Kensington Palace marked Prince George’s 13th birthday on Wednesday with a new video and a fresh photograph, giving the public a more grown-up view of the elder son of the Prince and Princess of Wales as he moves into his teenage years.
The video showed George smiling, waving at the camera in sunglasses, playing cricket on the beach and climbing rocks. It was shot in Cornwall at Easter, while the photograph was taken last month at Kensington Palace straight after the Trooping the Colour ceremony by Matt Porteous. In the picture, George stood with his hands in his pockets in an open-necked white shirt and dark suit.
The release fits the royal family’s habit of sharing updated images for major milestones, but this one carries a sharper sense of change. The new portrait looks more formal than last year’s, when George was shown in Norfolk in a rural setting wearing a countryside-style gilet and a friendship bracelet. The shift is small in terms of wardrobe, but obvious in what it signals: a child being presented as a teenager, not just a schoolboy.
That timing matters because George is getting ready to start secondary school in September and is expected to follow Prince William’s path to Eton College. Entry there usually begins at 13, and he will become a boarder at one of Eton’s 25 boarding houses, each of which has about 55 pupils. He had previously studied at Lambrook School in Berkshire alongside Charlotte and Louis, and he was seen with King Charles and other senior royals at the Trooping the Colour parade in London in June.
The birthday post does not say why the video was filmed in Cornwall at Easter rather than on the day itself, but the structure of the release answers part of the question. The moving images capture George in a relaxed setting, while the portrait presents him in a more formal way, and together they draw a line between the family record and the public role that is coming into view. The next step is already clear: September will bring a new school, and with it a more defined stage in front of the public.
