Prince George is just 11 years old, but his life may soon be transformed by a public frenzy—meaning his parents may have to prepare for a battle over his privacy.
At George’s age, his father, Prince William, was at Ludgrove boarding school, where the headmaster was said to have banned newspapers in the library and ordered pupils’ television viewing to be restricted to shield them from stories and gossip about the royal family.
Then, when William was 15 years old, everything changed. The young Prince of Wales was was suddenly viewed very differently by the public and the media after a tour of Canada in March 1998 that gave rise to what was nicknamed “Willsmania.”
One woman held up a sign saying, “William it’s me you’ve been looking for,” while Monika Vriend was with the crowds in Vancouver and told Canadian Press at the time it was, “Like back in the day when the Beatles came through, people were just going crazy and swooning and couldn’t believe their own eyes that the princes were there.”
That visit, which is depicted in the final season of Netflix series The Crown, came about three months off his 16th birthday.
Anwar Hussein/Getty Images and Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images
The interest was no doubt well intentioned but demonstrates just how short childhood is for royals and triggered intense demand for stories about his private life.
Prince George is just 11, and those 4 1/2 years will no doubt feel like a lifetime to him, but for the adults in his life, the moment that turbocharges his need for privacy may be just around the corner.
TV debates about the future of the Monarchy often frame George’s generation as being a long way off the era when they will start to fill the headlines more than their parents, in large part because they are still so young.
However, King Charles III, who took his sons to Canada in 1998, less than six months after their mother died, no doubt did not exactly plan for the “mania” that ensued.
And in that vein, William may have a finite amount of time in which to decide how he will react if a similar avalanche of attention suddenly engulfs his heir in the social media age, when public discourse is even harder to control.
Journalism professor Tim Luckhurst, principal of South College at Durham University in the U.K., told Newsweek: “I don’t think interest in the royal family has diminished at all.
“I think the royal family sell newspapers, they sell magazines they sell television programs, they are extraordinarily popular and indeed they have always understood that there is a Faustian pact between themselves and the popular press be that in print or online.”
George, born in July 2013, is four years and six months off William’s age during the Canada visit, which is long in the context of his life so far but may pass quickly for his parents, currently pre-occupied with pressing matters related to health and legacy.
After all, Harry and Meghan moved to California only about four years and seven months ago as the COVID-19 pandemic began to take hold.
To put that time frame in context, it was fully four years ago that the Sussexes sparked a backlash by commenting on the last U.S. presidential election and by the time the next president completes their term in January 2029, be it Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, George will be just two months off the “Willsmania” age.
And if William’s own—and Prince Harry‘s—life experiences are not warning enough, then the world of showbiz is replete with cautionary tales.
Former One Direction singer Liam Payne’s death after falling from a hotel balcony in Argentina on Wednesday, October 16, has also triggered conversations about the impact fame has on child stars.
Fellow X Factor contestant Rebecca Ferguson said if Payne had never entered the show he would be “alive today” while Sharon Osbourne said: “We all let you down.”
There is nothing to suggest George’s story will ever be as tragic as Payne’s but there are still warning signs in very recent royal history that the road ahead could be bumpy.
Princess Kate’s first few months of 2024 show just how quickly stories about the royals can still blow up—and particularly because royal privacy was a factor in conspiracy theories and speculation taking hold.
Samir Hussein/WireImage
The Princess of Wales disappeared from the public eye after abdominal surgery and a diagnosis of cancer that she chose not to make public.
In the midst of a vacuum of information, accounts on X, formerly Twitter, began speculating she had died, been murdered, been admitted to a psychiatric hospital or run off with the couple’s children, all of which turned out in time to be false.
However, the frenzy became so intense that ultimately the palace had to back down and she announced her cancer diagnosis in March.
Not only that, but in September she further pulled back the curtain offering footage of unprecedentedly candid moments involving her three children—George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis—in a video announcing her chemotherapy had ended but appealing for more time before a full return to work.
Luckhurst said: “There is almost no possibility of controlling social media completely.
“There are two ways forward. One is ignore it and two is go after any absolutely obvious and direct forgeries with real aggression and to use the law to the best possible effect.
“Social media is the big nightmare of our day, and the best thing one can possibly do as a person in the public eye is to ignore it entirely because people will say things on social media that they could never have said in print and will get away with so doing as long as social media exists.”
During Kate’s “missing” scandal, conspiracy theories about her marriage to Prince William became rife, but George and his siblings with have romantic lives too one day and they will also spark fevered discussion on social media.
Yet William and Kate were not able to stop the gossip and nor have Prince Harry and Meghan Markle been able to stop the media writing stories insinuating their marriage has been on the rocks—even after a passionate kiss in public as recently as August.
None of it bodes well for the experience George, Charlotte and Louis have to look forward to as they get older and demand for content about their private lives begins to soar.
Luckhurst did, though, praise William and Kate’s “almost flawless” work to produce a more positive relationship with British newspapers and broadcasters, pointing to the earliest days of their relationship as a model for the future.
William and Kate met while he was at St Andrews University, in Scotland, and the prince offered some photo opportunities in return for being largely left alone.
They still pursue this approach, sending out photos Kate has taken herself of the children to the media on their birthdays.
That avoids them enduring what Prince Harry, in his book Spare, called The Wall: “Before skiing at Klosters we’d always have to walk to a designated spot at the foot of the mountain and stand before seventy or so photographers, arranged in three or four ascending tiers—the Wall.
“They’d point their lenses and shout our names and shoot us while we squinted and fidgeted and listened to Pa answer their daft questions.
“The Wall was the price we paid for a hassle-free hour on the slopes. Only if we went before the Wall would they briefly leave us in peace.”
One other issue is the international media, who have historically been as problematic as the British press, if not more so. It was French Closer that ran topless pictures of Kate sunbathing in private, the Australian press that leaked that Harry was deployed as a soldier in Afghanistan, cutting short his tour, and TMZ that published naked pictures of him partying in Las Vegas.
TMZ also ran long-lens pictures purporting to be of Kate in Windsor during her health crisis and paparazzi photos of Prince Harry and Meghan in New York in May 2023. German magazine Bunte also ran drone images of their son, Prince Archie, playing in the private grounds of Tyler Perry’s Los Angeles mansion in 2020.
However, Luckhurst remains optimistic about the groundwork William and Kate have done so far: “Kate and William have set an almost flawless example of offering access and offering genuine collaboration when it was in their interests and when the public expressed a genuine interest without compromising their privacy or compromising their values.”
Jack Royston is Newsweek‘s chief royal correspondent based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.
