It was a moment of spontaneous father-son joy, emotion overflowing in one of those sporting highs everyone can relate to.
The Three Lions, England’s national soccer team, had scored an equalizer in the 73rd minute of the final of the UEFA EURO 2024 tournament. The stakes were high, a nation hanging on the result.
Could England “bring it home”? Prince George reached for his father, closing his eyes as they shared a tender hug, relief that their team was still in with a chance.
Prince William, the president of England’s Football Association, had brought his eldest boy to the match in Berlin. There was no advance announcement to media; the first and second in line to the throne walking into the Olympiastadion side by side, in matching suits and ties, a united royal front barracking for the nation. Lucky George. For soccer fans these are moments in history. At 10 years old he was at the heart of the action.
Throughout the match George, the spit of his late grandmother Diana, Princess of Wales, echoed his father’s reactions as they cheered and sighed together. It was unknowing and spontaneous; these two have clearly been here before, father and son watching footy, probably mostly side-by-side on the sofa at home in Windsor.
When Spain’s Mikel Oyarzabal barrelled their second goal into the back of the net William and George stood bolt upright and then collapsed into their seats, simultaneously clasping their hands around their cheeks, mouths open in disbelief and devastation. Minutes later Spain was the rightful victor. The better team on the night.
But what a match it was for Prince William and his eldest son George. The “mini me” photos went viral on social media. “These two are heartbreakingly adorable together — what a beautiful relationship,” wrote one fan on X. “Love them,” wrote another.
It may sound rather ordinary, only they are the two monarchs-in-waiting behaving like, well, a regular loving father and son. To see our future kings in such an authentic and abandoned display of emotion on the public stage can’t help but lift your day. The whole world saw the warmth of William and George’s relationship.
In a family fractured with discord and burdened with ill-health, this was a tonic.
The Wales family is the shining beacon of the monarchy’s future and here they were spreading unbridled delight.
William and George, a special bond
George’s seemingly uncanny mirroring of his father’s mannerisms — which he has done on previous occasions — is called “observational learning” by child psychologists and is actually very common. The fact that he does it so exuberantly shows the positive reinforcement he is receiving from Prince William and their closeness.
In fact, the special bond between William and George has always been apparent to those of us watching more closely. From the moment William cradled George as a baby hours after his birth outside St Mary’s Hospital in London protecting him from the baying mass of photographers, to the gentle kiss he planted on his nine-month-old head here in Australia at Taronga Zoo when George met his namesake, a young bilby.
When the royals visited Canada in 2016 I remember thinking George, then a three-year-old toddler, was just starting to wonder at the media throng watching him. On that tour I was in the media retinue and Prince William held his son tight, knowing exactly what he was going through. Aside from a few tantrums, George was a dream on the tour, sharing the burden of the front-page limelight with his younger sister Charlotte and his parents.
But in the years that followed as he started to realise his destiny, appearing at Trooping the Colour and playing a key role in his grandfather King Charles III’s coronation, one can only guess at what is going on in the young prince’s head. George now knows what lies ahead for him; that the person out there leading the pomp and ceremony will be him one day.
This no doubt plays a big part in his relationship with his father. These two both had their lives decided at birth, they share a gilded cage and will rely on each other more heavily as the years roll on and they take the House of Windsor into new eras. Only Prince William can really understand what that feels like and he surely feels a deep responsibility to guide George — and all his children — through the maze.
William and Catherine have already shifted the dial. Their style of parenting is light years away from the nanny-centric, aristocratic frostiness of the traditional royal childhoods of bygone days. William often talks about his desire to give his children as normal a childhood as possible and if the football outing is anything to go by, he is already doing that.
“I want George to grow up in a real, living environment, I don’t want him growing up behind palace walls, he has to be out there. The media make it harder, but I will fight for them to have a normal life,” he said in an interview with GQ magazine.
Could William involve George in homelessness work?
Earlier this year Prince William said he was eager to follow in his mother’s footsteps and introduce his children to his own work with homeless people. “When I can balance it with their schooling, they will definitely be exposed to it,” he told the UK’s Sunday Times newspaper.
William and George over the years
Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, Prince William and Prince George preparing Christmas puddings at Buckingham Palace in 2019. (AP: Chris Jackson/ Buckingham Palace)
Last week Prince William marked the end of the first year in his five-year Homewards project to end homelessness. It’s a highly ambitious campaign involving multiple bespoke solutions and building projects all over Britain, including on his own Duchy of Cornwall land.
As George approaches his 11th birthday on July 22, the time may well be coming for him to be by his father’s side once more in a very different area of his work. Prince William was 11 when his mother first took him to a homeless shelter; it was an experience that deeply affected him and critically broadened his outlook.
“I think it’s in all our interests, it’s the right thing to do, to expose the children, at the right stage, in the right dialogue, so they have an understanding,” William said. “They [will] grow up knowing that actually … some of us are very fortunate … some of us need to do a bit more where we can to help others improve their lives.”
