Time flies when you're sitting V-VIP at Taylor Swift concerts, but the royal kids are growing up fast—and Prince William and Kate Middleton already have pretty specific plans for what their futures hold. Or, erm, what they don't. It turns out, the royal couple doesn’t want their children to be “working royals,” partly because of the lifelong tension between Prince Harry and Prince William.

According to an insider the Daily Beast describes as a “former Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace staffer who keeps in contact with former colleagues,” “The working assumption is that the younger two children will get on and do their own thing. They will be encouraged to not become working royals.”

The former staffer notes that Prince George won't have the option not to work due to being the main heir, but says there's been a “deliberate strategy to let Charlotte and Louis choose their own destiny.”

trooping the colour 2024
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Meanwhile, a family friend says Prince William and Prince Harry's falling out has had a huge impact on how the Waleses are approaching things with their kids.

“It is no secret that William has been devastated by the destruction of his relationship with Harry,” the friend explains. “Although he absolutely puts the blame on Meghan and Harry, he does of course also appreciate that the whole system, where one of your kids is less important than the other due to an accident of birth, had a massive part to play in what happened and how it happened.”

Apparently, William doesn’t want to put his kids “through a human mincer that is going to cause everyone misery,” and he and Kate “want to find a practical solution to the ‘spare’ problem that has bedeviled the family for generations.”

Another friend notes that the Prince and Princess of Wales don't “want history to repeat itself” when it comes to toxic heir and spare dynamics, so...here's to hoping their plan to let Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis choose their own destiny works out!