Prince William's life in pictures: The boy who was born to be King
From the moment he was born on June 21, 1982, Prince William Arthur Philip Louis was destined to be king.
The eldest son of then-Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, and Diana, Princess of Wales, would one day become King of England and head of the Commonwealth; and now that his father is King, the start of William's reign is that much closer.
Keep reading for a look back at William's life as the boy who was born to be King.
From the moment his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, died on September 8, 2022, Prince William's life changed forever.
In a heartbeat, he went from one of many senior working royals to heir apparent to the monarch, first in line to the British throne.
It's a title he's been preparing for since the day he was born, more than four decades earlier.
Born at St Mary's Hospital in London less than 11 months after his parents' wedding, William's arrival was met with much celebration.
"He has the good fortune not to look like me," Charles joked of his firstborn.
The new prince was introduced to the world the very next day outside the hospital, but it was a week later before Buckingham Palace revealed his name to the world.
His christening took place in the Music Room of Buckingham Palace on August 4 that year, which happened to be the 82nd birthday of his great-grandmother, the Queen Mother.
Diana and Charles doted on their baby son and the princess even broke from royal tradition just for his sake before he turned one.
William famously joined his mother and father on a royal tour of Australia when he was just nine months old, reportedly because his mother refused to leave him behind in England.
No royal mother had ever brought such a young child on tour before, breaking decades of royal tradition.
The rest of William's early childhood was divided between an apartment in Kensington Palace, his parent's country home, Highgrove House in Gloucestershire, and international holidays.
But by the time William's brother Harry arrived on September 15, 1984, his parents' marriage was beginning to fall apart.
Charles and Diana separated in 1992 and finalised their divorce in 1996, and Diana went to great lengths to protect her sons from the media frenzy that surrounded their family.
The royal family insisted he be allowed to live as normal a life as possible, with the press rewarded with occasional and carefully managed photo opportunities, usually to mark family holidays or major milestones such as the first day of school.
Diana was especially keen for William to have a normal childhood and exposed him to 'real life' experiences.
"When I was younger, Harry and I, we were at boarding school. And my mother used to play all sorts of songs to kind of while away the anxiety of going back to school," William said of his mother in 2021.
"Sitting in the backseat, singing away, it felt like a real family moment. And my mother, she'd be driving along, singing at the top of her voice."
But as he got older, the reality of Prince William's place in the monarchy became clearer to him.
His grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, was a constant presence in his life and was front and centre with her heir apparent, William's father Charles, at many of William's milestones, like his 1997 Confirmation at Windsor Castle (pictured).
From a young age, William knew that his father would one day succeed the Queen, and William himself would go on to succeed Charles as Britain's King.
Tragically, his mother Diana would never live to see her son crowned.
The Princess of Wales was killed in a car accident in Paris in 1997, when William was just 15.
The royal family tried to protect William and Harry from the media fallout, but there was only so much they could do for the grieving princes.
"At the time, you know, my grandmother wanted to protect her two grandsons, and my father as well," William has since said.
"When Diana died, that is pretty much the only time in the Queen's entire reign that she chose family over duty," explained 9Honey's royal columnist Victoria Arbiter in The Windsors podcast.
Despite being only 15 and 12 when their mother died, William and Harry were required to walk in her funeral and supposedly instructed not to cry.
Charles supposedly told a sobbing Harry, "You don't cry, you walk", while convincing the boys to appear at their mother's public funeral.
In the end, their grandfather Prince Philip reportedly persuaded them to appear by promising to walk beside them.
"If I walk, will you walk with me?" he asked them, according to journalist Tina Brown.
They agreed, and as they walked to Westminster Abbey, Philip quietly spoke to them about each of the historic London landmarks they passed to "keep [them] from breaking down."
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