His wedding is only a month away, but Prince William didn’t hesitate when his grandmother the queen asked him to visit disaster stricken areas in New Zealand and Australia on her behalf.
Leaving fiancée Kate Middleton at home to fine-tune the final plans for what will be the most-watched wedding of the decade, William was honoured to step up to the plate and represent the House of Windsor.
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In an emotional royal visit, he consoled relatives of the victims of the Christchurch earthquake and the Pike River mine explosion, and those affected by the Queensland and Victorian floods. It was just over a year before that he had taken time out to comfort the families of victims of the Victorian bushfires.
The surprise trip this month came hot on the heels of William’s equally frenetic tour of the UK, this time with wife-to-be Kate Middleton on his arm.
The “changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace” is clear to see — Prince William has arrived and with him the royal family is young again. And for all of us watching the 28-year-old royal with his innate ease and grace with ordinary people, it’s just like watching his mother before him.
A mere flash of his blue eyes and catch of his shy smile evoke memories of Diana and the deja vu does not stop there. William was well-taught by his mother, not just on how to cope with his bizarre life in the spotlight, but on how to use it to reshape the monarchy, affect change, make a difference and somehow stay true to himself.
Diana, the aristocratic preschool teacher whose blue-blooded lineage can be traced back to King Charles I, was just 20 when she gave birth to William on June 21, 1982, and even though there was never any question about what William would do when he grew up, she was determined to stamp her mark on the future King of England.
Battling the stifling protocol of the English “royal firm”, Diana strove to give Prince William Arthur Philip Louis Windsor not just a normal, loving childhood, but one that might equip him with a fresh attitude and mindset on the life of duty which lay ahead of him.
“He’s a deep thinker,” she said proudly of her son, who was 13 at the time of the interview and whose first tour of duty was to Australia with his parents when he was nine months old.
Away from the cameras, she introduced her sons to radically different corners of their kingdom. They visited homeless shelters and met people with HIV.
“I want William to experience what most people already know. That he and Harry are growing up in a multiracial society in which not everyone is rich, has four holidays a year, speaks standard English and has a Range Rover,” said Diana.
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“What Princess Diana did was to bring up a couple of normal human beings [in her sons]. They come across as real people,” says Michael O’Mara, publisher of leading books on the royal family, including Andrew Morton’s biography of Diana.
“If Charles had married another person who was more like the Windsors, the children would have been more inward looking, less relaxed and removed from the real world.
“Diana was dragging her sons around to doss houses — they understand real people. The common touch is the main thing. The way William sounds is completely different to his father. He may sound posh, but he comes across as relatively normal, not from another planet or from an episode of Doctor Who.”
Read more of this story in the April issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
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