Royal Baby Fever is set to seize the world for the next year, at least. Are you prepared?
1. "Diana" will probably be somewhere in the baby's name.
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To be royal means that you have an ungodly amount of names. Like, three or four, instead of just a first and middle name like normal people. So, William's full name, excluding his last name, is "William Arthur Phillip Louis." His dad Prince Charles's full name — "Charles Phillip Arthur George" — is so complicated it was famously bungled by Diana when they got married. (She said "Phillip Charles Arthur George" during the ceremony, which seemed like a great reason to cut back on the number of names these people have, but royals don't like to edit tradition, you know.) Whether or not the royals smoke something crazy and decide to give Kate's baby two names like their commoner mother (Kate = Catherine Elizabeth. SIMPLE.), they'll have opportunity to work "Diana" in there somewhere if Kate births a daughter.
Royals expert Diane Clehane, author of Diana: Secrets of Her Style, says she doesn't see them giving the maybe-daughter "Diana" as a first name, "but I see Diana's name in there somewhere." Of course it would be pretty awesome if they had a girl and Diana WAS the first name! "I sort of have this fantasy in my head they'll have a girl and they'll name her Diana," Clehane says, "and she'll be queen and Diana will have had her revenge in the end."
2. Kate's pregnancy will be totally different from Diana's.
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The royal family has been very welcoming and protective of Kate. Things were very different for Diana, who had no one when she was 20 years old, married Prince Charles, and suddenly folded into royal life after dating the prince for just months. This combined with Camilla's continued presence in Charles's life led to a disastrous end to their marriage that disgraced the royal family.
"There would be no Kate if there had not been Diana," Clehane notes. "The royal family learned a very tragic lesson with Diana — this is what happens when you try to force the hand of a relationship that looks good on paper but isn't meant to be." Clehane thinks that this is partly why the royal family was open to William marrying a commoner like Kate.
Kate is getting a lot more coddling from the palace than Diana ever did, because the future of the royal family rests on her and William and their children. Keenly aware that you can't have a "royal family" without the "family" part, the palace has taken great care of her up until now to make sure the marriage succeeds. That ought to only continue while Kate and William are royally pregnant.