The royal family is built on centuries of tried-and-true tradition, but one tradition that the Prince and Princess of Wales want to kibosh? The pervasive “heir and spare” dynamic, so integrated into their lives that Prince Harry named his memoir Spare to reflect the role he was written to play. If William and Catherine have a say, that dynamic ends in this generation of royals, and Catherine, The Daily Mail reports, is encouraging a healthy relationship between Prince George (the heir to the throne and her eldest child) and his younger siblings Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, believing it will help take some pressure off of him when he is King.
Catherine herself is the eldest of three—she has a younger sister, Pippa, and a younger brother, James—and the three Middleton kids seem to have a healthy sibling dynamic. Catherine wants the same for her trio, desperate for there not to be a Spare volume two someday written by Charlotte or Louis. Of the sibling relationship between the Wales three—specifically George and Charlotte—royal expert Christopher Andersen said it is “much healthier than it would normally be in the royal family.”
Of the kids, Andersen said “Prince George has all the pressure. He has these two siblings who can help him—who can ease some of the pressure and share some of the burden.” William and Catherine, Andersen said, don’t at all want Charlotte and Louis to feel “sidelined,” and are extremely conscious of how Harry was “very hurt” being brought up in William’s shadow “and are conscious that Charlotte and Louis don’t feel the same,” The Daily Mail reports.
“They [Charlotte and Louis] don’t want to feel invisible in his shadow,” Andersen said.
While William and Catherine are concerned about the history of the “spare” repeating itself—think not just Harry, but as far back as Princess Margaret, Her late Majesty’s younger sister—Harry is, as well, telling The Telegraph earlier this year that he is concerned for the “spares” that come behind him (for those who don’t know, the “spare” is the younger sibling of the heir to the throne, with the name suggesting that, God forbid something should happen to the heir, the majority of the purpose of the spare’s birth is to be a fill in for their older sibling). He told The Telegraph that he hopes his efforts in speaking of his own pain will help stop history from repeating itself in the next generation: “Though William and I have talked about it once or twice, and he has made it very clear to me that his kids are not my responsibility, I still feel a responsibility,” Harry said. “Out of those three children, at least one will end up like me, the spare. And that hurts. That worries me.”
Harry also spoke of his own children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, saying he wouldn’t allow Archie to go through the same “traumatic” experience as he and William did.
