When it comes to the way they parent their children, Prince William and Kate Middleton have always done things the way they wanted — even if it wasn’t necessarily the way that royal protocol would have them do it. As one royal expert pointed out, despite all of the royal traditions that Will and Kate did follow when the time came for Prince George’s christening, there was one big way they elected to break protocol instead.
As The Mirror reported this week, in author Valentine Low’s book, Courtiers: Intrigue, Ambition, and the Power Players Behind the House of Windsor, he looked back on the day that baby Prince George was christened in the church. Noting that Will and Kate did ensure that their firstborn would have a “very traditional royal christening,” they broke the rules when it came to choosing his godparents.
While, in the past, children born into the royal family were only given royal grandparents, for George, it was different: Only one of his godparents was an actual royal, William’s cousin, Zara Tindall.
For the remaining six godparents, Will and Kate chose close friends and family members, and they followed a similar pattern when choosing godparents for their two children who followed, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.
One of their most surprising choices in godparents for George was Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, who used to work as the couple’s private secretary.
“It is an absolute article of faith with just about every private secretary that I spoke to for this book that the relationship between adviser and principal is surely professional,” Valentine wrote in his book, via InStyle. “But Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton was their friend. He had been there at the very beginning, before they had their own household. He was their confidant, their mentor, their older brother.”
It’s hard to believe that George’s christening was 12 years ago this week — time really flies, and soon, we’ll see our oldest royal “baby” become a teenager. That will come with plenty of changes for the royal family, including a likely transfer to Eton College, the all boys boarding school that George is reportedly set to attend as he comes of age.
