If they are being honest, most people have fantasized about being a member of the Royal Family. After all, it’s nice to be insanely rich and famous from the moment you are born, and having family connections to so many powerful people generally makes life much easier.
However, the Royal Family is all about upholding certain traditions. And that’s not just something future kings and queens must follow: all royal children are trained from birth to follow certain rules. And when you find out what these rules are, you’ll probably count yourself lucky you were never born a royal.
Just what are these rules, though, and how have they affected the youngest members of the current Royal Family? Keep reading to discover the answers!
Not accepting presents
Remember when we said that royal children are famous from the day they are born? Because of this, even the youngest royals are often flooded with presents from people they don’t really know. For example, back in 2014, Prince George received a whopping 774 gifts.
But that was when he got the sad news that he couldn’t keep any of them. Why not? According to MyLondon, all royals must follow certain rules regarding gifts: they can’t be worth more than £150 and generally can’t accept gifts from people they don’t know except under very special circumstances. While that may seem unfair to the children, the Royal Family wants to make sure nobody can effectively bribe royals by giving them expensive gifts and making the royal in question feel like they owe that person a favor.
RELATED: 8 Things You Didn’t Know About Prince George
Bowing before the King or Queen
We all know that if we were to appear before King Charles, we’d be expected to bow or curtsy before him. You might think that his own family gets a pass on having to do that. However, you’d be wrong in that assumption!
As reported by Harper’s Bazaar, every member of the Royal Family is expected to bow or curtsy before both King Charles and Queen Camilla. While there are special rules that someone with a His or Her Royal Highness title does not have to bow or curtsy before someone with that same title, the royal children generally practice these moves from a very young age. That way, they won’t mess things up when bowing or curtsying in front of the King at important events.
No choice but to be baptized
King Charles is a man of many titles, but one that it’s easy to forget about is that he’s the head of the Church of England. This underscores the fact the Royal Family is very openly and explicitly Christian. As a result of this, all royal children must be baptized from a young age.
This is one way to ensure that all family members are Christians, but what about those who marry into the family? Simply put, no exceptions: as Town and Country points out, Meghan Markle had to get secretly baptized before she could marry Prince Harry.
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They can’t play Monopoly (no, really!)
In an age of smartphones and computers, it’s difficult to imagine children of the Royal Family gathering around the table and playing a game of Monopoly. But even if they were inclined to do so, they couldn’t because the game has been banned from the Palace!
As the Telegraph points out, the game is banned because the family got a little too competitive with it. No word, sadly, on whether they used any fun house rules like getting money when they land on Free Parking. And considering this story was shared by Prince Andrew, we can only assume he always got a bit nervous about the prospect of being sent directly to jail while playing.
Girls must wear dresses
Pop quiz: when is the last time you saw a female member of the Royal Family wear something other than a dress? The reason for that is simple: from a young age, girls in the Royal Family must wear dresses, which is a tradition that Queen Elizabeth basically started with her own daughter, Princess Anne.
As Harper’s Bazaar points out, these tend to be simple, smocked dresses. This helps young girls look timeless, which is considered a better alternative than embracing modern fashion trends that will look outdated in no time.
RELATED: 30 Rare Photos Of Queen Elizabeth’s Early Life
Boys must wear shorts
Don’t worry: boys in the Royal Family also have some insane rules to follow when it comes to fashion. And perhaps the craziest one is that they are generally expected to wear shorts rather than pants!
This strikes most people as weird because, as a rule, shorts are usually seen as more informal than pants. But as Good Housekeeping points out, this royal tradition stretches back to a time when boys wearing pants was considered a middle-class behavior. Therefore, these royal boys wear shorts to emphasize they are high class…even if they do look more than a bit goofy while wearing them.