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CNN Live Event/Special

Growing Up William; The Royals: A New Prince

Aired July 26, 2013 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANNOUNCER: The following is a CNN special report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is the baby, the new royal heir in the United Kingdom.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): The birth of a new prince, a day surrounded by so much excitement, so much joy.

HRH PRINCE WILLIAM OF WALES, UNITED KINGDOM, DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE: Very special.

BOLDUAN: So much hope for the future, so reminiscent of a moment three decades ago.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: May we see your son?

BOLDUAN: Lady Elizabeth Anson has known William since the day he was born. She's Queen Elizabeth's cousin.

(on camera): How would you describe William's childhood? What was it like?

LADY ELIZABETH ANSON, GREAT BRITAIN: I think that the early part of both Prince Harry and Prince William's childhood was magical and wonderful as anything.

KATIE NICHOLL, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: He was brought up in London, Kensington Palace, which is a private estate where he really could have quite a normal upbringing. He's able to ride on his bike around the courtyard and Diana took him and later Harry walking in Kensington Park gardens, really ordinary, ordinary things.

BOLDUAN: Yet each as a toddler, William was in training.

Author Christopher Andersen.

CHRISTOPHER ANDERSEN, AUTHOR: From the age of 5, William has these teas with granny, the queen, in which she is schooling him in what will be -- mean to be a king. Here is a woman who can sit there and say, I have got this little letter from Henry VIII that's the real thing, to give you an idea on some grasp on history.

BOLDUAN: And while his grandmother the queen was teaching him how to be king, his mother, a princess, was teaching him how to be a kid.

ANDERSEN: She had taken him and Harry to McDonald's and Disneyland and go-cart tracks and she makes them stand in line at the movies. She makes them say please and thank you. She gives them a sense of what it's like to function in the real world. I think that's very, very important here, because that's something Charles and the rest of the royal family never had.

BOLDUAN: Diana also taught her sons about hardship. Lana marks was her close friend and confidant.

LANA MARKS, FRIEND OF PRINCESS DIANA: Sometimes, when she would take them at night on the streets of London and it would be freezing cold and raining and they would see the homeless and then come home to the palace, to Kensington Palace, and have a lovely hot bath, she would explain to them that not everybody comes home to have a lovely hot bath.

BOLDUAN: But things at Kensington Palace were becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

NICHOLL: William came from a broken home, a marriage that broke down in the most awful way, because it was so public. You look at Diana and Charles acting out that separation and divorce through the papers. It was so unseemly. It was so unroyal.

ANDERSEN: William became sort of the fixer. He loved both of his parents, tried to -- he wanted everybody to be happy together.

BOLDUAN: That would prove impossible. Books and recordings would soon expose infidelities by Charles and Diana. And by the time William was 10, a separation was announced.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is announced from Buckingham Palace that, with regret, the prince and princess of Wales have decided to separate.

BOLDUAN (on camera): It's no street that Princess Diana and Prince Charles, it was a turbulent time, and William was very young, but very aware.

ANSON: Very, very aware.

BOLDUAN: Of the difficult relationship that his parents had.

ANSON: It's very difficult really to explain the sort of thing about being pulled in one direction and then pulled in the other. They certainly got a lot of love from both sides, from both parents independently. So it wasn't a childhood where they weren't loved. They were very much loved, but not with the mother and father together.

BOLDUAN (voice-over): By August 1996, the divorce was final. The entire scandal had played out on the world stage, though William found some protection as a student at Eaton. ANDERSEN: During his time at Eaton, he began dating some of the more beautiful titled ladies.

BOLDUAN: And he wasn't just popular with the prep school crowd.

MARKS: He got enormous fan mail from some of the most major, major Hollywood stars, and he was so tempted to reply and, of course, had to maintain his decorum. And of course that would not be a thing one would do as the future king of England.

ANDERSEN: He knew his position and how attractive he was in terms of his -- not only his appearance and all that, but the fact that he was who he was.

BOLDUAN: He was attractive, famous, and finally coming clear of his parents' scandal when the unthinkable happened.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BOLDUAN: On August 31, 1997, William was awakened by the news that his mother had died in a Paris car crash.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The French government has informed all of us that Princess Diana has died.

BOLDUAN: News that would change his life forever.

When we come back, William rebels against the House of Windsor.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BOLDUAN (voice-over): By 1997, Prince William had watched his parents' marriage dissolve in divorce and buried his mother after a fatal car crash. He was just 15 years old.

NICHOLL: To lose his mother at such an important stage in his life, he was an adolescent, a boy going into manhood, and not to have his mother there, the person who he could always count on, who he absolutely adored, I think is a loss that he will feel forever.

BOLDUAN: He would have to come of age without her. And as William returned to Eaton, the Windsors assumed greater control.

ANDERSEN: Eaton is located directly across from Windsor Castle. It's walking distance. So granny could keep her eye on William at Eaton, and she did. And so he had kind of a sense of responsibility, always has. And for William, you have got to remember he changed too with the death of his mother, changed dramatically.

BOLDUAN: Changed, says Andersen, without the kind, nurturing guidance Diana had always provided. ANDERSEN: She said, when he becomes king, I want William to lead from the heart, and not the head. She resented the royal family. She felt they were cold. She felt they out of touch with normal people.

And when she died, William and Harry were cut off from Diana's family and from her friends , and they were in a sense Windsor-ized. All of a sudden, he's fox hunting, he's playing polo, he's fishing at Balmoral.

BOLDUAN: William was steeped in the ways of the Windsors, but that would not keep him from small acts of rebellion, like enrolling at St. Andrews instead of attending Cambridge or Oxford. William quickly developed a close circle of friends, including Jules Knight.

JULES KNIGHT, FRIEND OF PRINCE WILLIAM: I think that he's a pretty shrewd judge of character and he's had to have those skills from very early on when he was at school. And I think, yes, he's good at working out if people are friends with him for the right reason.

BOLDUAN: Jules and William had several classes together.

KNIGHT: We used to have go to these lectures which were just like outside of town. And he would regularly sort of walk in late and come and sit next to me, looking for someone that he knew.

BOLDUAN: And someone equally disinterested in lectures on moral philosophy.

KNIGHT: We played quite a few games of naughts and crosses. That is pretty much my only recollection of the lectures.

BOLDUAN: But even close friends weren't enough in the beginning.

ANDERSEN: That first year was really tough for William at St. Andrews University. He felt completely isolated from his friends and family. He was constantly driving back down to London to hit the clubs with his friends or going to Edinburgh, He was so desperately unhappy that after the first year he was determined to leave. And it was really Kate who talked him into staying.

BOLDUAN: Kate Middleton, the friend who would ultimately become his wife.

ANDERSEN: They were able to have something akin to a normal courtship and life at St. Andrews. They were in this little bubble with their friends. So they were able to go to local restaurants, local bars.

KNIGHT: He made better friendships and relaxed into the friendship group that he was in and started to enjoy himself more socially.

BOLDUAN: He may have enjoyed himself socially a little too much.

ANDERSEN: He did like to drink. William would go swimming in castle moats. He would climb to the tops of fountains and dive in. That was the kind of craziness that was going on, but every time he talked to Kate, she's the person who really pulled him back from the brink.

(on camera): What was dating like early on?

NICHOLL: They were living with a few of their very close friends. And I suppose being in that environment was conducive for the friendship taking a different turn and becoming an intimate relationship, which is what happened.

BOLDUAN (voice-over): But William was having a hard time finding his way, and an even harder time committing.

ANDERSEN: For his 21st birthday, which was called Willennium, it was a huge party at Windsor Castle. Kate was there, but she wasn't the guest of honor. The guest of honor, in addition to William that day, at that party was Jecca Craig. And the press was all over that. All of a sudden, she was the one.

BOLDUAN: Other women would also catch William's eye, and that caused rocky moments with Kate. Finally, in 2007, they split. And he almost lost the love of his life.

(on camera): How did William react to that breakup?

NICHOLL: Well, I think he realized quite soon after he had made the decision to end the relationship that actually he had made a mistake. But then I think he put all of his efforts into working how he could woo Kate back again.

BOLDUAN (voice-over): At last, William made up his mind. Kate was the one, in part, perhaps, for the way she was raised.

ANDERSEN: And Kate exposes him to a happy family for the first time. He started visiting the Middletons home in Bucklebury and he saw that indeed it was possible to have a happy family and a happy marriage. And I think that's a big reason that Kate's the one.

BOLDUAN: A happy marriage, a stable home, the opposite of what William had experienced growing up. And, at last, in 2010, William popped the question.

PRINCE WILLIAM: I took her out somewhere nice in Kenya and I proposed. I had been planning it for a while, but as every guy out there will know, it takes a certain amount of motivation to get yourself going. So I was planning it and then it just felt really right out in Africa. It was beautiful at the time, and I had done a little bit of planning to show my romantic side.

BOLDUAN: William seemed ready to grow up and settle down.

Coming up next, from party boy to parent, two of the biggest days of Prince William's life.

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(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BOLDUAN (voice-over): April 29, 2011, the world watched as Britain's most eligible bachelor, Prince William, married Kate Middleton. It was a day of mixed emotions, as he told ABC's Katie Couric.

PRINCE WILLIAM: Honestly, it was one of those days where you feel very elated, also completely terrified, I have to be honest. The prospect of two billion people watching was quite daunting. I sort of steadied myself with my brother. We were cracking some very bad jokes behind the altar when we were ready to come out, trying to settle the nerves.

NICHOLL: To me, it was a real love story. It was a true love match. And this was the fairy tale wedding that we all hoped for, and we all hoped it would be very, very different, of course, from Charles and Diana.

BOLDUAN: William wanted the strong marriage his parents never had and charted his own course right from the beginning.

NICHOLL: They didn't want hundreds of statesmen and dignitaries there that they didn't know. They wanted their friends. And if you looked at those pews right up near the high altar, it was their friends. And I think they managed the remarkable. They had the most extraordinary wedding, but they actually made it remarkably ordinary.

BOLDUAN: After a wedding broadcast to billions, William and Kate disappeared to their secluded farmhouse on the cast of North Wales.

(on camera): This is the quaint Welsh island of Anglesey. Since 2010, the island's most famous residents have been the duke and duchess of Cambridge. Anglesey is less than 300 miles from London, but it couldn't be further from the life expected of the royal couple.

For those who know them, though, it isn't surprising that William and Kate are living by their own rules.

CHRISTOPHER JACKSON, GETTY IMAGES ROYAL PHOTOGRAPH: This is the area that William and Catherine feel most at home.

BOLDUAN: How would you describe that area?

JACKSON: It's beautiful. It's very quiet. It's very low-key. You get a few sort of local pubs. And William and Catherine can kind of drop into the cinema, of drop into the local public, and it is just the kind of thing that they just couldn't do in London. This is why they feel most normal.

BOLDUAN (voice-over): Feel normal and do normal things, like taking their dog Lupo for long walks on the beach or shopping at the grocery store. And yet William's day job is anything but normal as a helicopter rescue pilot for the Royal Air Force. PRINCE WILLIAM: Every day, you come in to work, and you don't quite know what's going to happen. It's quite exciting in that sense. It's unpredictable.

But, at the same time, it's great that you get to go out and actually save someone's life, hopefully, or at least make a difference to someone when you know that they're in trouble.

BOLDUAN: Prince William, hero, husband, and sometimes reluctant royal. Weeks would pass after the wedding before the newlyweds would resume their normal duties by meeting America's first family.

(on camera): They clearly looked quite.

NICHOLL: Oh, they did. And you watched the chemistry between them, and William was obviously very aware that this is a big engagement for Kate. The cameras were fixed on her. He was glancing across and making sure that she was comfortable.

BOLDUAN: Have you noticed a change in photographing them? Kind of how -- is he more protective when they're in public?

JACKSON: William has always been very protective. He has his right hand that is always guiding Kate. And he just gives out this incredibly protective aura.

BOLDUAN (voice-over): But William wouldn't always be able to protect her, especially from the paparazzi. Just months after their wedding, photos surfaced of Kate topless and sunbathing while on a royal engagement in Southeast Asia.

NICHOLL: There were some pictures where Kate was completely nude. So this was shocking. It crossed a line as far as the palace and the couple were concerned. Kate was absolutely appalled, shocked. William was furious.

BOLDUAN: And, this time, he fought back, determined to learn from the mistakes of the past.

NICHOLL: The palace didn't waste any time and they made it clear in no uncertain terms that they would take action immediately. And that was at William and Kate's behest.

BOLDUAN: William could insist on doing things differently at every turn and on leading in his own way. When riots rocked the streets of London, William responded like the prince his mother taught him to believe.

NICHOLL: William and Kate were in Anglesey. They had already said that they were taking a backseat. They had done a huge job in Canada, and they wanted time to themselves.

But they were the ones that said, actually, we want to go meet the shopkeepers who have had their livelihoods smashed and trashed and burned to bits.

BOLDUAN (on camera): So, they didn't need to. They wanted to.

NICHOLL: William has said he doesn't want to be an ornamental royal. He wants to be there for the good parts of the job, but also the difficult parts of the job. But I think it was important to them.

BOLDUAN (voice-over): But nothing could be more important to the monarchy than providing an heir to the throne, a royal duty, a rite of passage that would come two years after William walked Kate down the aisle.

From an early illness to the relentless bump watch, to 10 tense hours of labor, William was that Kate's side.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's the baby, the new royal heir in the United Kingdom.

BOLDUAN: And when he emerged from St. Mary's Hospital with his wife and newborn son, it was clear that William was ready to assume the roles he had been groomed his entire life to fill, ready to be a husband, ready to be a father, ready to reinvent the monarchy.

(on camera): For the first time in more than a century, three heirs wait their chance to ascend the throne. Buckingham Palace will some day be the home for William, his father and his son as they lead the monarchy into the 22nd century.

I'm Kate Bolduan in London. Thanks for watching.

MAX FOSTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Are we going to be ages doing this?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Word into CNN this morning that the duchess of Cambridge, Kate, is now an early labor.

PENNY JUNOR, ROYAL BIOGRAPHER: If you grow up as an heir to the throne, it is drilled into you from a very early age that you have got to behave, you have got to be polite, you have got to always have a smile on your face.

FOSTER: Her Royal Highness, the duchess of Cambridge, was safely delivered of a son at 4:24 p.m. local time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They will make great parents. And it's great to be able to welcome another child into the family.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Here we have the birth announcement.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What does it mean to you to be here on this historic occasion?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Awesome.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is pretty awesome.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are so pleased for Kate and William.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Girls are too much drama. Boys are great.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will wait and see, see in a minute.

There is the baby, the new royal heir in the United Kingdom.

And the duchess of Cambridge, smiling, looking so well, isn't she? A big smile from Prince William, so proud.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

PRINCE WILLIAM: I will remind him of his tardiness when he is a bit older, because I know how long you have all have sat out here, so hopefully the hospital and you guys can all go back to normal now and we can go look after him.

MAX FOSTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that was quite an entrance, though the baby boy at the center of it seems gloriously unaware of all the fuss. The little prince's mum and dad certainly weren't, and they must surely have had that sense of stepping into the unknown. For most new parents, the first place we look for advice is our family, how our parents did, our grandparents and, if we're very lucky, our great-grandparents.

(voice-over): We might think of the queen and the duke of Edinburgh as sticklers for tradition. But actually they broke the mold by the simple act of sending their son to school.

RICHARD TOWNEND, HILL HOUSE SCHOOL: This cabinet here is from my father, Prince Charles on the football ground, just about to kick a football.

FOSTER: The honor of being the first school to receive a royal pupil went to Hill House in west London.

TOWNEND: When he came, it was a complete novelty, of course. He is the very first royalty ever to be educated outside the home. He had never had the experience of meeting lots of children before. He was quite an ordinary person. He wasn't treated in any way special, didn't expect to be. He always says this is the happiest time he ever had.

FOSTER: By all accounts, Prince Charles was a thoughtful, often diffident boy, which made for a complicated relationship with his father.

JUNOR: The duke of Edinburgh is a very rough, tough man's man. He doesn't appreciate sensitive -- sensitivity really in a person, certainly not in one of his sons. And Charles was a very sensitive child.

FOSTER: But it was the duke of Edinburgh who called the shots over schools, and he believed his son would benefit from the same no- nonsense education that he had enjoyed, at Gordonstoun in the North of Scotland.

(on camera): Following in his father's footsteps, Prince Charles arrived here at Gordonstoun at the age of 13. He was to spend most of his teenage years here, and as for most of us, they were years that left a deep impression.

(voice-over): These days, there are girls as well as boys at Gordonstoun. It's not a place which aims to pamper its students. If that's true now, it seems to have been particularly so back in Charles' day.

(on camera): Perhaps surprisingly for a British private school, the Gordonstoun philosophy here was quite idealistic. Its aim was an egalitarian society, marked by self-reliance self-discipline.

(voice-over): These simple huts which make up the lodge where Charles lived reflect that philosophy. Much has been made of the fact that the morning routine involved a bracing cold shower.

JAMES THOMAS, GORDONSTOUN SCHOOL: There was one cold shower in the middle of all the hot showers. And if your grandmother is anything like mine, she would say, you must have a cold one to stop your catching pneumonia. So, you're supposed to have a little squirt on the way out. And, of course, most of them ducked it anyway. But the mythologies built up, and there we are.

JUNOR: It was very tough for a boy who had had probably quite a comforted life in comfortable palaces, and he really hated it, and he was homesick and he was bullied. And it was a very difficult experience for him.

FOSTER: In his adult life, the prince of Wales has been more positive about his far-flung Gordonstoun experience, saying it taught him to accept challenges and take the initiative.

Even so, when it came to his sons, Charles chose differently. Schools for William and Harry would always be close to London and home.

(on camera): You don't get many schools closer to a royal home than this, Eaton College. This is where William spent five years. Just over the river, and up a bit, is Windsor Castle, the official residence of her majesty the queen, who no doubt approved of the choice.

PENNY JUNOR, ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHER: She was delighted that they went to the schools they went to. The fact that think went, you know, across the bridge from Windsor to Eaton so she could see William for tea every week was great.

FOSTER: Fitting in at school can be a challenge for anyone. When Prince Charles was at Gordonstoun, one of his contemporaries asked rhetorically, how can you treat a boy just as an ordinary chap when his mother's portrait is on the coins you spend in the school shop and on the stamps you used to mail your letters home? William's experience at Eaton was far more forgiving. Amidst the turmoil of his parents' disintegrating marriage, school provided a sanctuary.

JUNOR: As he was going to school, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) after him. There was no great shakes about being heirs of the throne of England. He was treated normally, and that was the great thing. He had a lot of friends there. He was popular. He could forget who he was. He was just a normal boy, and that was what he loved.

FOSTER: Outside school, both William's parents sought to expose him to as much of the world as possible. Diana in particular was determined her boys would not spend their whole lives inside the royal bubble. As veteran royal photographer Arthur Edwards told me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Diana introduced her children to McDonald's and the cinema, and Prince Charles -- it was unheard of. And Prince Charles introduced his children to great literature and Shakespeare and the opera. And so there was a great combination of both cultures. And, you know, William, I think, is a much better rounded person for that.

FOSTER: If Diana had a big say over William's upbringing, Kate will expect to have an even greater say over that of her little boy. I was lucky enough to get a glimpse of Kate's childhood at the end of last year.

(on camera): While this is the school that the Duchess of Cambridge attended as a young girl in her local village, she paid a visit to one of her old schools, St. Andrew's in Berkshire.

(MUSIC)

FOSTER (voice-over): It was, it seems, a very easy, very carefree time for her.

DUCHESS CATHERINE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) guinea pig. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Pippa.

PAUL OUTRAM, ST. ANDREW'S SCHOOLS: She wasn't retiring, but she wasn't rambunctious or boisterous or loud in any way. But just gentle.

FOSTER (on camera): Has she changed?

OUTRAM: A little, yes. She's very confident and suave and sophisticated. I think she and I (ph) are smart.

DUCHESS CATHERINE: Thank you, headmaster. It is such a treat to be back here at St. Andrew's. I absolutely loved my time here. They were some of my happiest years, which makes it so incredibly exciting to be back here today. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that, when I had to leave, I told my mother that I was going to come back as a teacher.

FOSTER (voice-over): English private schools have their own traditions, and the game of helicopter is one that belongs to St. Andrew's. The duchess was reliving her youth, a childhood spent in a country idyll. It was a safe, happy and comfortable upbringing that was unknowingly preparing her for royal life.

JUNOR: She had a very normal, secure and happy upbringing. That is exactly what she will try and reproduce for her child. I have no doubt she'll have to have nannies or a nanny or some kind of help, because she will have to do royal duties. That, unhappily, comes with the job.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Returning home, the young couple were reunited with their son Prince Charles, then nearly a year old.

FOSTER: Parenting norms have changed hugely since Prince Charles was a baby. In 1949, it would have seemed perfectly normal for Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh to leave their son for weeks to go on an overseas tour. Thirty-four years later, things have changed.

In 1983, foreign tours were still lengthy affairs. But when Charles and Diana toured Australia and New Zealand in that year, Prince William came with them. And as royal babies tend to do, stole the show.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was very unusual for Charles to accompany the parents on an overseas tour. But Diana said, "If William doesn't go, I don't go." So they made arrangements for the child to be kept at their house with his nanny, and every weekend they would go off and spend time as a family.

When they got to New Zealand, they did this amazing photocol (ph), where we saw William crawl for the first time and he stood up. And that's where we heard him called Wills. It was absolutely a triumph, actually, and was the best tour they ever did.

FOSTER: It's unthinkable now that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge would go on any joint tour without their young son.

It's also highly unlikely that they would be on the road for six weeks straight, like Charles and Diana 30 years ago. Life in the royal family is as much about change as it is tradition.

More in a moment.

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KATE WILLIAMS, ROYAL COMMENTATOR: It's all about the big event. Royals exist to be seen. They exist to be seen in ceremonial settings.

FOSTER: All eyes on the prize for the commoner who married a prince.

JUDY WADE, "HELLO" MAGAZINE: When a prince marries, he not only chooses someone for him, he chooses someone for -- for the country.

JOHN MAJOR, FORMER BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: People see that iconic figures who they see only at a distance who they perhaps never meet, have the same emotions, the same feelings, the same cares, the same loves that they have in their own lives. I think the royal family have communicated that better in the last couple of decades than perhaps at any earlier time in their history.

FOSTER: That sense of connection between the royal family and the rest of us was picked up in the royal wedding homily given by the bishop of London, Richard Charters. In a sense, he said, every wedding is like a royal wedding, with the bride and groom as king and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them into the future.

(voice-over): In another very important sense, though, this bride and groom were not like any other couple.

WILLIAMS: A monarch has failed if he or she doesn't have a child. They're useless. Because principally, the role of the monarch is to perpetuate the monarchy. And without a child, it's a failure.

WADE: She's been very smart. Wait a while, get used to all these nerve-racking things like making speeches and, you know, meeting boring people and traveling every everywhere, and then have a family.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is CNN breaking news.

ASHLEY BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: All right. This is the kind of breaking news we love to bring to you. Everybody knows you never ask a woman if she's pregnant unless you really know that she's pregnant. And look at what's below your screen there. It's official: Kate Middleton is pregnant.

FOSTER: The announcement actually came several weeks earlier than the couple would have liked, after the duchess was admitted to hospital, suffering from acute morning sickness. That prompted two Australian deejays to pick up the phone and trick their way through to Kate's ward, where they were given confidential information about the duchess's condition.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hello. I'm just after my granddaughter, Kate. I want to see how her little tummy bug is going.

FOSTER: The royals themselves seemed happy enough to laugh it off. Prince Charles, in his first public remarks since the pregnancy announcement, had a go at a joke.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your Royal Highness, what's your reaction to the news about the duke and duchess of Cambridge?

PRINCE CHARLES, UNITED KINGDOM: How do you know I'm not a radio station? I'm thrilled. Very nice to be a grandfather at an age like this (ph). It's splendid.

FOSTER: When Kate and William walked out of the hospital just a few hours later, all smiles, the episode looked over. That was until the tragic news that the nurse who first answered the phone to the Australian deejays had been found dead in her apartment. An inquest is still to decide whether the death was suicide linked to the prank call.

As the pregnancy progressed, those familiar landmarks and the questions every mum-to-be gets asked, the fun stuff.

(on camera): We can show you the first official bump pictures. I can reveal that to you now. She arrived here in a tight-fitted dress. So the Duchess of Cambridge completes her first official engagement with a visible baby bump.

(voice-over): So there was the physical proof. But was it a boy or a girl?

For about a day, we were convinced it was a girl. A woman in the north of England swore blind she heard Kate refer to a daughter.

(on camera): This story has exploded in this country. It's safe to say that. I've drilled it down to a conversation that the duchess had in Grimsby (ph) on Tuesday. She met someone in the crowd, Sandra Cook. She's 67 years old.

This is what Sandra told reporters after meeting the duchess. "The lady next to me gave me a teddy bear and I distinctly heard her say, "Thank you, I'll take that for my d..."

(voice-over): The newspapers liked it, and for a while, it was a fact. Until this video emerged, and the story was forced into abeyance.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There you go, Kate, for the baby.

DUCHESS CATHERINE: Thank you so much. Very sweet of you. Very cuddly (ph) teddy bear. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did you really say "my daughter"? Did you really say it? Are you sure?

DUCHESS CATHERINE: No, no, no. Yes, I'm sure, I'm sure. We don't know.

FOSTER: Of course, the irony here is that, for the first time ever, the gender of the royal baby didn't matter, at least in one crucial way.

DAVID CAMERON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: Put simply, if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were to have a little girl, that girl would one day be our queen.

WILLIAMS: Previously you had to have a son. And women have only taken the throne if they have no siblings, as in the case of Victoria, or only have female siblings, as in the case of Elizabeth II.

FOSTER: The old rule was called male primogeniture. Britain and the 15 other countries where the queen is head of state, are in the process of scrapping it. The first-born child, boy or girl, now gets the crown.

Not before time, one might venture. More in a moment.

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FOSTER: The coronation of the monarch. For the British state, there is no more important moment than this: when a new king or queen is crowned. For the new little prince, it represents destiny.

While Charles, who attended his mother's coronation, has mooted (ph) changes, for the moment, the monarch is not only head of state but also the head of the established church, the Church of England. The theme of family and religious faith crop up regularly in Queen Elizabeth's annual Christmas message.

QUEEN ELIZABETH, UNITED KINGDOM: This is the time of year when we remember that God sent His only son to serve, not to be served.

REV. CANON ANN EASTER, CHAPLAIN TO THE QUEEN: I'm quite sure she believes in God, but I think she also believes in the value of the Church of England and its role in this country.

FOSTER: Ann Easter is one of those who administer to the royals' spiritual life. She's a chaplain to the queen, one of 36 members of what's called the ecclesiastical household.

(on camera): What sort of great-grandmother do you think she's going to be?

EASTER: I think she will want to be quite involved. It's absolutely sure that this baby will be brought up in a traditional English Christian way. The baby will be used to going to church. The baby will be used to God talk.

That's what they've done all along, really. They've kept the traditional values while very cleverly and beautifully changing and adapting to the needs of the time.

FOSTER (voice-over): Prince William doesn't seek to proclaim his values loudly. But if you listen out for them, you can certainly get a sense of them. Like here at the launch of a sports coaching program.

PRINCE WILLIAM: What all three of us have in common is that we love sports. And not just playing it, but for what it does for people young and old. It builds confidence, engenders mutual respect and responsibility, and teaches us about the value of teamwork.

FOSTER: Another value that William holds dear is privacy. For the duke and duchess and their baby, it represents arguably their biggest challenge. And not one they're likely to duck, to judge by their response to the publication last year of holiday pictures.

JUNOR: He is more proactive in attacking the media than any previous member of the royal family. I mean, years ago, there was a tradition that, if the media got something wrong or published an intrusive photograph, they just kept their heads clean (UNINTELLIGIBLE). They didn't make a fuss about it. They just let it pass.

But William has become a complete expert on privacy law. The trouble is, it's not just the media anymore. He can tame the media, but you've still got individuals.

PETER PHILLIPS, PRINCE WILLIAM'S COUSIN: Yes, but he's going to be under a great deal of scrutiny. But that being said, both his parents are used to that. I think there is the structure and infrastructure around them all to be able to protect him to a certain extent. But sure, he's going to be in the limelight just like William was from a very early age.

WADE: The whole thing in that royal family is they've not only got to do good works; they've got to be seen to be doing good works. Otherwise the public thinks they're not doing anything and they're lazy. But really, you know, you need the media. It's become a love- hate relationship, but they need us, because otherwise, how would people know how wonderful they are?

FOSTER: William and Kate won't want for advice on how to bring up their little boy. They know that every choice they make will be scrutinized.

EASTER: Well, it ain't going to happen, but wouldn't it be great if the baby goes to a comprehensive, the local comprehensive?

FOSTER (on camera): The state school?

EASTER: Yes, because -- well, yes. Because that would mean that they really were taking a part in the ordinary life.

FOSTER: The problem for the young royals might be seen as a management issue: how to prevent accessibility and necessary public exposure from tipping over into the excesses of celebrity.

(voice-over): Easier said than done when you look how the duke and duchess were treated in Hollywood two years ago.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm going to scream, tell them I love them and take 5,000 pictures and post them live on Facebook.

FOSTER: The arrival of the royal baby will only serve to ramp up further global interest in Britain's royals.

WILLIAMS: Obviously, what would make it easier, perhaps, for William and Kate, if they have at least another child, perhaps three for four more children. But in the end, this is the future king, and everyone wants pictures of him.

FOSTER: For as long as Britain remains a monarchy, those in line to take the throne will occupy their own quite unique spot in the public eye, at home and, it seems, around the word. But maybe we need to pause for a moment and think about our own role in all of this.

EASTER: The birth of every child is a public event, because like they say, it takes two people to make a baby, but the whole village to bring up the child. And every baby is our future.