Andrew Vine: Prince who sealed monarchy’s place in a nation’s hearts

LIKE any parents of a happy and healthy little boy, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will today be fussing over their son even more than usual because it is his first birthday.

By The Newsroom Tuesday, 22nd July 2014, 7:00 am

A very happy birthday to him. The birth of Prince George was a cause for national celebration, and there will be a deluge of cards and presents on their way, to be carefully preserved until he is old enough to appreciate the affection in which he is held.

Amid whatever celebrations the family plans, it’s possible that his parents, grandfather and great-grandparents alike pause to reflect that George’s arrival a year ago was a very visible signal of an upturn in the fortunes of the House of Windsor.

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There was, of course, the historical significance of his birth. For the first time since Victoria’s reign, there are three generations of direct heirs to the throne. That in itself has underlined the robustness of the monarchy, and fostered a sense of renewal.

But George’s birth seemed to signify something more. It set the seal on a re-energised Royal Family that has bonded more strongly and sympathetically with the public than it has for a generation.

The Firm, as the Royal Family is wont to term itself, is in fine fettle. The warmth of the relationship between it and its people was writ large here in Yorkshire only weeks ago.

The rapturous reaction accorded William, Kate and Harry at Le Grand Départ was mirrored days later in the welcome the public gave the Princess Royal and the Countess of Wessex at the Great Yorkshire Show.

And it’s been increasingly like that not only at home, but abroad as well this past year. William and Kate’s tour of Australia was an unqualified success, the presence of George only adding to its lustre.

His birth coincided with the culmination of a long – and sometimes bumpy – journey of readjustment and reappraisal within the Royal Family as it came to grips with shaping the monarchy for the 21st century.

The beginnings of that journey can be traced back to the low point of the mid-1990s and the collapse of Charles and Diana’s marriage. The hostility towards the Royal Family amongst some sections of the public following Diana’s death in 1997 demanded that the Windsors took a long, hard look at themselves.

The cheering crowds in Harrogate – and come to that, Australia – were conclusive evidence that lessons have been learned within the family and its younger members have mapped out the most promising of ways forward.

Yet it has been a long time in coming. It is only relatively recently that the Queen has scaled down her workload, giving more responsibility for engagements to Charles and William, suggesting that the process of modernising the way the Royal Family operates has not been easy, and the judgement over when the time was right to start preparing for the future has been very carefully weighed.

The stroke of luck that the Royal Family needed after Diana’s death was a long time in coming, too. It had to wait until the arrival of the former Kate Middleton in William’s life.

More grounded than Diana, more intelligent and with a much more supportive family than the lost princess ever enjoyed, she has been the catalyst for a new beginning.

Kate has been subjected to a similar degree of attention as Diana, and the assurance with which it has been handled is a mark of how much the Windsors have learned.

The quiet transformation of the Royal Family’s approach to the realities of unrelenting fascination with the monarchy was apparent at the time of George’s birth. The missteps of the Diana years, the awkward and sometimes unintentionally revealing public appearances, seemed an age away.

Instead, the clamour was handled deftly, access to and privacy for the Royal couple and their baby being held in balance by a slick and confident media operation.

Confidence has also been a key factor in the success of William and Kate’s public appearances. Both are confident enough to allow their natural ebullience to show, as demonstrated at Le Grand Départ, when their reactions to the sprint finish mirrored those of everybody else in the crowds.

That unforced, natural quality has endeared them to the public, as has their obvious pride in George, which mirrors the way countless other new parents feel. They were the most appealing of couples before his birth, but the arrival of George has given them a glow of happiness that only makes them more so.

A new generation of Royals has taken the stage, and so has a new generation of royalists.