The youngest of Kate Middleton and Prince William’s three children, Prince Louis, marked his seventh birthday Wednesday, and his proud parents shared birthday wishes, a new photo, and a brief video clip of the rambunctious youngest Wales on social media to celebrate along with the world.
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In the video compilation, we’re treated to Louis’s seemingly boundless energy and boyish glee he exhibited during the shoot, complete with him grinning into the camera at close range and even a rare snippet of him speaking.
“I can jump down from there!” he announces, pointing, then demonstrates by leaping off a log, thrilled. The cinematographer is not tagged, but from Louis’s sneaky smiles and close proximity to the shooter, there’s a non-zero chance that Kate was behind that phone, playing Instagram Mom.
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It’s not just the clip that’s a change to the family’s typical birthday offerings: While the Prince and Princess of Wales routinely share new photos of their children to mark birthdays, there are a few subtle ways that Louis’s photographic celebration breaks with both Wales family tradition, and broader royal family norms.
In the portrait, Louis wears an olive green v-neck sweater over a white-and-blue grid patterned collared shirt, paired with a pair of blue jeans. It’s not the casual connotation of denim that is remarkable here, but that his princely knees are covered by the full-length pants.
In the British upper classes, boys typically wear short pants until about age 8, stemming from the 16th-century concept of “breeching,” when infants would be dressed first in gowns, regardless of gender, before boys graduated to short pants. The transition to full-length trousers was considered a milestone and mark of maturity, with etiquette expert William Hanson telling Harper’s Bazaar in 2018 that “a pair of trousers on a young boy is considered quite middle class—quite suburban. And no self-respecting aristo or royal would want to be considered suburban.”
