His Royal Highness

George Alexander Louis

Prince of Cambridge

Church bells pealed, cannons boomed, the fountains at Trafalgar Square were bathed in blue light, and throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom toasts were made welcoming the future king. The Prince of Wales and his wife, Camilla, were “overjoyed” and “thrilled” for the new parents, and Charles claimed to be “enormously proud and happy” to become a grandfather for the first time. The Queen and her husband, Prince Philip, were simply “delighted” at the news, while Prime Minister David Cameron described it as “wonderful news,” nothing less than “an important moment in the life of our nation.” As for the new parents: “We could not,” William said simply, “be happier.”

There were other, decidedly less sentimental, reasons for celebrating: by boosting tourism and launching the sale of millions of souvenirs from BORN TO RULE sleepwear to Union Jack bootees, the royal birth was giving a $400 million boost to the British economy. British mothers who gave birth the same day got an added bonus: each was sent the album Hushabye, a collection of lullabies recorded by New Zealand singer Hayley Westenra. The CD included “Sleep On,” a lullaby written especially for the little prince by royal wedding composer Paul Mealor. The Royal Mint also produced special commemorative sterling-silver pennies for any baby born in Britain on the same day, each contained in either a pink or a blue pouch. According to English tradition, it’s considered good luck to cross the palm of a newborn infant with silver.

The baby had been in no rush to make his big debut. On what was generally believed to be Kate’s due date, July l3, William felt comfortable enough to fulfill one of his princely obligations by traveling sixty miles away to compete against Harry in the Kent and Curwen Royal Polo Cup match benefiting two of their favorite African charities, the Tusk Trust and Sentebale (Harry’s team won). The next day, William made his way to the Cirencester Park Polo Club, not far from Highgrove, his father’s country estate. This time, he and Harry were playing on the same team, and to raise money for three youth charities dear to William and Kate’s hearts—WellChild, Centrepoint, and Child Bereavement UK. Unfortunately, the father-to-be was once again on the losing side.

“Waity Katie,” as Kate Middleton had often been called during her decade-long courtship with William, was apparently doing it again—this time as her pregnancy dragged several days, then a full week, past the presumed due date. “We’re all,” Camilla, said of the royal family, “waiting at the end of a telephone” for news that the baby was finally on its way. Two days later, even the Queen—already a great-grandmother to Princess Anne’s two grandchildren, Savannah and Isla Phillips—finally admitted to being anxious. When asked during a visit to Cumbria in northwest England whether she preferred her third great-grandchild to be a boy or a girl, Her Majesty replied that she didn’t “mind” what the sex of the baby was. After all, the baby would without question be third in line to the throne behind Charles and William regardless of its sex.

In anticipation of the royal birth, all sixteen Commonwealth nations met in Perth, Australia, to ratify changes in the laws of primogeniture that for a thousand years demanded that firstborn sons take precedence over daughters in the line of succession. Now that women were to be given equal rights to the throne, only one issue remained for the Queen—that the baby’s birth not delay her usual summer vacation at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. “I would like very much for it to arrive,” the sovereign said, “because I’m going on holiday.”

It didn’t help matters that London was in the grips of a record-smashing heat wave, or that the couple’s quarters at Kensington Palace were, incredibly, not air-conditioned. While William played polo, Kate fled London’s scorching heat for the family’s stately new home in the West Berkshire village of Bucklebury. There, she could spend some quality time with her parents in crisp, cool, fully air-conditioned splendor as the Middletons and the world awaited the big event. One of those not particularly surprised about the slow pace of things was Carole Middleton, who had confided to friends that she was convinced her daughter’s baby would be born under the sign of Leo—on or after July 23.

After a week with the Middletons, William and Kate abruptly departed Bucklebury at 3:00 p.m. on Friday, July 19, with a police escort and their full complement of royal protection officers. Given the intense heat, doctors warned Kate to stay indoors at Kensington Palace—this time in a part of the palace that was adequately air-conditioned. That weekend, the couple stuck close to home while the Queen walked her corgis on the grounds of Windsor Castle, Prince Charles visited York, and the world held its collective breath.

With reporters from around the world camped out for over a week in front of St. Mary’s Hospital near London’s landmark Paddington Station, it seemed incomprehensible that anyone could steal past them and into the maternity ward—which is precisely what William and Kate did.

In the early-morning hours of Monday, July 22, Kate awoke to labor pains and a call was placed to the Dr. Marcus Setchell, the Queen’s former gynecologist. Setchell, sixty-nine, had delayed his retirement after William and Kate asked him to deliver their first child. It was difficult to think of anyone better qualified. In addition to serving as the Queen’s gynecologist for over twenty years and performing a hysterectomy for Camilla, Setchell performed an emergency cesarean on Prince Edward’s wife, Sophie, saving the life of both the Countess of Wessex and her daughter, Lady Louise.

Instructed by Setchell to head for the hospital, William and Kate decided to forgo the usual police escort, instead opting for an unobtrusive convoy of only two vehicles—a town car and a sedan. Making their way from Kensington Palace to the hospital just one and a half miles away, they arrived at a back entrance, quietly slipped inside, and registered at 5:50 a.m.—completely undetected. Coincidentally, this was the same early hour of the day Diana had arrived at St. Mary’s to deliver William in 1982.

Diana had insisted—against the express wishes of the Queen—that her child be the first heir apparent born in a hospital and not in a palace. William and Kate decided to keep up the new tradition started by William’s mother. This time, there were no objections from the Queen. The birth would take place, just as William’s and Harry’s had, in a twelve-by-twelve-foot, $1,500-a-day room in the Lindo Wing of St. Mary’s. The estimated total cost of the delivery: $15,000.

Like his father, Charles, who was the first British royal male in modern times to attend the birth of an offspring, William remained at his wife’s side throughout her twelve-hour labor. Dr. Setchell, assisted by the Queen’s current gynecologist, Dr. Alan Farthing, presided over the delivery with typically brisk, no-nonsense British efficiency. While the world waited outside, unaware that there was a new prince and heir, William and Kate spent four precious hours alone with their baby before allowing the Palace to make the official announcement.

For the time being, the baby’s name would remain a mystery. The world had to wait a full month after Charles’s birth to learn his name, and six days after William’s birth to learn his. Moreover, the official christening—an elaborate ceremony at Buckingham Palace presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury—would not take place until the baby was at least six weeks old. Fortunately, William and Kate chose not to keep up the suspense for long. Just two days after their son’s arrival, they announced the full name of the new princeling: George Alexander Louis Windsor.

The new arrival’s name was fraught with historical significance. The last George to sit on the throne, George VI, was Elizabeth’s beloved father, the stutterer of The King’s Speech fame who had guided Britain through the harrowing days of World War II. Several Scottish kings were Alexanders, and since William and Kate met and fell in love at Scotland’s St. Andrew’s University, it seemed only right to toss that name into the mix. Louis was undoubtedly a nod to Lord Louis Mountbatten of Burma, Prince Philip’s uncle and a father figure to Prince Charles. The last Viceroy of India, Mountbatten was assassinated by the IRA in l979. William also has Louis as a middle name.

Despite widespread reports that Kate and the baby would spend the first six weeks of the little prince’s life with the Middletons at their stately new home in the rural village of Bucklebury, the Duchess (Catherine will not become a princess until Charles becomes king and William succeeds his father as Prince of Wales) wisely chose to take advantage of the vast support system at Kensington Palace. “KP,” as Diana called it, was originally the country estate of the Earl of Nottingham, who sold it to William III in l689. More than three centuries later, the imposing Georgian brick structure, with its Christopher Wren–designed orangery, manicured gardens, ponds, and 274 acres of adjacent parkland, seemed the ideal first home for yet another future monarch—George VII. The day after leaving the hospital, the princeling was visited by the Queen, Charles and Camilla, Carole and Michael Middleton, and Uncle Harry and Aunt Pippa.

If there was any one place William could call home, it was Kensington Palace. As children, he and Harry scampered through the labyrinth of halls and cavernous reception rooms filled with antiques and art lent to them from the Queen’s private collection. William’s child would be raised in the same rarefied atmosphere, tempered by his mother’s common touch—something Kate, in contrast to the highborn Diana, came by naturally. Descended from coal miners, the daughter of a former British Airways flight attendant who grew up in public housing and wound up making millions selling children’s party supplies, Kate was the very definition of the new normal for the royal family. She was also the first commoner to give birth to a future monarch in more than 350 years.

For someone who grew up far from the perks, privileges, and demands of royal life, Kate proved again and again in the years and the months leading up to her wedding that she was more than up to the task. The scrutiny only intensified when, in late 2012, she and her husband were forced to tip their hand and tell the world that a baby was on the way.

In truth, the royal-baby watch, as relentless and intrusive and frenzied as the wedding watch that had preceded it, had begun long before that.

“Kate and I are looking forward to having a family.” With that offhand remark made shortly before his fairy-tale April 2011 wedding to Catherine Middleton, William triggered the inevitable media countdown to royal parenthood. Not that the newly minted Duke and Duchess of Cambridge would follow anything but their own painstakingly thought-out timetable. Unlike Diana and the Queen before her—both of whom delivered their firstborn less than a year following their respective nuptials—William and Kate had other things to consider.

Above all else, they were determined not to overshadow the Queen in any way during her 2012 Diamond Jubilee year celebrating sixty years on the throne. Nor did they want to do anything that might distract from the Olympics, also being held in London in the summer of 2012. Toward that end, William and Kate decided to spend their first eighteen months as man and wife focusing on his obligations as an RAF search-and-rescue helicopter pilot based in Anglesey, Wales—not to mention the new ceremonial responsibilities that would now surely come their way. As accustomed as William was to the demands of being a royal, he wanted to give his bride ample time to settle into her new and unfamiliar role as the newest face of “the Firm.”

Deciding to postpone their honeymoon in the Seychelles for several weeks, the newlyweds returned immediately to their modest farmhouse in Anglesey, where the Duchess of Cambridge was soon spotted shopping at a local supermarket—and, while her security detail looked on, loading groceries into her car by herself.

William and Kate celebrated their first month as a married couple welcoming the president of the United States and his wife to Buckingham Palace during the Obamas’ state visit to the UK in May 2011. In a sign of things to come, Kate’s dress—a $340, beige, bandage-style Shola dress from Reiss—sold out of stores throughout the UK and the United States within hours.

That July, William and Kate embarked on their first official trip abroad, to Canada and the United States. On Prince Edward Island, he thrilled spectators by practicing his helicopter water landings, then competed against his wife in a dragon-boat race (William’s team won). Later they donned cowboy hats for the Calgary Stampede, and during a swing through Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, they played street hockey with a group of teens. In Hollywood, William and Kate outshone stars such as Tom Hanks, Barbra Streisand, Jennifer Lopez, and Nicole Kidman at a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) gala held in the royal couple’s honor.

By the fall of 2011, the tabloids were chockablock with rumors of a royal pregnancy. During a visit to Copenhagen on behalf of UNICEF, Kate refused to sample some high-nutrition peanut paste—taken as a clear sign that she was suffering from morning sickness. Later, when she wore a billowy silver gown by British designer Jenny Packham, it was only one of many instances on which the Duchess would be accused of concealing her delicate condition beneath loose-fitting clothes. Unfounded baby rumors aside, during the 2011 Christmas holidays the Waleses did become proud parents—of a black cocker spaniel puppy they named Lupo.

Not until William departed for a six-week tour of duty in the Falklands in February 2012 did the press stopped fixating exclusively on a possible royal pregnancy and notice that Kate was taking up where Diana had left off working with sick, abused, and emotionally troubled children. That February, Kate, who like her late mother-in-law seemed remarkably at ease in the company of even the most desperately ill youngsters, chose to make her first official speech at precisely the sort of venue Diana would have chosen: a children’s hospice. Kate, heir to the legacy of the woman the world once knew as the People’s Princess, soon had a moniker all her own: the Children’s Princess.

In deciding which charities to support as royal patron, Kate seemed to borrow heavily from the late princess’s playbook. In addition to East Anglia Children’s Hospices and the Art Room, which aids abused children by using art as therapy, Kate adopted Place2Be, an organization that offers mental health support to schoolchildren. Acknowledging that substance abuse was at the root of many of society’s problems, she also signed on as patron of Action on Addiction.

She also added two museums: the National Portrait Gallery—her degree from St. Andrews was in art history, after all—and the Natural History Museum because, as she explained, it “exposes children to the wonders of our planet.” In addition to the group SportsAid, which assists disabled athletes, the former Brownie and Girl Guide (Britain’s equivalent of the Girl Scouts) championed the cause of Britain’s scouting movement.

While William was still away in the South Atlantic, Kate tried to keep up her usual routine. Always up by eight, she walked Lupo to a Starbucks just blocks away from Kensington Palace—accompanied by at least two discreet royal protection officers on foot and another trailing in Land Rover—and ordered her usual: a grande decaf soy latte.

After morning meetings with staff to work out her schedule, the Duchess met with representatives from her charities or joined her in-laws on their seemingly endless series of walkabouts. In March 2012, Kate, her stepmother-in-law, Camilla, and the Queen toured the specialty store Fortnum & Mason, which has been supplying Britain’s aristocracy with fine foods for over three centuries, then joined Granny and Prince Philip on a train trip to the city of Leicester in England’s East Midlands to help launch the Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

That June, as planned, William and Kate watched from the sidelines as the Queen basked in the adulation of her people during Jubilee celebrations that included a flotilla of a thousand vessels sailing up the Thames, a pop concert headlined by such UK pop legends as Sir Tom Jones and Sir Paul McCartney, and a breathtaking fireworks display over Buckingham Palace.

The following month, after showing up at Wimbledon to watch Roger Federer crush Mikhail Youzhny in the quarterfinals, William and Kate were a near-constant presence at the London Olympics, appearing in the stands at a dozen separate events to cheer on British athletes. Throwing themselves into their role as “official ambassadors” of Team GB (Great Britain), they buried their faces in their hands when their countrymen lost and cheered wildly when they won. In between, they joined other spectators in doing the wave. More than once, the newlyweds became so excited they jumped to their feet and threw their arms around each other—the sort of unrestrained, spontaneous PDA (public display of affection) that no royal couple had ever indulged in before.

No sooner had the world’s athletes packed up and departed London than the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge embarked on a nine-day Jubilee Tour of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. In Singapore, William stirred up pregnancy rumors once again by blurting out that he and Kate wanted to have two children.

Unfortunately, the young royals would soon be upstaging the Queen anyway—and for reasons that had nothing to do with a blessed event. While vacationing in Las Vegas in August 2012 between army deployments to Afghanistan, Prince Harry was photographed cavorting nude with a young woman during a game of strip billiards. Leaked by the celebrity website TMZ on August 21, the racy photos—with a little help from some strategically placed censor dots—soon graced the pages of tabloids and even respectable publications across the globe.

Once again Prince Harry, who over the years had drawn unwanted attention for his pot smoking and boozy carousing—not to mention wearing a Nazi uniform to a costume party—was mortified. Yet no sooner had Harry issued his customary public apology than another royal scandal reared its head—this time directly involving Harry’s sister-in-law.

Drawing rapturous crowds on the Asian leg of their Jubilee Tour, William and Kate were just getting ready to depart from Malaysia for the Solomon Islands when photos of the Duchess topless surfaced in the pages of two European publications—France’s Closer and the Italian magazine Chi. The famously stoic Kate dissolved in tears when she was shown the pictures, taken from a public road at a distance of more than five hundred yards.

They both hid their upset from the public entirely, smiling and joking their way through one hokey welcoming ceremony after another. When they were asked to don grass skirts and join in the fun on the tiny South Pacific island of Tuvalu, Kate cracked that her husband had “been practicing his dance moves.”

Beneath the cheerful exterior, William was livid. As both he and Kate had done before, the heir immediately deployed his formidable legal forces to punish those responsible for publishing the scandalous photos. On September 17, 2012—just four days after Closer and Chi hit newsstands—William and Kate not only filed a civil lawsuit but also lodged a criminal complaint with French authorities. Under French law, such invasions of privacy can result in a one-year prison sentence and fines of up to 45,000 euros (roughly $60,000) for individuals and 225,000 euros (about $300,000) for companies.

Unbeknownst to the public, the sordid topless-photo affair was catching William and Kate at a particularly vulnerable time. They had decided to start a family as soon as the strong antimalarial drugs they had been given for their Pacific tour wore off. This newest intrusion on their privacy was a jarring reminder of how life would be for any child of theirs.

Diana had tried and failed to get the paparazzi to back off—a failure that, as far as William was concerned, cost her mother her life. But William was also aware that, at least in the UK, the media could be shamed into obeying some restrictions when it came to covering the royal family. They had, after all, agreed to keep a respectable distance from Diana’s sons in the years immediately after she was killed while being pursued by the press in Paris.

It was precisely the right moment, William and Kate decided, to take a stand. The arrival of a royal baby would certainly trigger a media frenzy—one that could last indefinitely and, if unchecked, make it impossible for their offspring to experience anything approaching a normal childhood.

While their case against the photographers churned in the notoriously slow French courts that fall, the baby buzz continued to build. William and Kate resumed their official schedule of royal engagements. While the couple mingled with crowds of well-wishers in Cambridge, the prince blushed when someone handed him a onesie with DADDY’S LITTLE CO-PILOT scrawled across the front. “I’ll keep that,” he said with a grin. Just when it seemed all but certain that Kate was expecting, she threw everyone a curve by showing up at her former boarding school on November 30, 2012, to play a round of field hockey—in three-inch heels.

A few days later, Kate and William decided to take some time off and relax with Kate’s parents at their baronial $7.8 million estate in Kate’s hometown of Bucklebury, purchased just a few months earlier by Carole and Michael Middleton with a little help from William. Only a few hours after arriving on December 3, however, Kate became violently ill. She had experienced bouts of nausea in previous weeks, but now she was unable to keep food down at all, and she was clearly becoming dehydrated.

With a member of their royal protection detail at the wheel of their Land Rover, William and Kate sped to London’s King Edward VII Hospital. There she was quickly diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), a severe form of morning sickness that affects less than 2 percent of pregnant women. Left untreated, HG can result in a number of complications during pregnancy, including malnutrition for the mother and low birth weight for the child.

The condition also occurs more frequently in women expecting multiple births; given the high frequency of twins among the Middletons and William’s Spencer relatives, that was worth noting. (Assuming the abolition of the laws of succession that had given firstborn males precedence over firstborn females, in the case of a twin birth the first one out is the rightful heir.)

Kate’s hospitalization forced the couple’s hand. She was only about six weeks along—the baby was due in July—and she and William had hoped to wait until she was at least twelve weeks into the pregnancy to make the announcement.

Not surprisingly, the reaction was nothing short of ecstatic. The Queen, Prince Charles, and Prime Minister David Cameron were among those who issued statements expressing their unbridled delight at the news. “This wonderful news tops off what’s been quite a year for Britain,” said William’s uncle Earl Spencer, referring to the Queen’s Jubilee and the London Olympics. “I’m delighted for them both and can’t wait to meet Diana’s grandchild.”

Even under these circumstances, scandal was never far away. Euphoria over the announcement of a royal pregnancy soon turned to shock 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. Mel Greig and Mike Christian used what they referred to as “absurd, plummy accents” to impersonate the Queen and Prince Charles, inquiring about Kate’s health, yet the nurse on duty nevertheless gave them a detailed report on the patient’s condition.

Saldanha became so distraught over the incident that she hanged herself at the hospital. The inevitable public outcry over what had been intended as a harmless prank subsided somewhat when it was revealed that Saldanha had reportedly attempted suicide twice before. Apparently the radio hoax was one of only several issues that upset her, including long-standing grievances against the hospital staff. In one of her notes, Saldanha asked the Australian DJs who placed the prank call to pay off her mortgage.

On December 6, Kate was released from the hospital and, after a brief rest in Bucklebury, resumed her royal duties. On January 11, she took a break from the walkabouts and plaque unveilings to celebrate her thirty-first birthday with William and a group of friends watching Cirque du Soleil’s latest offering. The next day, she was on hand for the unveiling of her first official portrait at the National Portrait Gallery.

Whenever she appeared at a ribbon cutting or shook hands along a rope line, all eyes were on what she was wearing to cover up what the press would refer to in headline after headline as “the royal baby bump.” Kate was now, said maternity-wear designer Rosie Pope, “a maternity style icon. The world will be watching, and no doubt pregnant women will be inspired everywhere.”

Inspired they were, as expectant mothers on both sides of the Atlantic rushed to purchase the maternity dresses and coats Kate deemed princess-worthy. On a tour of Scotland in early April of 2013, she wore a blue-and-green plaid coat over black leggings and boots with four-inch heels—looking stylish even as she played a spirited game of Ping-Pong with her husband at a Glasgow sports center. “The only reason I won today was because Catherine was pregnant,” the Prince said of his 6–2 victory. “Otherwise she would have taken off her coat and beat me.” Still game, Kate then joined her husband in shooting some hoops. Later that month, the black-and-white polka-dot dress Kate wore when she, William, and Prince Harry visited the Harry Potter film set in London resulted in more front-page coverage; the Duchess was now fully six months pregnant, and she looked it.

Not surprisingly, speculation concerning the baby’s gender ran rampant. Even though William and Kate wanted to be surprised and had apparently asked not to be told what sonograms had revealed about their child’s sex, reporters searched desperately for clues. When a well-wisher handed Kate a teddy bear, she replied, “Thank you, I will take that for my d . . .”

“You were about to say daughter, weren’t you?” asked another bystander.

“No! We don’t know!” Kate insisted.

“Oh, I think you do,” the woman replied.

“We’re not telling,” Kate replied with a smile. She did allow that she and her husband each had their preferences. William wanted a girl, while Kate was hoping for a boy. All that really mattered, she made clear, “is that the baby is healthy.”

The Duchess was determined to do everything she could to make that a reality. As soon as she learned she was pregnant, conscientious Kate avoided alcohol, caffeine, artificial sweeteners, even the fake-tanning cream she used on her face and arms to give her that special glow. However, she refused to give up the one thing pregnant women are often happy to forgo: high heels. One notable exception occurred when she spent one snowy March day in the mountainous, northwestern county of Cumbria, teaching a troop of Cub Scouts how to climb a rope and build a fire. For this, she wore a Barbour coat, skinny jeans, and a pair of Le Chameau Vierzon Nord boots.

At the Queen’s annual Buckingham Palace garden party in May, Kate was back in high heels—tottering around on the grass but never loosing her balance or her poise—and again in June when she wore a dalmatian print to launch the newest cruise ship in the Princess line (fittingly christened the Royal Princess), even though the task required climbing up and down steep gangways. For her last formal appearance before giving birth—at the annual Trooping the Colour ceremony marking the monarch’s official June l5 birthday celebration (the Queen actually turned eighty-seven on April 21)—Kate wore an Alexander McQueen coat in pastel pink, a matching broad-brimmed hat—and pink satin heels.

Six days alter, William celebrated his thirty-first birthday with Harry while Kate stayed out of public view. She had no illusions about accurately timing the big event. The due date was “around mid-July,” she joked with reporters, “but apparently babies have their own agenda.” She and William had already been nesting for some time, staying at Kensington Palace’s cozy, two-bedroom Nottingham Cottage—”Nott Cott” to Palace insiders—while renovations on their permanent home at the palace were under way. Formerly the home of the Queen’s only sibling, Princess Margaret, Apartment 1A was not really an apartment but a four-story, twenty-one-room house. Among other things, Apartment 1A boasted six bedrooms, several large main-floor reception rooms, a private tennis court, and its own walled garden.

Prince Harry was scheduled to move into Nott Cott once his brother and his family settled into their new digs, theoretically shortly after the royal baby’s birth. Unfortunately, renovations hit a major snag when asbestos was discovered inside the walls of Kensington Palace.

Once they did take up residence in their sprawling new quarters, William and Kate would be in the expert hands of housekeeper Antonella Fresolone, formerly one of the Queen’s top housemaids at Buckingham Palace. In their advertisement posted at Buckingham Palace, William and Kate stressed that “discretion, loyalty and reliability” were of paramount importance. Charged with running the Cambridges’ household, Fresolone, whose departure from Buckingham Palace required the Queen’s personal approval, was certain to be a constant presence in the life of the newest royal.

KP was only one of the grand residences the Cambridges could call home. Prince William and his young family were also free on weekends and holidays to unwind at Anmer Hall, their ten-bedroom, Georgian-style country manse on the grounds of the royal estate in Sandringham—another gift from the Queen.

The decor for the royal nurseries at both residences featured soft beiges and browns, with fabrics and furniture reportedly handpicked by Kate during visits to the high-end shops Bernard Thorp, and Dragons of Walton Street, a particular favorite of Diana’s. If William and Kate decided to stick with tradition, they were given the option of dusting off the cast-iron, four-poster crib that the Windsors have used for the past l35 years. Out of respect for the baby’s great-grandmother, the new parents pulled out the Queen’s 1926 Silver Cross pram, which had also been used by Charles and the rest of the Queen’s children, out of storage. But in the end, William and Kate settled instead on a pricey beige stroller Kate found at her favorite London department store, Peter Jones on Sloane Square.

With William often on RAF duty 277 miles away—Kate had had to celebrate their second wedding anniversary alone in London because her husband was, she explained, “on shift”—Kate pored over pregnancy and baby books such as What to Expect What When You’re Expecting and The Complete Book of Breastfeeding. (William was the first modern heir to the throne to be breast-fed, and Kate wanted to do the same for her baby.)

William intended to take two weeks of paternity leave once the baby arrived, but for now he asked his brother to drop by and keep Kate company whenever he could. “Kate is incredibly grounded and strong,” observed Harry, now fully recovered from his naked-in-Vegas scandal. “She will make a brilliant mother.” Kate also leaned heavily on her sister (Pippa Middleton was the first person to learn that Kate was pregnant), her ever-present personal assistant (Rebecca “Becca” Deacon), and, predictably, her mother. Carole Middleton tagged along with her daughter the Duchess on several shopping trips, including one to the chic furniture shop Blue Almonds, where Kate bought a wicker crib, and to the children’s clothing store Trotters for onesies, sleepers, bootees, and bibs.

Carole also went along on a shopping expedition to the baby boutique Nursery Window, and to Peter Jones to shop for car seats and rocking chairs. Kate, said one clerk who waited on her, “was just like any pregnant lady preparing for a baby.”

Well, not just any pregnant lady. The inescapable truth was that George would be a king unlike any other, and not simply because his mother was a commoner. He was the first grandchild of the incomparable and complex Diana, Princess of Wales, and as such heir to a unique legacy of compassion, controversy, heartache, and promise.

The seeds of change were actually planted during Diana’s own tortured childhood at Althorp, the Spencer family’s spectacular five-hundred-year-old country estate in Northamptonshire. There, Lady Diana Spencer, like her future husband, the Prince of Wales, grew up in a cocoon of wealth and privilege—all thanks to a family fortune built on sheep trading in the fifteenth century. Ever since, the Spencers had always occupied a place at court—although that scarcely mattered to the six-year-old girl whose world collapsed when her mother walked out on the family. From then on Diana and her little brother, Charles, were raised by a succession of nannies. (Their older sisters Sarah and Jane had already been shipped off to boarding school.)

“Her own childhood was hell,” Diana’s friend Peter Janson said. “Her parents hated, despised, each other. She grew up under that.” To make matters worse, several of the nannies hired to care for Diana and her brother on a revolving-door basis were abusive. One routinely struck Diana on the head with a wooden spoon, while another took pleasure in banging the children’s heads together when they misbehaved.

Although no one dared to raise a hand—or a spoon—to the future king, Prince Charles’s childhood was in many ways equally bleak. If nothing else, Diana’s father did dote on his children; neither Elizabeth nor Philip, however, seemed particularly fond of their firstborn son. The Prince of Wales would later describe his mother as distant, cold, and emotionally repressed. Prince Philip was, Charles recalled, nothing less than an overbearing, mean-spirited bully.

Even as a baby, Charles’s life was strictly regimented. He saw his mother twice a day for thirty minutes, once at 9:00 a.m. and then shortly before dinner. He was, he later recalled, devastated by the Queen’s long absences touring the Commonwealth and marveled that, after months away, the most the Queen could manage was a formal handshake for her little boy.

It was not the sort of childhood he wanted for his children, Charles told friends. To be sure, the Prince of Wales surprised even himself by turning out to a warm and caring father. Yet it was Diana who would become the public face of change inside the royal family. By openly lavishing affection on her children, allowing them to break free from the hidebound ways of their blue-blooded ancestors, and exposing them to the grittier world outside palace gates, Diana made it possible for William to fall in love with a woman such as Kate.

As a practical matter, then, how was the littlest prince likely to be raised? Would he have a nanny? Would he attend nursery school like Daddy, or—like his grandfather and generations of royals before him—spend his early childhood being attended to by governesses and private tutors inside palace walls?

Although she was the very definition of a hands-on mother, Diana harbored no illusions about being able to handle the job alone. She would need the help of a capable and nurturing nanny—something Charles knew all too well. Although his own nanny, Mabel Anderson, was a strict disciplinarian, Charles developed a strong emotional attachment to her. When his favorite teddy bear—Charles brought the frayed childhood toy along on all his trips well into middle age—started to lose its stuffing, the Prince of Wales summoned Nanny Anderson to fix it. And when his marriage also began to unravel, Charles brought the sixty-nine-year-old Anderson out of retirement to care for his sons when they stayed with him at his country estate, Highgrove.

Similarly, William was extremely close to his first nanny, Barbara Barnes. A major departure from previous royal nannies, who had graduated from one of three approved nursery-training schools, Barnes had no formal training. She refused to wear a uniform and proclaimed that her free-form child-rearing style would consist of “plenty of fresh air and common sense.”

Still, Nanny Barnes couldn’t do the job alone. She was assigned her own assistant, Olga Powell, and a night nurse, Ann Wallace, to help her look after the child. After four years, a struggle for control between Barnes and Diana led the nanny to quit; she was quickly replaced with the less threatening Powell, who nevertheless grew even closer to William than Barnes had been. Powell was “wonderfully calm,” said Diana’s former bodyguard Ken Wharfe. “She was there to look after the kids while their parents were working.” (When Powell died in October 2012 at age eighty-two, a grieving William canceled four royal appearances so that he could attend her funeral.)

After their parents’ acrimonious split in l992, William and Harry would welcome yet another mother figure into their lives when Charles hired the young and vivacious Alexandra “Tiggy” Legge-Bourke to be their nanny. Following the car crash that killed their mother, Tiggy helped fill at least part of the deep void left in the young princes’ lives. Despite a flurry of press stories claiming that Kate’s mother would serve as a kind of nanny with support from a series of babysitters, the new parents would take great care in selecting the right nanny for their newborn.

What happens in the coming years is open to speculation, but if William and Kate continue to follow Diana’s lead, little George will almost certainly attend a nursery school like any other British child his age. When three-year-old William walked into Mrs. Mynors’ Nursery School for the first time in l985, he became the first member of Britain’s royal family ever to attend preschool.

Since then, Mrs. Mynors’ had undergone a name change—it was now the Minors Nursery School—and had moved a few blocks away into larger quarters. But the school was still just a short walk from Kensington Palace, and William had fond memories of the place. Here, the future king had terrorized his teachers by threatening to have them imprisoned in the Tower of London if they didn’t do what he wanted.

From Miss Mynors’, William graduated to kindergarten at Wetherby in nearby Notting Hill (Wetherby’s sister school for girls is Pembridge Hall), then moved on to Ludgrove, an exclusive boarding school in Berkshire. This put him on the path to Eton, the fabled prep school just a short walk from Windsor Castle. Only time would tell if the Little Prince’s schooling was destined to follow a similar trajectory.

However, one thing was certain. Determined that her sons not be cut off from the lives of their subjects the way previous generations of royals had been, Diana defied her palace handlers by insisting ten-month-old William accompany her and Charles on an official trip to New Zealand and Australia—the first time a royal infant had ever traveled abroad with his parents. Later, Diana continued to shatter the rules and irk the Queen by taking William and Harry to movie theaters (where she made them wait in line like everybody else), amusement parks, go-cart tracks, and fast-food restaurants (Kentucky Fried Chicken was her favorite). But Diana also exposed them from an early age to the darker side of life outside palace walls, often bringing the young princes along on her visits to orphanages, AIDS clinics, and homeless shelters.

Undoubtedly, William and Kate, who have embraced Diana’s causes and added some of their own, will pick up where the People’s Princess left off. Even before their princeling was born, plans were under way for the Cambridges to take him along when they accompany the sovereign on her highly anticipated state visit to Ireland in 2014. The palace was also abuzz with rumors that, in a replay of William’s history-making visit Down Under in 1983, William and Kate were going to bring their son along on a separate trip to New Zealand and Australia later in the year.

No one was more besotted with the newest royal bundle of joy than the Queen, and for reasons that extended well beyond the simple love of an eighty-seven-year-old for her great-grandchild. While it seemed incomprehensible to her countrymen, the Queen was now seriously considering an abdication—either on her ninetieth birthday in 2016 or perhaps following the death of Prince Philip, now ninety-two and plagued with health issues. This would at last pave the way for Charles to become king and hasten William’s ascension to the throne. She would not be alone among European monarchs in making the tough decision to step aside.

The year of the royal birth was also a record year for abdications—which did not go unnoticed by William’s grandmother. In April of 2013, seventy-five-year-old Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands abdicated in favor of her son, Prince Willem-Alexander, forty-five. That July, seventy-nine-year-old Albert II of Belgium handed the crown to his son, Crown Prince Philippe, fifty-three.

Yet one abdication above all others that year made the biggest impression on the Queen, shocking her as it did the rest of the world. When Pope Benedict XVI—who was almost exactly one year younger than Elizabeth II—announced his decision to step down in February of 2013, one courtier described the Queen’s reaction as “utter, total disbelief.” If Her Majesty was reluctant to break with tradition by retiring so that Charles, now sixty-four, could enjoy at least a few years on the throne, she only had to look at Benedict XVI’s bold decision to step aside—the first papal abdication in six hundred years.

For the world’s most famous baby, the future was as perilous as it was promising. There would be the twists and turns of fate, the inevitable melodrama, the tragedies and scandals—all dutifully recorded and at times magnified by a ravenous press. Yet it seemed unlikely that any two people were better equipped than the baby prince’s parents to help him cope with the pressures and pitfalls of royal life. “William and Harry,” Diana said shortly before her death, “are my one splendid achievement.” William and Kate will someday undoubtedly say the same thing about the grandchild she never knew.