Even though King Charles only took the throne in 2022, there's inevitably going to be talk about his heirs. Prince William has been preparing for his future role as King his entire life, and in a new documentary about his son Prince George, a "sad" story about William's childhood reveals why he's parenting his own way.
In the Channel 5 documentary Prince George: How to Make a Monarch, legendary royal photographer Arthur Edwards recalled a moment when he was photographing the royals on a ski vacation. "I remember once when we were in Switzerland on a skiing trip and they would do a photo call and I remember William saying to me, 'Please Arthur, no more pictures, no more pictures'," he said (via the Mirror).
Adding that Prince William "was about nine or 10," Edwards shared that the young prince "was very sad, he's had enough of it and when I think back to that, I think 'My God, how he suffered.'"
The photographer, who has been documenting the royals for the Sun since 1975, said that as an adult, the Prince of Wales "was determined that wasn't going to happen to his children."
Although the Prince and Princess of Wales did take part in a ski vacation photo shoot with their young kids in 2016, their private family holidays in recent years have remained just that. And when photos of Prince George, 11, Princess Charlotte, 9 and Prince Louis, 6 are released, it's on William and Kate's terms, with the Princess of Wales often taking her own photographs of the kids.
Cameras followed Princess Diana even when she dropped her kids off at school, but fortunately for Prince William's children, they've grown up protected from this level of media intrusion. The Prince and Princess of Wales strive as much as possible to give their kids a "normal" childhood, as several royal experts noted in the new Prince George documentary.
"I think William and Kate, making sure that George, Charlotte and Louie have these normalizing experiences where they just interact with really normal people, actually gives them that grounded sense that they are human beings like the rest of us," psychotherapist Lucy Beresford shared. She added that William and Kate want their kids to know that "they're not rarefied, they're not elevated," adding that giving them everyday experiences "could hopefully dilute that sense of 'I'm invincible'."
