It rained in Windsor on Tuesday morning. Prince George, 13, walked through the gates of Eton College between his parents, was shaken by the hand by headmaster Simon Henderson and by the provost, Sir Nicholas Coleridge, and then went to find his room.
His father did the same thing in September 1995, at the same age, in front of the same building. William arrived that day flanked by Diana and by the then Prince Charles, whose marriage had ended the year before and whose divorce would be finalised within months. Eton, for William, was partly an escape. George arrives under no such cloud, which may be the most significant difference between the two photographs.
What George is walking into is less a school than a machine for producing British power. Founded in 1440 by Henry VI as a charity for 70 poor scholars, Eton has since turned out 20 prime ministers. It costs around 88,000 dollars a year. Its boys wear black tailcoats and white ties, call their teachers beaks and their lessons divs, and are tested in their first weeks on the school's colours, a ritual quiz on which house wears what. William, who was there from 1995 to 2000, will have briefed his son on all of it.
He was also the one who broke the pattern. Charles was sent to Gordonstoun on the north coast of Scotland, the spartan school his own father had attended, and was miserable there. William was the first heir to the throne to go to Eton instead. Harry followed in 1998. George, second in line, now makes it three.
He leaves behind Lambrook School near Windsor, where his sister Charlotte and brother Louis remain. Eton is a boarding school. As of Tuesday, for the first time, he does not live with them.
