Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne (33 page)

The Prince of Wales had also made a point of visiting thirty-three of the fifty-four Commonwealth countries, and attending the biennial meeting of the Commonwealth heads of government in his mother’s place. He needed to. Contrary to popular belief, Charles will not automatically become head of the Commonwealth when he eventually becomes king. All fifty-four must vote him in, and a 2010 poll by the Royal Commonwealth Society showed that fewer than one in five citizens in the fifty-four member countries wanted Charles as the next Head of the Commonwealth.

Acknowledging that Elizabeth was greatly admired for uniting and guiding the Commonwealth, the Society stressed there was a “significant debate” about whether the job should be passed on to Charles “when the time comes. Many people are vehemently opposed to the idea.” In a confidential U.S. London Embassy memo published on the WikiLeaks website, the Commonwealth’s director of political affairs, Amitav Banerji, said the Prince of Wales simply did not “command the same respect” as the Queen.

The disclosure came as a blow to the Prince, who regarded heading the Commonwealth as a central part of the job. The Queen was more philosophical, going so far as to publicly reassure Australia, New Zealand, and Canada—three Commonwealth nations that were likely to ditch the British monarch as their head of state after Elizabeth departed—that, when the time came, it was strictly their decision to make.

CHARLES WAS NOT THE ONLY
Royal forced to play a waiting game. By the summer of 2013, Waity Katie was at it again. This time, the entire world was right alongside her, anticipating with bated breath the arrival of the Cambridges’ first child. From the outset, it had not been an easy pregnancy. Kate was barely six weeks along when she was hospitalized in early December with a severe form of morning sickness, forcing an early announcement that the Duchess was expecting. Joy turned to horror, however, after Jacintha Saldanha, a nurse at King Edward VII Hospital, put a prank call from two Australian radio shock jocks through to the nurse treating Kate. Upset over the call and the subsequent headlines, Saldanha, who had apparently suffered mental health problems, hanged herself at the hospital.

The bizarre incident of the nurse’s suicide was a distant memory by the time Kate checked into the Lindo Wing of Paddington’s St. Mary’s Hospital—the same hospital wing where both William and Harry were born. She was a week overdue, and both the Windsors and the Middletons were on tenterhooks. “We’re all,” Camilla said, “waiting at the end of a telephone.”

Finally, after twelve hours of labor with her husband at her side throughout, Kate gave birth to an eight-pound-six-ounce boy on the afternoon of July 22, 2013. Instead of following past practice and instantly proclaiming the news to the outside world, William insisted that the Palace wait four hours before making the official announcement. It was time they needed to spend alone as a family, he later explained—a few precious hours before their infant son became “public property.”

That evening, the information was typed up and sent by a royal driver who sped it straight to Buckingham Palace. A notice was then placed on a wooden easel just outside the palace:

THE DUCHESS OF CAMBRIDGE

WAS SAFELY DELIVERED OF A SON

AT 4:24 P.M.

HER ROYAL HIGHNESS AND HER CHILD

ARE BOTH DOING WELL.

A sixty-two-round salute boomed from the Honorable Artillery Company at the Tower of London, while the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery in Green Park next to Buckingham Palace fired off forty-one rounds. Church bells pealed, motorists honked their horns in celebration, and the fountain at Trafalgar Square was bathed in blue light.

The Queen was “delighted,” of course, and Prince Charles declared that he and Camilla were both “overjoyed at the arrival of my first grandchild.” Diana, had she lived, would have become a grandmother at fifty-two. It was left to her brother, Earl Spencer, to speak for the late Princess of Wales. “We’re all so pleased—it’s wonderful news,” he said. “My father always told us how Diana was born on just such a blisteringly hot day, at Sandringham, in July 1961. It’s another very happy summer’s day, half a century on.”

It would be a full twenty-seven hours before the world got its first look at the future king, and longer still before it learned the baby’s name. In the meantime, the grandparents were in a breakneck race to see who could get to the hospital first. Camilla, according to a Clarence House staffer, was determined that she and Charles as senior Royals be the first to see and hold the little Prince. Unfortunately, they were two hours away doing yet another walkabout in the North Yorkshire village of Bugthorpe.

William saw no reason to stand on ceremony. Long ago he had fully embraced his in-laws; in fact, he was on leave from his
search-and-rescue duties and staying at the Middletons’ Bucklebury home as Kate waited out the final days of her pregnancy. By not holding off Kate’s commoner parents to allow the baby’s first visitors to be members of the Royal Family, he was making it clear that old class distinctions no longer applied.

There was no doubt that Carole Middleton intended to play a major role in the life of the future king. Arriving at the hospital by cab, the Middletons waved at reporters and ducked inside, emerging more than an hour later. When someone asked what the first “cuddle” with her new grandson was like, Carole replied, “Amazing. It’s all coming back.”

The Prince of Wales and Camilla were rushed to London by helicopter and arrived in a royal car. “Have you been there all along?” Charles asked reporters, many of whom had been camped outside the hospital for two weeks. The couple dashed in and, ten minutes later, reemerged. After proclaiming the baby “marvelous,” he took off with Camilla. Neither royal grandparent had asked to hold the child, and the length of their visit—less than ten minutes versus an hour or more for the Middletons—spoke volumes. Perhaps even more important, Carole had taken part of the Middletons’ visitation time to look over her son-in-law’s shoulder while he changed his first diaper. Neither Charles nor Camilla, who had always maintained a sizable household staff, were known to have ever changed a “nappy.”

A full day after the baby arrived, father, mother, and child finally emerged from the hospital to the accompaniment of reporters’ shouts and a fusillade of camera flashes. “He’s got a good pair of lungs, that’s for sure,” William told the press. “He’s got her looks, thankfully.” Kate, no less self-deprecating than her modest husband, interrupted. “No, no,” she said. “I’m not sure
about that.” What color was the baby’s hair? William wasn’t sure as yet, but added, “He’s got way more than me, thank God!” Moments later, they were driving off to Kensington Palace in their black Range Rover with the boy known only as “Baby Cambridge” strapped into his $160 Britax baby car seat.

It would be another full day before the world learned the baby’s name. But before that could happen, the newest Windsor had to meet his great-grandmother. Arriving at Kensington Palace in a dark green Bentley, she went inside where the baby, William, Kate, and Prince Harry were waiting to greet her. It was the first time in 120 years that a reigning monarch had met her third-generation heir.

Before they announced the baby’s name to the world, or even let Charles and Camilla in on their decision, they told the Queen. As she had done with all of her own children, Elizabeth, aware that any “suggestion” from her could be interpreted as a direct order, chose not to interfere in the naming process. William and Kate named their little prince George Alexander Louis—His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge. The Queen was thrilled, and Charles would be as well. George had been the name of six British kings, including the “Mad” King George who lost the American colonies, and of course Elizabeth’s own father. Although his first name was actually Albert and he grew up as “Bertie,” Elizabeth’s predecessor on the throne chose to rule as George VI in honor of his own father, George V.

The couple took great care in choosing their baby boy’s other names, as well. Alexander was a popular choice with the Scots, who regard Alexander III as one of their greatest kings. Louis honored Charles’s mentor and father figure, his great-uncle Lord Mountbatten.

After half an hour, the Queen returned to Buckingham Palace and her dreaded boxes of state. She was determined to finish them all before heading off the next day for her traditional annual holiday at Balmoral. Ninety minutes later, the Cambridges drove off, too, bound for the Middleton family home in Berkshire with Boy George strapped in the backseat. For the next six weeks, Kate stayed with her parents while William shuttled between Bucklebury and his search-and-rescue duties in Wales. Carole, never one to let even the smallest detail slide, had gone to the trouble of setting up a nursery at the Middletons’ mansion so that Kate could make an easy adjustment to motherhood and William could live out his stated wish to be a “hands-on dad.”

From his christening at St. James’s Palace, where the Archbishop of Canterbury baptized him using water from the River Jordan, to his first royal tour to Australia and New Zealand in April of 2014, the cherub-cheeked Prince evoked the same reaction throughout the realm that Diana’s “William the Wombat” had three decades earlier.

Shortly after a platoon of reporters dutifully recorded images of the littlest Prince feeding baby kangaroos at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo, tragedy struck when Camilla’s brother, Mark Shand, died suddenly in New York. After attending a charity auction, the celebrated hedonist turned dedicated wildlife conservationist consumed five whiskies and a glass of champagne before joining friends at the Gramercy Park Hotel. Stepping outside for a smoke, Shand, sixty-two, tried to reenter the hotel through the revolving doors, slipped, and struck his head on the pavement. He died nine hours later. In addition to the fact that Shand’s blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit, the coroner determined that Camilla’s brother had an unusually thin skull—paper thin in
places—and that anyone else “would have probably survived the fall.”

Hearing the news at Birkhall, Camilla was, Prince Charles said, “utterly devastated.” Recalling the moment, Camilla said “an anguished voice was on the other end telling me that something terrible had happened to my indestructible brother. My charismatic and sometimes infuriating brother, who had survived tsunamis, shipwrecks, poisoned arrows, and even the fearsome Komodo dragons, was no longer with us.” At Shand’s funeral, Camilla leaned on Charles’s arm and wept as her brother’s body was carried into the church in a biodegradable wicker coffin adorned with flower garlands.

William and Kate sent their condolences from Australia, where their squealing son was still charming the folks Down Under just the way his father had. But George represented something even more—something Great Britain and the Commonwealth had never seen. According to
Time
magazine’s Andrew Ferguson, George embodied “almost American-style upward mobility, with a British twist: if you work hard and play by the rules, regardless of race, color or creed, you too can marry your daughter off to become the mother of a King. . . . The future King of England and Defender of the Faith has emerged from a mother who is without a drop of peerage blood. My guess is the boy, quite apart from his personal qualities, will prove an inconvenience to antiroyalists and monarchists alike.”

Perhaps, but for now his parents were determined to shield their Little Prince from the unremitting glare of media scrutiny. Once George’s first official overseas tour was over, he all but vanished from sight. William and Kate were determined to give him something akin to a normal toddlerhood, and toward that end
they retreated to Bucklebury and Anmer House. It would be a full year before George made his next public appearance—and then only to join in as his country celebrated another blessed event.

On May 2, 2015, Kate gave birth to an eight-pound-three-ounce daughter, once again in the private maternity ward in the Lindo Wing of London’s St. Mary’s Hospital. As before, cannons boomed and church bells rang, but this time landmarks like the Trafalgar Square fountains, the Tower Bridge, and the London Eye were bathed in pink light instead of blue.

The birth of the Princess of Cambridge differed in other ways as well: She was taken outside to meet the press and public when she was less than ten hours old, and later that same day her name was announced: Charlotte Elizabeth Diana—Her Royal Highness, Princess Charlotte of Cambridge. Since Charlotte is the feminine form of Charles, the royal princess’s name paid obvious tribute to three of the most important people in William’s life.

Merely by being born, Charlotte made history. She was the first daughter of a future monarch born since the abolition of primogeniture, making her now fourth in line for the crown behind her big brother, George.

This time, Carole Middleton—who once again was the first grandparent to meet and hold the newest arrival—tagged along when the family repaired to Anmer Hall. Prince William’s spokesmen explained that it was only logical for the maternal grandmother to be on hand to help with a newborn. However, this explanation for Carole’s involvement in the Cambridges’ lives made little sense to Royals and aristocrats who were cared for by nurses and nannies essentially from birth. There would be other differences in the way the Cambridges chose to bring up their children. In December 2015, Kate and William enrolled
two-year-old George at Westacre Montessori nursery school in Norfolk. Although William was the first Royal Family member to attend preschool, his was located not far from Kensington Palace and cost upward of $20,000 annually. Westacre Montessori School, despite its comparatively modest cost of roughly $50 a day per pupil, nevertheless provided financial assistance to 85 percent of its students.

Before long, there were grumblings that Prince Charles, Camilla, and even the Queen were being denied access to the royal babies. “Spoil them, enjoy them—and give them back at the end of the day,” Charles cracked when asked about the role of a grandparent. Yet, while the Middletons were a near-constant presence in the lives of George and Charlotte, Charles complained he “almost never” saw them.