For weeks, the bookies have been taking bets on everything from the colour of the royal baby’s hair
to its birth date, weight, name and sex. But there has only ever been one aspect of the new birth that I would lay money on: what sort of father William will be.
I bet he will be more hands-on than any previous royal dad, and will want for this child to grow up in a happy, safe and informal environment, in which his privacy is sacrosanct.
William has tasted real normality (albeit privileged) with Kate and the Middleton family, and with the friends and their families he has met over the years. He has no doubt compared the way they live with his gilded but sometimes traumatic childhood — and knows which he would choose for his own son.
Diana adored her boys, and there was no shortage of hugs and outings and treats when she was around. Charles, too, was besotted by them and, in private, delighted in playing with them and putting on silly voices or pulling faces to make them laugh.
But for all the fun and games, home was neither safe nor happy: in fact, for some years it was a war zone, with stories about the marriage and the affairs seeping into the Press day after day.
It was also an unmistakably royal household with butlers, footmen and valets, housekeepers and chefs, chauffeurs and policemen. Round-the-clock childcare was the responsibility of nannies, not parents, just as it was for Charles and previous generations of royal children.
Diana had also been brought up by nannies. She was an aristocrat with more blue blood in her veins than the Royal Family, and it would never have crossed her mind to do anything but employ a nanny herself.
So while the Waleses’ home was more relaxed and more child-friendly than any other Royal household that had gone before, William and Harry still lived in the nursery on the top floor at both Kensington Palace and Highgrove. They ate there with the nannies and police protection officers, played there and slept there.
Sometimes, when the children were very small, visitors would find them answering the front door alongside the butler, and William might be found hiding in his father’s study at bedtime.
But generally, they were out of sight in the care of well-drilled professionals, which was just as well because as his parents’ marriage lurched from bad to worse — and the public chewed over details of the lovers, the ‘Squidgy-gate’ and ‘Camillagate’ tapes, and the Dimbleby and Panorama interviews — William came to rely on the household staff more and more.
He could turn to them when his parents were distracted by their own problems, and by their busy work schedules.
Many children in similar circumstances might have gone disastrously off the rails, but William formed close and sustaining relationships not only with his nannies, but also with police protection officers and schoolmasters.
The first nanny, Barbara Barnes, was asked to leave because Diana was afraid the four-year-old William was too close to her. It was the first of a series of painful losses — pre-figuring, in some ways, the death of his mother — and he has never forgotten those attachments.
(Last year, he cancelled an engagement so he could be at the funeral of Olga Powell, a nanny who had been with him for 15 years, through all the most tumultuous times. He remained in touch throughout her retirement.)
This, after all, was a child who slept in the nursery with his nannies — and when he woke it was his nanny’s bed he clambered into for a cuddle. Often he went into his mother’s bed for a second cuddle, but his nannies were the only ones he could always rely on to be there.
Diana, like Will, had been brought up by nannies. She was an aristocrat
with more blue blood in her veins than the Royal Family, and it would
never have crossed her mind to do anything but employ a nanny herself
William and Kate have no plans to employ a full-time nanny yet, and there will be no servant in smart livery to answer the front door
But not even the best nanny is a substitute for the full, loving attention of one if not two parents. And all the indications are that this new royal baby will get the real thing.
William and Kate have no plans to employ a full-time nanny yet, and there will be no servant in smart livery to answer the front door.
In fact, the only person they have employed is a housekeeper to work at Kensington Palace when they move into their newly refurbished apartment in the autumn. She has a very flexible job description — which will no doubt include walking the dog and minding the baby, as well as laundering the sheets and stocking the fridge.
They have done most of this for themselves for the past three years while living in a rented cottage in Anglesey near William’s RAF rescue helicopter base. They’ve employed only a woman to help with cleaning.
Prince Charles, at the same age as William — although he was unmarried — already had a full complement of staff. His son clearly wants a less formal life for his family.
Trust has always been a major issue for William; and after the betrayal of people like Paul Burrell — who worked as a butler at Kensington Palace before his mother’s death and then wrote a book about his life there — he could be forgiven for his reluctance to employ anyone else.
But it is not just the memories of his formative years which have shaped William’s thoughts about fatherhood. For he has seen another way of life with the Middletons, and has embraced it with enthusiasm.
As a friend of his once said to me: ‘If you want to understand William, his relationship with the Middletons is the beginning and end of it. He likes them, they’re happy and they’re nice, straightforward people.’
And the Middletons will be very much in evidence — as grandparents should. This baby will have a string of names and royal titles, and will be the monarch who may take the House of Windsor through to the next century — but I bet the new arrival will be a Middleton through and through.
Kate is very close to her family, and William folds seamlessly into their secure, loving and solidly middle-class lifestyle. It is so very different from everything he experienced as a boy.
He and Kate spend weekends at the Middletons’ house in Bucklebury — she was there when she was knocked sideways by morning sickness in the early stages of her pregnancy and was rushed to hospital.
They go on holiday together — the last trip was to Mustique in the spring — and William and Kate even spent last Christmas with them. This was a real break with tradition, and William had to seek the Queen’s permission to miss the Royal Family gathering at Sandringham, where he spent every Christmas as a child.
A marker of the Middletons’ influence is that when William goes back to work, there is every chance Kate will go and stay with her parents.
Carole Middleton is the baby’s only full grandmother, and William will want to encourage that relationship. He is very close to his own grandmother (as Charles was to his grandmother, the Queen Mother), and knows what a special, valuable and loving relationship it can be.
Having watched his parents’ marriage unravel, William was wary of committing himself to a permanent union. But he learned from the mistakes they made.
He knew that Charles and Diana had scarcely known one another when they married. What they discovered, too late, was that they had different interests, different needs and expectations, and didn’t much care for the other one’s friends.
So much of the unhappiness that William witnessed as a child stemmed from those fundamental differences. He was determined that he would not make the same error.
It was eight years before he asked Kate to marry him, and for some of those years, at university, they had lived together. By the time they walked down the aisle, they knew each other completely. Now, they are friends as well as lovers, and the chances are their marriage will be as solid as the Middletons’.
But what stands out — and what attracts William, I suspect — is the contentment of the Middleton family. Kate with her level-headedness, calmness and confidence is a product of Carole and Michael’s calm and confident parenting, and William sees it for what it is.
His life has been unreal in many ways. He knows better than most that privilege, titles and money don’t bring happiness. The French would say that the most important thing is to be ‘heureux dans sa peau’ — happy in your own skin.
I’d lay money on that being what he will want for his own child. The burden of the title can come in its own sweet time.
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