William, Prince of Wales
1982 – · Generation XXXIX · Prince of Wales · House of Windsor
William, Prince of Wales, is the elder son of King Charles III and Diana, Princess of Wales, and has been heir to the British throne since his father’s accession in September 2022. He was born at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, London, on 21 June 1982 and christened William Arthur Philip Louis on 4 August that year by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, in the Music Room at Buckingham Palace. His brother, Harry, was born in September 1984.
He went to Wetherby School in London from 1987, to Ludgrove School in Berkshire from 1990 and to Eton College from 1995. His parents divorced in 1996, and in August 1997 his mother was killed in a car crash when he was fifteen. At her funeral William and Harry walked behind the cortège with their father, their grandfather Prince Philip and their uncle Charles, Earl Spencer. After leaving Eton in 2000 he took a gap year that included army exercises with the Welsh Guards in Belize, volunteering with Raleigh International in Chile and work on a British dairy farm. In 2001 he began at the University of St Andrews, switched from history of art to geography, and graduated in 2005 with an upper second-class MA, having written his dissertation on the coral reefs of Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean.
William entered the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in January 2006 and was commissioned that December into the Blues and Royals of the Household Cavalry. He then trained as a search and rescue helicopter pilot with the Royal Air Force, joining 22 Squadron at RAF Valley on Anglesey in September 2010. Over three years there he flew 156 rescue operations, served a routine deployment to the Falkland Islands and qualified as an operational captain. He left the armed forces in 2013 after more than seven years of service, and from March 2015 to July 2017 flew as a pilot for the East Anglian Air Ambulance.
On 29 April 2011 he married Catherine Middleton, whom he had met at St Andrews, at Westminster Abbey. On the wedding day the Queen made him Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus. The couple have three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, born in 2013, 2015 and 2018. The Queen had already appointed William a Knight of the Garter in 2008, and in 2012 she added the Order of the Thistle.
When Elizabeth II died on 8 September 2022, William became Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay on his father’s accession. The next day, in his first address as king, Charles III named him Prince of Wales, a title Charles himself had held since 1958. Kensington Palace indicated that a repeat of Charles’s 1969 investiture at Caernarfon was not on the table. As Duke of Cornwall William also took charge of the Duchy of Cornwall, the estate set up in 1337 to provide an income for the heir to the throne.
Much of his public work runs through the Royal Foundation, which he shares with the Princess of Wales. With the foundation he set up United for Wildlife to fight the illegal wildlife trade, and with Catherine and Harry led Heads Together, a campaign launched in 2016 to reduce the stigma around mental health. In October 2020 he and Sir David Attenborough launched the Earthshot Prize, which is to award £50 million over a decade for solutions to environmental problems, with ceremonies held in London, Boston and Singapore in its first three years. In June 2023 he launched Homewards, a five-year programme that aims to show homelessness can be ended in six places across the United Kingdom. His first patronage, taken up in 2005, was the youth homelessness charity Centrepoint. He became president of the Football Association in 2006 and of BAFTA in 2010.
Place in the family
- William, Prince of Wales is a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II.
- William, Prince of Wales is the elder of 2 children of King Charles III and Diana, Princess of Wales recorded in this archive.
Images
- The infant William with his parents on the lawn of Government House, Auckland, during their 1983 tour of New Zealand (Robert John Tucker (Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections), CC BY 4.0)
- An RAF Sea King flown by the newly qualified search and rescue pilot Prince William during an exercise with the RNLI, August 2010 (Senior Aircraftwoman Faye Storer, Ministry of Defence, Open Government Licence v1.0)
- William and Catherine on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on their wedding day, 29 April 2011 (Dogbertio 14, CC BY-SA 3.0)
One of 53 people of House of Windsor (from 1917) in this archive. The present house — it renamed itself Windsor in 1917, setting aside the German title Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
Line of descent: Owen Tudor → Edmund Tudor → King Henry VII → Margaret Tudor → King James V of Scotland → Mary Queen of Scots → King James I → Elizabeth Stuart → Sophia of Hanover → King George I → King George II → Frederick Prince of Wales → King George III → Edward Duke of Kent → Queen Victoria → King Edward VII → King George V → King George VI → Queen Elizabeth II → King Charles III → William, Prince of Wales.
Parents
- King Charles III (1948 – )
- Diana, Princess of Wales (1961 – 1997)
Siblings
- Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex (1984 – )
Partners
- Married Catherine, Princess of Wales (1982 – ) in 2011 — 3 children together
Children
- Prince George of Wales (2013 – )
- Princess Charlotte of Wales (2015 – )
- Prince Louis of Wales (2018 – )
Life
- 1982 — Born
- 2011 — Married Catherine, Princess of Wales
Sources
- William, Prince of Wales · Wikipedia
- The Prince of Wales · The Royal Family (royal.uk)
- William and Kate named Prince and Princess of Wales by the King · BBC News
- Prince William to swap armed forces for royal and charity duties · BBC News
- Prince William and Sir David Attenborough join forces on ‘Earthshot’ prize · BBC News