As Prince George’s 12th birthday approaches on July 22, many royal watchers are celebrating the young heir’s steady rise in royal life. The first-born son of Prince William and Kate has made people fall in love with him with his increasing maturity in his public events and these include going to sporting events with his parents or in the Trooping the Colour.
From donning suits at Wimbledon to expressing his love for Aston Villa, George is clearly his father’s son. The twain have been frequently observed together, and they have had incidents successively which combine some of the forms of royalty with the sincere relationship between a father and a son. However, soon that cozy image will be confronted with something that few people outside palace walls anticipate.
One of the Royal traditions will silently be broken when a week passes and the way Prince George and Prince William travel together will change forever.
According to this tradition, which is not seen in any law but has been practiced during decades, a heir to the throne cannot stay in the same vessel with the next one since he or she reaches the age of 12. This implies that George and William will be asked to travel independently in all royal engagements in future.
“We flew all four: the Prince, the Princess, Prince William and Prince Harry, up until Prince William was 12 years old,” said Graham Laurie, King Charles’s former pilot, in an interview with OK! Magazine.
“After that, he had to have a separate aircraft and we could only fly all four together when they were young with the written permission of Her Majesty.”
“When William became 12, he would fly normally in a 125 from Northolt and we would fly the 146 out with the other three on,” he added.
This is not a luxury or status practice but the way of securing the future of the monarch. The tragic history of the Royal Family with travel accidents is the reason why such a cautionary protocol has occurred. George lost his grandmother Princess Diana in a terrible car accident in 1997. Prior to it had happened, there had been the death of the Princess Cecilie in 1937 caused by an air crash; she was a sister to Prince Philip. Prince George, the uncle of Queen Elizabeth II, and Prince William of Gloucester, son of the previous Prince of Wales on his mother line killed in an aviation accident.
The object is easy: to lose not two heirs together.
George will also not be allowed to share flights or official cars with his father even when spotted on a public occasion with his family, as it will be made clear that he was once allowed to do so. There is also a possibility that he will not be traveling together with his younger siblings and so the family trips that were previously normal, such as playing card games in the road are no more.
According to royal experts the family was already ready to accept this change. The permission was not the first time William and Kate asked the Queen to allow them to bring George on a plane when he was still young as they did during the 2014 tour of the Australia and New Zealand. This is not usually the case.
This is one month there will be no exception.
With Prince George approaching the age of 12, his future as a royal ruler gets much closer and much more orderly. This customs might appear as any minor adaptation, yet in the circles of royal peoples it is a strong ritual initiation.
The birthday of the young prince is more of a celebration in many aspects. It is the beginning of his breakage–not only with the ways of childhood, but with the image of his own father.
