Being raised a royal isn’t as glamorous as you’d think . Just look to the childhood of Prince Charles .
While he had unique experiences and many doors open to him, his upbringing was also been marked by loneliness, followed by being forced into a loveless marriage.
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Thankfully, he was able to break the mold of royal parenting. By doing so, his sons, Prince Harry and Prince William , carried on the tradition.
Here, come see how fatherhood has changed in the royal family throughout the years.
Prince Charles’s upbringing was different from the very start.
Around the time of his birth in 1948, his mother, Queen Elizabeth, had to stop breastfeeding him since she came down with the measles, according to Vanity Fair .
Four years later, following the death of her father, she became Queen.
This understandably made the Queen and Prince Philip occupied with royal duties.
While Charles wasn’t entirely starved of affection from his late father or mother, he was raised mainly by nannies and staff .
This was documented in author Jonathan Dimbleby’s book, Prince of Wales: A Biography .
He wrote that royal staff were the ones who played with a young Prince Charles and watched him take his first steps.
That’s not to say that Charles never saw his parents, though.
Prince Philip also taught his son how to fish and hunt, although their relationship was often strained.
This stemmed from Philip’s fear that his son was too “soft.” As a result, he took on a “forceful” personality to both Charles and his daughter, Princess Anne.
Sadly, it wasn’t just his father that allegedly bullied him. He was also ridiculed at school for his “protruding ears” and larger size.
Although it’s been well-documented that Charles was forced into a loveless marriage with the late Princess Diana, he was a present father to Prince Harry and Prince William.
Prince Charles, for instance, was one of the first male royals to be present for their child’s birth.
He also said that he “mucked around with them a great deal,” as they were growing up.
“As they get older, the more things perhaps they, being boys, can do with their father. That’s obviously more and more enjoyable,” he said in the 1994 documentary, Charles: The Private Man, the Public Role .
When Princess Diana died in 1997, Prince Charles took on the role of a single father.
He taught his sons a great deal throughout the years — all things that came in handy when Prince William and Prince Harry had their own children.
Here’s an image of Prince William carrying newborn Prince George in a car seat.
William’s wife, Kate Middleton, said on a podcast that her husband practiced how to use a baby seat before his big televised moment of doing so.
When they welcomed their first daughter, Prince William took fatherhood a step further.
This is too adorable: the royal admitted to looking up videos of how to properly do Prince Charlotte’s hair.
“Never try to do a ponytail! It’s a nightmare!” he joked with a fellow dad while visiting Blackpool in 2019. It’s evident from other family photos that William is a hands-on parent.
Prince Harry has taken on a similar approach with his son, Archie, that he shares with wife, Meghan Markle.
The couple also has a baby girl on the way .
When he and Meghan introduced baby Archie to the world, they broke tradition by having Harry hold the baby.
Finally, Harry revealed on the *Armchair Expert* podcast with Dax Shepard that he hopes to “break the cycle” of pain and suffering in his family.
By stepping down from his royal duties and moving his family to America for their safety and well-being, we’d say that he’s accomplishing just that.
