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Footage of Prince George's cheeky behavior during a visit to Australia and New Zealand with his parents, Prince William and Kate Middleton, has gone viral after a a humorous clip was shared on TikTok.
George—the eldest of the royal couple's three children—was born in July 2013 and is next in line to the throne behind his father. In April 2014, William and Kate undertook a 16-day visit to Australia and New Zealand at the invitation of the countries' governments, and the couple brought eight-month-old George with them.
After spending nine days in New Zealand, where the young prince was given his first exposure to the high intensity of interest at public engagements, the family traveled to Australia where they took in a visit to Taronga Zoo in Sydney.
Shown in the video clip, uploaded to social media platform TikTok by user, the.royal.watcher, George was given his own stuffed animal of a Taronga Zoo resident as a keepsake.
Watched nearly half a million times in 48 hours, the clip shows George playfully throwing the stuffed animal across the zoo enclosure the family were posing for photographers in, with Prince William assuring those gathered that: "He does love it, honestly!"
The stuffed animal was of a bilby, a small, furry, desert-dwelling marsupial. The royals got up close and personal with a real bilby at the enclosure who was also named George. The zoo named the enclosure in the infant prince's honor, with William joking in a speech given at the beginning of the family's tour: "I suspect George's first word might be 'bilby'—only because koala is harder to say. We really look forward to our time here together as a family."
A number of TikTok commenters have praised the young royal for his feisty appearance at the zoo, with one writing: "He is cute 😀."
"He really said yeet to Roo 😂," wrote another, with a further user posting: "The best royal 🥰."
It was George's only visit to Australia, where he won hearts around the country, causing a spike in pro-monarchy feeling. In polling taken ahead of the family's visit, support among Australians for abolishing the monarchy fell to a 35-year low. As a result, George was jokingly nicknamed by local press the "republican slayer."
Though no plans have been officially announced, William and Kate are expected to return to Australia at some point in the near future, possibly with their children, George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.
In September 2022, following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that there had been "preliminary discussions about the now Prince and Princess of Wales visiting Australia."
"I would hope that if they visit they would bring their children with them," he said.
William recently held separate meetings with Albanese and New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins at Kensington Palace during their visits to London for the coronation of King Charles III.
During the coronation ceremony, George played a formal role as one of his grandfather's Pages of Honour. This saw the young prince, together with a group of similarly aged boys, hold the king's robes as he entered and exited Westminster Abbey.
George will celebrate his 10th birthday on July 22.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.
About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more