A well trodden path
Prince George will begin his studies at Eton College on 8 September 2026. He will be thirteen. The move was widely anticipated. It places the young prince on a path walked by both his father, the Prince of Wales, and his uncle, Prince Harry. For the second in line to the throne, it represents a return to a specific Windsor tradition, one established only in the previous generation but now seemingly entrenched for the next. It is what many expected. The choice feels inevitable.
This decision puts an end to years of public discussion about the prince’s education. Observers had suggested another option was possible. A different route. That route would have led to Marlborough College, the £47,000 a year coeducational school in Wiltshire attended by his mother, the Princess of Wales. Selecting Marlborough would have been a powerful signal, representing a break with the rigid formality of recent royal history and a clear victory for the Middleton family’s more modern, mixed sex approach to schooling. It would have been a different kind of future.
That future will not materialise. The family has chosen Eton. They have chosen continuity. In doing so, the Prince and Princess of Wales have made a clear statement about the upbringing they envision for a king. The choice firmly aligns Prince George’s school career with that of his father, embedding him within the same institution that moulded Prince William’s worldview and provided him with a tight circle of lifelong friends. It is a Windsor choice, not a Middleton one.
This is not, however, a return to ancient royal custom. It is the continuation of a very modern one. The late Queen was educated privately by tutors at Buckingham Palace. Her son, King Charles III, was sent to the famously spartan Gordonstoun in Scotland. It was Prince William who became the first future monarch to attend Eton, a decision that broke with centuries of precedent. Now his own son follows. The path is set.
What is a £50,000 a year education?
Eton College received its foundation charter from King Henry VI in 1440. It was a religious act. And a royal one. The school’s original purpose was to educate seventy poor scholars, who would then proceed to King’s College in Cambridge, which the same monarch founded one year later. That mission is a memory. The school's modern identity is defined by exclusivity and immense cost, with annual fees for its 1,350 pupils now approaching £50,000. This sum buys entry into an institution that has stood for nearly six hundred years opposite Windsor Castle, a constant physical reminder of its deep and enduring connections to the crown. It is an engine of the state.
Life inside the college walls is governed by centuries of accumulated tradition. The uniform is its most visible sign. All boys are required to wear a uniform based on the formal morning dress of a previous era, consisting of a black tailcoat, a matching waistcoat and dark pinstriped trousers. A stiff, detachable white collar completes the look. This is their daily reality. It is not for special occasions. The school also maintains its own arcane vocabulary, a private language that separates its community from the outside world and reinforces a shared identity among the pupils. Masters are not called masters or teachers. They are known as ‘beaks’. Lessons are ‘divs’. This internal lexicon, combined with unique sports like the Eton Wall Game, creates an intensely self contained environment designed to foster fierce loyalty and a sense of profound separateness.
The school sees its purpose as the formation of leaders. It has been remarkably successful. Its list of former pupils includes twenty British prime ministers, alongside generations of men who have run the army, the church and the City of London. The academic pressure is severe. Results are paramount. Pupils are pushed relentlessly towards Oxbridge and other elite universities before moving into positions of influence. This production line of power is not restricted to politics or finance. It also shapes the country’s cultural life. Old Etonians include the actors Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie and Eddie Redmayne, artists whose work often trades on a particular vision of English identity forged at schools just like this one. For its pupils, Eton provides a network that lasts a lifetime. It is a formidable advantage.
A Windsor choice, not a Middleton one
The choice was not automatic. It represented a fork in the road for the education of a future king, a decision between two very different models of British elite schooling. One was the Windsor way. The other was the Middleton way. Eton is the default setting for heirs to the throne, the school attended by both the Prince of Wales and his brother, the Duke of Sussex. It is an institution designed to produce rulers. It is all male. Its purpose is the preservation of a certain kind of power and the formation of men who are comfortable wielding it, a single sex environment where the pressures of royalty can be managed behind high walls and ancient protocols.
The alternative was Marlborough College. This was the path of his mother. Catherine, Princess of Wales, attended the Wiltshire school in the 1990s, and it represents a different philosophy entirely. Marlborough is co educational. Boys and girls learn together. The school is younger than Eton, founded in the mid nineteenth century, and while expensive and exclusive, it does not carry the same heavy weight of constitutional history or the same reputation for forging prime ministers. Its ethos is often described as more liberal, perhaps more rounded, less of an academic pressure cooker focused solely on funnelling pupils into the ancient universities and the corridors of power.
The decision to send George to Eton is therefore a statement. It is a conscious rejection of the Marlborough model. It signals a victory for the traditional, patrilineal Windsor approach over the more modern, meritocratic (within its own gilded limits) background of the Middletons. The Princess of Wales has been a powerful force for modernising the public face of the monarchy. She has championed a more emotionally open and accessible style. This choice is not that. It is a reversion to type. It is a doubling down on the formula that has produced kings and their courtiers for centuries, an explicit choice for a single sex, establishment upbringing that separates a future monarch from the vast majority of his subjects from the age of thirteen. The Middleton way was an option. It was not taken.
The problem of perception
This creates a problem of perception. A very expensive problem. The fees for Eton are around £50,000 a year. That figure is far beyond the reach of almost every family in the United Kingdom, a sum that crystallises the immense privilege separating the royal family from the public it is supposed to serve. It is a difficult number to explain away. It is a hard fact. For years the Prince and Princess of Wales have worked carefully to build an image of a more accessible, more modern and more relatable monarchy, one that understood the pressures of normal life. This decision does not support that image. It directly contradicts it.
The choice appears to be a retreat into an old world of inherited status precisely when many people are experiencing significant financial hardship. It raises questions about the judgement of a couple who have placed such a high value on being seen as in touch. The projection of empathy becomes harder when your heir is educated at a cost that would be life changing for most. It is an act of separation. It builds a wall. The action suggests that, when a choice had to be made between relatability and tradition, the Waleses chose tradition.
The gain from this is institutional. The monarchy gets a future king formed by the same institution that shaped his father, his uncle and generations of the ruling class. For those inside the system, for the establishment that surrounds the crown, this provides a sense of continuity and predictability. They know what an Eton education produces. They can be confident in the result. The monarchy shores up its own foundations, signalling that its core values have not changed. The price of that stability is a loss of connection. The decision makes the Windsors less like the people they reign over. It makes them more remote. It makes them different.
How Eton will shape a king
Eton shapes its students. It will shape a king. The school provided the Prince of Wales with a small, fiercely loyal group of friends who remain his closest confidantes decades later, men who understand the pressures of his position because they witnessed them at close quarters. He learned a model of privacy there. A very deep privacy. That experience, of building a protective wall of trusted peers from a shared, privileged background, is one the Waleses clearly value for their own son. This is not simply an education. It is an apprenticeship in managing a public life by creating a very private one, surrounded by people formed in the same crucible of tradition and expectation. It is a proven method. It works.
Prince George’s experience will be unique. He carries a weight his father did not have at the same age. He is a direct heir, second in line to the throne from his first day in the school's tailcoats. Every friendship he forms, every sporting achievement, every minor teenage rebellion will be viewed through the lens of his destiny as the future King George VII. Nothing is casual. This is a level of pressure that even his uncle, Prince Harry, never experienced at the school, as Harry was always the spare, not the heir apparent. The boy walks into a history that is already written for him. His classmates will know it. He will know it.
The response to this pressure will be control. A wall of silence. The palace will request a media blackout to protect Prince George’s school years from intrusion. That is almost certain. This follows the successful model used for his father’s time at Eton and at the University of St Andrews, an agreement where the press stayed away in exchange for staged, formal access on rare occasions. It is an attempt to manufacture a normal childhood in the most abnormal of circumstances. The school will become a fortress. The goal is to give him five years of relative peace before a lifetime of public duty begins. For the future king, privacy is not a preference. It is a necessary condition for survival.
The view from Europe
The British choice looks different in Europe. It looks singular. While Prince George prepares for Eton’s tailcoats and traditions, other heirs are taking a very different path, one that self consciously embraces either internationalism or the state sector. The decision is not universal. Far from it. This places the Windsors on a divergent trajectory from their continental counterparts, a trajectory that appears to be a deliberate reaffirmation of a uniquely British model of royal upbringing. The contrast is stark.
In Spain, the heir apparent chose Wales. Princess Leonor, the Princess of Asturias, attended UWC Atlantic College. The school is a former twelfth century castle in the Vale of Glamorgan, but its ethos is relentlessly forward looking and global. It is co educational. Its students come from across the world, many on scholarships, brought together by a mission to foster international understanding. This was an education for a globalised century, not one rooted in the national establishment of the fifteenth century. It was a choice for diversity. It was a statement. The Spanish monarchy selected an environment designed to expose its future head of state to a vast range of cultures, languages and perspectives.
The Dutch model is more radical still. Catharina Amalia, the Princess of Orange, attended a state secondary school. She went to the Christelijk Gymnasium Sorghvliet in The Hague. There were no fees. Her classmates were not selected by wealth or lineage. This was not an apprenticeship in ruling from a distance. It was an exercise in living alongside fellow citizens. The imagery of the heir to the Dutch throne cycling to school became a powerful symbol of a monarchy aiming for normality and integration, not gilded separation. It presented a vision of royalty embedded within the society it serves, an experience fundamentally at odds with the exclusive, fee paying world of Eton College.
Set against these European examples, the decision to send Prince George to Eton is revealed as a deeply conservative one. It is a choice for continuity. It is a vote for tradition. The path taken by the Spanish and Dutch royals is a conscious attempt to modernise the image and substance of their monarchies, aligning them with more egalitarian and internationalist values. The Waleses have chosen the opposite. They have opted for an institution that reinforces class, insulates its pupils and has moulded the British ruling elite for centuries. This is not an accident. It is a deliberate choice to shape a king in a very specific, very traditional, and increasingly unusual way. The message is clear. Britain is different.
Sources. BBC News UK: Prince George set for first day at Eton College. Evening Standard: Prince George to begin next phase of school career at Eton College.
Analysis. Drafted with AI assistance from the sources listed above and reviewed by an editor before publication. Jnews links to the organisations it writes about.
