Prince George Being a Playground Boss Goes Viral

Prince George telling his school friends "you better not mess with me" because Prince William will be king has gone viral on TikTok.

Royal author Katie Nicholl revealed the young royal's playground taunt in her 2022 book The New Royals, which described it as a "killer line."

Russell Myers, royal editor of U.K. newspaper The Mirror, was asked about the passage during an appearance on Australia's Today show, and a clip of his response has gone newly viral on TikTok.

Prince George at Lambrook School
Main picture: Prince George smiles at Sandringham Church, Norfolk, England, on December 25, 2023; and, inset, walks with his family during a September 2022 settling-in day at Lambrook School, in Berkshire, England, where he is... Samir Hussein/WireImage

"This is actually hilarious because apparently in a new book, Prince George has been telling his classmates, 'Listen, you better not mess with me or my dad because he's going to be the king,'" Myers said.

"I mean it is literally the best thought of 'my dad is bigger than your dad,' isn't it? So, little cheeky George, maybe he's got a bit of his uncle Prince Harry's fighting spirit in him."

A clip of the moment was liked more than 11,000 times and viewed over 108,000 times after it was posted alongside a series of picture of the young royal, who turns 11 on July 22.

The anecdote is based on a line from Nicholl's book that reads: "George understands he will one day be king and as a little boy, sparred with friends at school, outdoing his peers with the killer line: 'My dad will be king so you better watch out.'

"They are raising their children, particularly Prince George, with an awareness of who he is and the role he will inherit, but they are keen not to weigh them down with a sense of duty," Nicholl added.

George goes to Lambrook, a coeducational school in Berkshire, where fees are £24,714 a year [around $31,500], for pupils in the middle and upper school.

George's siblings, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, also attend the institution, which is a stone's throw from their Adelaide Cottage home, within the grounds of Windsor Castle.

Lambrook also has boarding school places at a cost of £1,895 [$2,417] per week; however, the royal trio are day pupils, not boarders.

William and Kate will have a choice to make in the next couple of years about which school to send George to for the next stage of his education.

The Prince of Wales and Prince Harry both went to English boarding school Eton, though the younger brother made it clear in his memoir that he felt out of his depth.

"Heaven for brilliant boys, it could thus only be purgatory for one very unbrilliant boy," Harry wrote. "The situation became undeniably obvious during my very first French lesson. I was astounded to hear the teacher conducting the entire class in rapid, nonstop French. He assumed, for some reason, that we were all fluent.

"Once or twice I'd confess to a teacher or fellow student that I wasn't merely in the wrong class but in the wrong location," Harry continued. "I was in way, way over my head.

"They'd always say the same thing: 'Don't worry, you'll be all right.' And don't forget you always have your brother here! But I wasn't the one forgetting. Willy told me to pretend I didn't know him."

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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About the writer


Jack Royston is Newsweek's Chief Royal Correspondent based in London, U.K. He reports on the British royal family—including King Charles ... Read more

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