Why is Prince George not going to secondary school until after he turns 13?

[MinnieMounjaro]

Prince William reveals Prince George, 12, is already boarding at £10,669-a-term Lambrook School mol.im/a/15846933 via https://dailym.ai/android

I saw this article in the DM saying Prince George is currently boarding at Lambrook "ahead of moving to his secondary school in September". He turns 13 in July so the thought occurred to me - why is he still in primary school? Should he not have started secondary in 2024 when he was 11?

That’s an outcome, not a crime. Or a cause.

I mean though, monarchy is inherently tied to medieval and archaic structural systems, carrying built-in dynamics that feel incredibly harsh by modern standards. Look at the British royal family it's historically common for siblings to clash because the system itself is structurally cruel. Other than British We even saw a modern version of this in the Danish monarchy when the Queen stripped several of her grandchildren of their royal titles. While a lot of it comes down to standard family dysfunction, the institution itself is designed to inevitably create toxicity. It automatically elevates the heir while making the spare feel lesser-than based purely on birth order, completely ignoring whether a younger sibling might actually be better suited to rule

I mean it's not ok to treat both children differently (like giving a better toy or bed to one and not the another for no reason other than birth or a shallow reason) so if if that is the case its ok that it hurts and he feels resentful, no children deserves that regardless of what you think of Harry as an adult, that's a cruel thing to do. I hope Catherine and Meghan are breaking that toxic circle with their own children.

Random thought: I really wonder about women who marry the heir to the throne. It means that their first-born is trapped and their entire life mapped out for them in one role the moment they're conceived. Hard luck if you have other talents and interests. You're doomed to live in a golden cage and perform endless boring duties and be harshly criticised by all and sundry for the rest of your life.

I couldn't do it to a potential first-born, I just couldn't. To bring a child into the world knowing that they were destined for all that, and to have no freedom to become a "something," a pilot or a teacher or a doctor or a fashion designer. Not to be able to properly develop any professional skills or mastery of an area of employment. Giving your life to public service, much of it boring, and everyone telling you how pointless your life's work is and how much they want the institution you represent to be gone.

The women who have married heirs to the throne must have wanted to be Queen very, very badly to knowingly saddle their first-born with that position. (I say knowingly because in the late Queen Mum's case, she had no idea her husband would become King.) Really, William is very lucky that Kate chose him, when she could easily have married some rich hooray Henry and had a private life of leisure.

Speaking of Queen Mums, it's really odd to think of Kate being the Queen Mother one day, if she outlives William. 🤣 To be the Queen Mother, you have to have been a Queen Consort yourself and be the mother of the current Sovereign. So the next one would be Kate - if she outlives William. Kate as the Queen Mum - lol! 🤣 I can just imagine her with a blue rinse and a pink gin! 😂

It automatically elevates the heir while making the spare feel lesser-than based purely on birth order, completely ignoring whether a younger sibling might actually be better suited to rule.

Obviously landed families with large houses and estates are not the same as the royal family, but primogeniture still exists and the eldest son inherits everything.
What the younger siblings get depends on the family and how much actual cash they have - as opposed to land and possessions.
However theres nothing to stop the younger siblings from earning money - like practically everyone else in this world has to.

I see nothing to indicate that George, Charlotte and Louis are being raised differently from each other. Charlotte and Louis are obviously much loved and being brought up in a wonderful way. William and Harry were also much loved when they were boys, and Harry was much indulged. Even among Charles and his siblings, aside from Andrew, who was a rotten apple, there seems to be much love and support among them.

It's a tough job to be monarch and to grow up knowing you will represent a nation to the world and must do your best to be a successful symbol of national unity. The siblings have an important role in assisting in that. There's really nothing "inferior" about being a younger sibling and "only" being a prince or princess. Similarly with the grandchildren of the monarch. Does anyone really believe that Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall aren't happy, whole and contented people simply because they were never prince or princess, like their cousins Beatrice and Eugenie?

I would have thought that one thing Prince William learnt from observing his father is that you need to do a lot of other things as receiving the crown could be many many years into the future. Prince William is not even 45, he may well live another 40-50 years. Prince George may not even get the Crown until he is very old. I highly doubt they are labelling his future too much at this point. Sure he will do his duties, but he has potentially almost a lifetime of filling it with other meaningful charitable pursuits that he can be passionate about, just like his grandfather.

Catherine won't be Queen Mother.

That was a title created solely for Queen Elizabeth to distinguish her from her daughter THE Queen, who was also Elizabeth.

Had her name been Fiona, she would just have been known as Queen Fiona for the rest of her life, same as Queen Mary and Queen Alexandra (& every other Queen Consort who's husband died before them).

Only other similarish case was Margaret Beaufort who insisted on the the title "My Lady, the King's Mother" , but that was all a huge power struggle/MIL from hell Tudor machinations.

Queen Consort's are always just Queens them selves until they die.

My younger brother got the smaller bedroom, he also got 1 less sausage at times when very young - because he was younger and smaller.

The only person who's claimed he was treated differently because of birth order is Harry. And he thinks bins talk to him. It was just yet another case of him imagining petty grievances, apparently throughout his entire life. And now he's continuing the cycle with his own children. Sad really. He needs to get a decent therapist who will actually help him, not enable him.

Yes @MrsFinkelstein@Windsandstars it wasn’t so much a better actual bed but a better view from the bed out of the window. His various grievances were literally endless and a lot of them were childish. He was/is clearly fucked up by the death of his Mum so young and how badly that was handled at the time, (the long walk they did with everyone screaming) but as per the book he has a lot of animosity towards William that is very child like and immature he accuses William of not being there for him, but William was also a child grieving the loss of his mother. It’s very sad all around.

Yes, there was only 2 years and a couple of months between William and Harry, and the narrative has been very hard on William.

He will have had a very difficult time as a fifteen year old grieving his mother, let alone what we already knew of Diana parentifying him. Trying to support Harry over the years and then having this public accusation will have been very hurtful.

Your brain is still developing when you're a child, which is why those years are often referred to as your formative years.

Harry wrote a memoir about his life, so naturally he's reflecting on his experiences and how he perceived them at the time. If he felt he was treated differently as a child, that's part of his story to tell. Sharing those experiences isn't moaning or whining, it's recounting his life as he remembers it.

If I were to write a memoir, I'd probably have things to say about being a middle child. I might talk about feeling left out at times or how the youngest was often seen as the favourite. My older sister would likely say she had it hardest because she was expected to set an example for the rest of us. We're all entitled to reflect on those experiences without being dismissed as complainers.

As for the sausage incident, I don't believe it was actually in the book. If I remember correctly, it came from an interview with Paul Burrell, who recalled seeing a nanny give William more sausages because he would one day be King. Any child exposed to that kind of dynamic is likely to feel less important or valued.

Psychologists have long discussed how parents often treat siblings differently, sometimes without even realising it, and birth order can play a role in that. But in this case, we're not talking about subtle differences. Imagine explicitly telling a child that their sibling gets more because they're more important. How many people would consider that healthy or fair?

It's fairly clear that the environment those children grew up in reinforced the idea that one sibling was the priority. That's not a criticism of William; it's an observation about the institution and expectations surrounding them.

It's asking a lot of any child to happily accept being treated as less important. To expect them to respond with complete emotional maturity and never feel hurt is unrealistic. Children simply don't have that level of emotional development, and it's perfectly understandable that those experiences would stay with them into adulthood.

Yes, but there wasn’t much real reflection evident in Spare,

And Paul Burrell is globally known as being a bastion of truth 🙄

Well its where it came from, it didn’t come from the book. So lets make sure facts are correct. You agree then that Harry didn't 'moan' about the number of sausages then..

I know that some people at both Marlborough and Eton are convinced he’s going there and apparently know which house he’s been allocated! He can’t be going to both!

We all know that family is incredibly dysfunctional with mental issues going around due to the toxic environment. But honestly, support goes both ways. If one sibling is absent, they can't expect the other to just fall in line. If the older sibling wanted a real relationship, they should have been smart and empathetic enough to show up for their younger sibling equally instead of just acting entitled to their loyalty for being older, it's a matter if common sense.

And it’s bound to be deeply frustrating to watch a sibling consistently get the better end of everything, small details or bigger stuff. It isn’t just about an isolated detail or a better bedroom view; it’s the compounding pattern of systemic unfairness he had to witness over and over again throughout his entire life that probably triggered him all time.

And as I said in my post the expectation on him to be okay with that despite that he is young and is not capable of that type of maturity.

And posters here expecting a young child to be able to be that mature....🙄

If I remember correctly, it came from an interview with Paul Burrell, who recalled seeing a nanny give William more sausages because he would one day be King. Any child exposed to that kind of dynamic is likely to feel less important or valued.

As a pp pointed out, since when was Paul Burrell a reliable witness?

I never said he was. Im just pointing out people keep saying Harry whines about getting one less sausage but he never said it. It came from Paul Burrell. So if he isnt a reliable witness then why do people insist on attaching Harry to it and insisting he whinges about it when the fact is he hasn't and noone believes Paul so why keep bringing it up then.

However lets not be so deluded to think they treated both brothers equally, we know they didn't.

Spot on. Adult Harry has every right to reject that treatment, as does anyone else in his position. He knows what it's like to be treated as second best just for existing. This is textbook narcissistic family formatting - the golden child versus the scapegoat - and modern psychology heavily documents how toxic and lifelong this damage is. My mother lived through this exact dynamic: her brother was the golden child who did nothing just because he was a male heir (he could do no wrong but contributed to nothing and got everything best), while she was expected to handle everything and care for ungrateful parents. It’s an incredibly unfair and cruel thing to survive. This kind of dynamics exist and is real and the scapegoat is not whining nor being ungrateful.

Some people love to use the 'they were both just grieving children' excuse to smooth things over, but that completely ignores adulthood. Yes, William was a child then. But as adults, golden children almost always inherit the abusive system and continue to protect their own comfort and elevated status. Adult William didn't try to dismantle the unfair hierarchy; he leaned into it. Expecting the scapegoat to just quietly accept getting secondhand treatment forever so the golden child doesn't feel uncomfortable is a classic way sick families suppress accountability.

Anyway, if George does go to Eton that will put a spring in the step of quite a few posters who dislike the royal family and dislike private schools, particularly Eton.
They will get a lot of pleasure from the prospect of posts putting the boot in for this double whammy.

The Left have far more to froth about (than Eton or the Royal Family) now that Elon Musk is a trillionaire.
Imagine he could donate a tiny amount of his fortune to a school like Eton and it would be free forever for its pupils on passive income alone.
That is how they do it with some US unis, donations.

Mumsnet is full of threads from posters acknowledging the damage that their parenting did to them-wasn’t there a very long running one called something like “But we took you to stately homes…”? I don’t understand why it’s possible to understand what’s going on with those posters, but not to extend the same to the people who lived in the stately homes. I can’t stand the RF- but even I can see how damaged they all are.

Care to comment about the damage to the 14 or 15 trillionaire’s children @CurlewKate ?

What did Philip Larkin say?
“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.”

With privilege, wealth etc comes even more duty and burden.

However, still better than a druggie mum and an absent father! I know what I would choose.