🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Prince William and his eldest son, Prince George, have become the subjects of a new viral video on social media platform TikTok comparing strikingly similar interactions with their mothers, Princess Diana and Kate Middleton.
Both William and George have been the focus of increasing numbers of social media videos to become widely circulated over the last year, as their public profiles increased after the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022.
With the queen's death, William was made Prince of Wales by his father, King Charles III, and George moved one position closer to the crown in the line of succession, now making him second in line to inherit the throne.
Uploaded to TikTok by user l0velycatherine, archive footage of William and Diana taken in 1992 is edited with footage of George and Kate three decades later in 2022.
In the clip, a 10-year-old William is filmed leaving Wetherby School in West London where he and his mother had dropped off his younger brother, Prince Harry. Leaving the school, the prince took hold of his mother's hand as the paparazzi photographed them.
In the 2022 footage, Prince George is shown holding onto his mother's hand on a family visit to Cardiff in Wales to mark the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth.
The TikTok video—captioned "parallels"—has received over 160,000 views since it was posted on June 8 and gained in excess of 26,000 likes and numerous comments, many of which note the touching gestures between mothers and sons.
"George is Williams mini," wrote one user.
"AWW SO CUTE," said another, with a further comment reading: "Honestly my fav thing of being a mom is holding hands."
Over the past year, William and Kate have attended a number of events with George as he has reached an age where traditionally royal children begin undertaking more public appearances. The prince will turn 10 on July 22.
Among the events the prince has been present at have been a number of sports games, including prestige soccer matches and a solo day out with his parents for the Wimbledon tennis championships in London. George's mother, Kate, is patron of the All England Lawn Tennis Club, the association that hosts the championships each year, a position given to her by Queen Elizabeth in 2016.
The most important ceremonial event attended by the prince in the past year was the coronation of his grandfather, King Charles III, on May 6.
For the historic ceremony, George was one of the few royals given an official role. The prince was appointed as a Page of Honour to his grandfather, walking behind him in the official coronation procession through Westminster Abbey holding the monarch's robes.
Prince William has spoken rarely about his relationship with his mother, Princess Diana, in the years since her untimely death in 1997 when he was just 15 years old. In 2017, the 20th anniversary of the car crash that ultimately killed her, William spoke publicly about his reaction to her death and how he built his life in the aftermath.
"When you have something so traumatic as the death of your mother when you are just 15, as very sadly many people have experienced and no one wants to experience, it leaves you, you know, it'll either make or break you, and I wouldn't let it break me," he told viewers of a memorial documentary.
"I wanted it to make me," he continued. "I wanted her to be proud of the person I would become. I didn't want her worried or that her legacy would be that, you know, William and or Harry were completely and utterly devastated by it and that all the hard work and all the love and all the energy she put into us when we were younger would go to waste."
William has three children with Kate, George, who is the oldest, Princess Charlotte, 8, and Prince Louis, 5. In 2021, during the COVID pandemic, William and Kate shared Mother's Day cards written by their children to their grandmother, Diana, in an exercise showing how the family keep the princess a part of their everyday lives.
In photograph of a handwritten card made by George, the prince wrote: "Dear Granny Diana, Happy happy mother's day. I love you very much and think of you always. Sending lots of love from, George xxxxx."
In her message, Princess Charlotte made a touching reference to William. Writing: "Dear Granny Diana, I am thinking of you on mother's day. I love you very much. Papa is missing you. Lots of love, Charlotte."
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