William of Wales and Henry of Wales, Princes

▪ 2008

Prince William Arthur Philip Louis and Prince Henry Charles Albert David, respectively 

born June 21, 1982, London, Eng.

and

born Sept. 15, 1984, London, Eng.

 On Aug. 31, 2007, British Princes William and Harry (as the younger brother, Henry, was universally known) organized a memorial service to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the death of their mother, Diana, princess of Wales, in a car crash in Paris. At Diana's funeral in 1997, one of the more moving sights had been that of her two sons—then aged 15 and almost 13—walking behind the gun carriage holding her coffin. Ten years later the brothers were adults who attracted attention in their own right—in William's case, because he was the elder son of the heir to the throne, Charles, prince of Wales, and hence a future monarch, and in Harry's because his burgeoning military career raised the question of whether he would serve with other British troops in the Iraqi war zone.

      William and Harrywere both born at St. Mary's Hospital in London (unlike their father, Prince Charles, who was born at Buckingham Palace). The two boys attended the same sequence of private nurseries and schools, ending up at Eton College. After Eton, both boys engaged in “gap year” projects—William's included stints with the British army in Belize and as an aid worker in Chile; Harry's included working on a cattle station in Australia and in an orphanage in Lesotho. William then attended St. Andrews University in Fife, Scot., graduating (2005) with a degree in geography. Harry did not go to university but instead entered (May 2005) Sandhurst, Britain's leading military academy for training army officers; he was commissioned an officer in April 2006. William followed his younger brother to Sandhurst in 2006, and it was announced in 2007 that he would go on attachment in 2008 to the Royal Air Force and then to the Royal Navy, so that (in keeping with his father's training) the future king could gain experience in all three major branches of the armed services.

      As he grew into adulthood, William proved almost as popular with the public as his mother and rather more popular than his father; opinion polls showed that many Britons would prefer that the crown pass directly to him following the reign of his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, rather than to Prince Charles. Much media attention, therefore, centred on Kate Middleton, the nonaristocratic young woman whom William had met in 2003 at university and who (except for a brief, highly publicized break in the spring of 2007) remained his girlfriend four years later.

      As the younger brother, Harry usually made the headlines only when he misbehaved and/or had too much to drink. He was the subject of intense criticism in January 2005 when he attended a fancy-dress party wearing a Nazi uniform with a swastika arm band; he apologized for what he conceded was a serious error of judgment. In February 2007 it was announced that Harry's army regiment would be deployed to Iraq. On advice from the armed services, however, it was decided that neither William nor Harry would serve with Britain's forces in Iraq: not to shield members of the royal family from danger but because it was felt that they would become specific targets of attack and so put their fellow soldiers at excessive risk.

Peter Kellner

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