Given the deluge of royal news over the last 18 months, the fact that the Waleses relocated from Apartment 1A in Kensington Palace to the grounds of Windsor Great Park has largely faded into the background, but the couple’s Christmas card for 2023 is a reminder that–for William and Kate, George, Charlotte and Louis–Berkshire is now home base. After years of releasing photographs of themselves together at Norfolk’s Anmer Hall (with the occasional holiday snap thrown in), photographer Josh Shinner was dispatched to Windsor to capture this year’s picture, which sees the Cambridges posing together against a simple backdrop, dressed in coordinated white shirts and denim.
More than ever, the message is one of normalcy, the Waleses’ positioning that of a down-to-earth couple whose primary concern is giving their children as stable and healthy an upbringing as possible. They have deliberately chosen to live in the four-bedroomed Adelaide Cottage in lieu of Windsor Castle proper; they no longer have a live-in nanny in the form of Maria Teresa Turrion Borrallo (although she does still work for them); and their kids are enrolled at the nearby Lambrook School in Ascot, with William and Kate doing the school run themselves each morning. If, as is widely expected, George follows in his father’s footsteps and enrols as a boarder at Eton in a few years, the family’s move also means they’re now just 15 minutes from campus–readily available if and when the Prince should need them–while the Middletons are less than an hour away at Bucklebury Manor, poised to take on any necessary grandparent duties.
This won’t be the last we’ll see of the Waleses this Christmas, of course. The fivesome arrived in tandem for a carolling service at Westminster Abbey on 8 December, dressed in the red, white and blue of the Union Jack. After posting letters to Father Christmas, the children joined their parents inside the church for the third “Together at Christmas” concert, which will air in full on Christmas Eve in the UK. And on Christmas Day proper? Expect William, Kate, George, Charlotte and Louis to be front and centre during the Windsors’ annual walk to church on the Sandringham estate.
This article first appeared on Vogue.co.uk
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