Don’t expect to see the Prince William and Kate Middleton, Prince and Princess of Wales, out shaking hands and kissing commoner babies this week, as the entire family is reportedly taking a short holiday. According to People, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis are on a school break, so their royal parents are expected to clear their own public schedules to spend time with them, as they have in the past.
All three kids started at Lambrook this year, which is also the first time they’ve all gone to the same school together. People reports that the Wales children will return to class just in time for Halloween. (Side note: I wonder if real princesses still dress up like fairytale princesses for Halloween. Moving on.)
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It’s not traditional for royal parents to sideline royal duties in favor of parental duties, but royal experts have often noted that Prince William and Kate Middleton appear to be taking Princess Diana’s unorthodox approach to raising Royal Highnesses. “From William, I think we get the Princess Diana influence,” journalist Angela Mollard has remarked, via Marie Claire. “Princess Diana was the first real royal mum to submerge her children in ordinary life. They went to theme parks, they went to McDonalds, they went and visited the homeless, they went and visited AIDS patients. She made them aware of their privilege in a way that previous generations hadn’t.”
Like Diana, William and Kate always take a more hands-on approach to parenting than previous Waleses. Royal etiquette expert Myka Meier once told Us Weekly that William and Kate don’t even send their kids to traditional etiquette classes, meaning they teach them when to bow and what to say themselves. No wonder they need the extra time.
