It’s a boy! After weeks of anticipation and speculation and a labour lasting more than 11 hours on the hottest day of the year so far, the Duchess of Cambridge finally gave birth to a son at 4.24 yesterday afternoon, a baby who is now third in line to the throne.
Millions of words have been written and millions more spoken (I must admit that, although I’m a staunch royalist, I’ve found the last few days a bit over the top as a sort of hysteria seems to have taken over the country. And so, as I’ve done with many other momentous occasions this year, I’ve sifted through the huge amount of royal baby trivia we’ve been bombarded with since the news was announced that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were expecting their first child and selected my favourite facts.
Royal babies used to be born at home. The Queen was born at her parents’ house in Mayfair, Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace and Princess Anne at Clarence House. Prince William was the first future king to be born in hospital, coincidentally the same Lindo Wing at St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, where his own child has just been born. Until Prince Charles’s birth in 1948, it was customary for the Home Secretary to attend royal births to prevent baby swapping. (I bet the Duchess and Theresa May were both relieved that this no longer happens!)
Royal births are celebrated with a 62-gun salute from the Honourable Artillery Company at the Tower of London and a 42-gun salute by the King’s Troop Royal Artillery in Green Park. As I mentioned in a previous blog, a gun salute is a complicated concept to understand. The basic royal salute is 21, but there are an extra 21 when it takes place in a royal park. The Tower has 62 because, in addition to the basic 21, there are an extra 20 as The Tower is a royal palace and another 21 because it’s located in the City of London! I don’t know about you, but I’m still confused!
The Queen will be the first reigning monarch to meet a great-grandchild born in direct succession to the throne since Queen Victoria met the future King Edward VIII in 1894. The new baby is the Queen’s third great-grandchild (her first great-grandson) and the great-great-great-great-great grandson of Queen Victoria. Because of their titles, it isn’t necessary for royal babies to have surnames but, if William and Kate did want their son to have one, there are three available: Windsor, the name adopted by George V in 1917 because of anti-German feeling about the family’s then surname of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Mountbatten-Windsor, the name used by some direct descendants of the Queen and Prince Philip, or Cambridge, the name of the new prince’s parents’ house.
Royal babies usually have five or six godparents, though Prince Charles had eight. It’s expected that the christening will take place in the autumn after the Queen has returned from her annual summer holiday at Balmoral by which time Prince Philip is expected to be well enough to attend. The baby will be baptised with water from the River Jordan (probably the only thing I’ll have in common with him!) and will wear a lace and satin robe, which is actually a handmade replica of the 172-year-old garment used for generations of royal infants including the Queen herself, her father King George VI, the Prince of Wales and Princes William and Harry. The Honiton lace and satin robe was first worn by Queen’s Victoria’s daughter, Princess Victoria, in 1841 and last worn by Lady Louise Windsor in 2004 after which it was deemed too fragile for further use. The new christening robe, made by the Queen’s dressmaker, Angela Kelly, and the team of dressmakers at Buckingham Palace, was first worn in 2008 by the Earl and Countess of Wessex’s son, Viscount Severn.
Our insatiable appetite for news 24 hours a day means that every step in the life of the world’s most famous baby boy will be the subject of unprecedented fascination. Because of the instant global age in which we now live, news of the birth was announced by email before it was posted on a noticeboard in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace in the traditional way. Back in 1948, when Prince Charles was a baby, it was possible for him to be taken out in his pram by his nanny accompanied by just one bowler-hatted detective. Photographers would snap them going past and put the photos in an album to reminisce about with their grandchildren. How different it will be for the new prince being brought up in a world where camera phones and social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook mean that millions of people across the world can have instant access to pictures taken by members of the public.
Though, of course, I had plenty of time to plan this window, it wasn’t until the birth was announced that I found out if what I had in mind would work. In the middle, of course, are the proud parents (at least I got the colour of Kate’s dress correct even though it was cornflower blue rather than royal and had spots instead of stars!) cradling their baby son wrapped in swaddling clothes and clutching his first teddy – I wonder how many thousands more he’ll receive in the coming weeks. I’ve also tried to recreate what everyone, apparently, wants to see – the easel traditionally put outside Buckingham Palace to announce the birth of a royal baby. (I understand that people were actually queuing up yesterday to photograph it!) As you can see, one ursine couple have brought along their newborn cub to be photographed in front of the palace so that, in years to come, he can say, ‘I was there!’
Now that the world has had its first glimpse of the new little prince, there’s just one last important matter for us to speculate over (for the moment, anyway) – his name! Hopefully this will be announced soon as it took a full month for Prince Charles’s names to be revealed, though he and Diana only took a week to decide on William’s and a mere day for Harry’s. Just for the record, my money’s on Andrew Philip Charles George!