They might live in a beautiful palace and have access to anything they could possibly want, but the royal family really are humans, just like the rest of us.
They have ups and downs, suffer from stress and anxiety, and ride the emotional rollercoaster that comes with being a parent.
That’s why the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have made it their mission to use their public profile to talk about mental health issues, and donate generously to charities supporting their cause.
Prince William created mental health charity Heads Together in 2017, along with his wife the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, to help combat the stigma of mental health.
But, as the Duke told at panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week, it was tough to get people to support the charity.
He said that every celebrity they approached to back the initiative refused to be involved, because they preferred not to talk about “horrendous” events.
“What was interesting, when we set up the campaign was that not one celebrity wanted to join us, not one person wanted to be involved in the mental health campaign Heads Together,” Prince William said.
“We went out to a lot of people and nobody, before we started, was interested in being part of Heads Together, because it was mental health… that was three years ago. And that was a big deal.”
Now, William says things have slowly begun to change.
“Once we started showing people a lot more of what we were going to do, people realised Catherine, Harry and I put our necks on the line here – that actually maybe it was OK, we could join.”
Prince William has a strong bond with his kids. (Image: AAP/Getty)
The Duke of Cambridge also opened up about his own struggles with mental health, revealing that during his time working with the air ambulance service, some of the scenes he encountered were “very difficult to talk about” and there was one incident so traumatic he didn’t think he would “ever get over” it.
He said it was especially horrible because it was “related very closely to my children”, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, and choked up at the mention of the three little ones.
William said he sought professional help following the incident.
“I know that if I hadn’t taken the action I did then I would have definitely gone down a slippery slope and I would have been dealing with mental health on a different level,” he said.
He said despite being a royal, he was “only human.”
“You put a suit of armour on… but one day something comes along closely related to your own personal life and it really takes you over a line.”
Prince William with his son Prince George on his first day of school. (Image: Kensington Palace)
The Cambridge family’s 2018 Christmas card. (Image: Kensington Palace)
Prince William said it is a particularly British quality to not openly discuss emotions, meaning many people “suffer in silence”.
“For some reason, people are embarrassed about their emotions – British people particularly,” he told a packed audience at Davos.
“A whole generation inherited [this way of coping]. This was the way you deal with your problems: you don’t talk about it.”
But he said “a new generation knows that’s not normal” and is becoming comfortable with the idea of sharing your emotions.
He also urged companies to take the mental health of their staff seriously.
“It should be so much easier to go to HR and talk about it. It has to come from the top,” he said.
This isn’t the first time the Prince has opened up about his own mental health.
Last September, William spoke about the impact his career as a pilot had on his emotional state. His job saw him attend to patients injured in a range of circumstances, including road traffic accidents, fires and even poisoning.
“If you see sad things every day, you think all life is like that, you’re just seeing all the sad things, all the pain every day,” he said during a candid public speech.
“I think that for the medical community, particularly, that must weigh a lot on their minds. That you’re always dealing with despair, sadness, injury, things that are really quite troubling.
“The attrition builds up and you don’t really have the opportunity to off-load it.”
Just another reason to add to the list of why we love Prince William!
