Prince William and Kate Middleton have reportedly started to prepare their son, Prince George, to one day sit on the throne...and they're using a slow, measured approach.
According to royal expert and author Robert Jobson, the Prince and Princess of Wales are "gradually" introducing their 11-year-old son to the ins-and-outs of senior royal life.
"(They) don’t want to freak him out," Jobson, author of the new biography Catherine, the Princess of Wales, told Us Weekly in an exclusive interview.
"I think it was very important that he played that part as page boy at the King's coronation," Jobson said of George, adding that his parents are now intentionally including him in "situations where the press are there" so he can better understand the pressure and scrutiny that often come with being a member of the monarchy.
"It gave him a real sense of what the grandeur and all the expectation," Jobson added. "I thought that was quite important actually for George."
Prince George, Prince Louis, and Princess Charlotte waving.
Jobson believes that Prince William is "looking back at his own childhood" as he now prepares his own son to one day become King of England.
"Spending more time with his grandfather, who's actually doing the job, doesn't then necessarily freak George out," Jobson told the publication.
According to royal biographer and editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine Ingrid Seward, the Prince and Princess of Wales are intentionally raising their oldest child much differently when compared to Prince William's upbringing.
"William and Kate have always been wary of exposing their children to the public, as William still has painful memories of his own childhood and how he hated the persistent attention," Seward recently told The Mirror. "Prince George's public entrance into royal life had a gentle beginning. Kate and William planned it that way, and will continue to do so."
If reports are to be believed, Prince George didn't learn about his destiny as the future King of England until just recently.
“William has not revealed to the world how and when he broke the big news to his son,” royal historian and biographer Robert Lacey, author of Battle of Brothers: William and Harry—The Inside Story of a Family in Tumult, told The Mirror back in 2022.
“Maybe one day George will tell us the story himself," Lacey continued,. "But sometime around the boy’s seventh birthday in the summer of 2020, it is thought that his parents went into more detail about what the little prince’s life of future royal ‘service and duty’ would particularly involve.”
According to Lacey, Prince William and Princess Kate specifically picked that time to inform their son of his future in order to create a “controlled moment of their choice" so that Prince George "wouldn’t find out accidentally and be confused."
