the next generation of royals."
