"Nice one, Charlie!" the crowd cheers, as Diana produces an heir
This is the way they come into the world, the future Kings of Britain: to the thunk of artillery and cannonades of champagne corks. To billowing flags and pealing bells, to churchmen's prayers and endless, raucous choruses of Rule, Britannia! and For He's a Jolly Good Fellow! Amid clouds of euphoria that make their subjects-to-be and millions of television cousins feel that they are members of one harmonious family.
All the accustomed accolades and happy omens greeted the birth of an heir at 9:03 p.m., June 21. Yet, the arrival of the Princeling, who is in line to be the 42nd monarch since the Norman conquest, also had some marked differences. He was not born in the dim fastnesses of a palace, screened by courtiers, but in a $218-a-day, 12-ft. by 12-ft. white room, with one rather shabby armchair, at London's St. Mary's Hospital. Both parents had taken lessons in natural childbirth, and his father was in the room all through his mother's six hours of labor.* "I am, after all, the father, and I suppose I started this whole business," Prince Charles said earlier. "So, I intend to be there when everything happens."
Minutes after the birth, on the longest day of the year, Charles was cradling his first-born in his arms.
And then, like any other new parents at St. Mary's, Charles, 33, and Diana, 20, were left alone with their baby, Monday's boy, fair of face and hair, blue-eyed, 7 lbs. 1½ oz., born 328 days after the royal wedding.
On the hospital gates appeared a crudely lettered cardboard communiqué:
IT'S A BOY. Two hours after the birth, with tears in his eyes and lipstick smudges on his cheeks, Prince Charles grasped the hands of the well-wishers, who had been gathering outside the hospital all day.
Next evening, only 20 hours and 57 minutes after giving birth, Diana, Princess of Wales, walked out of the hospital with her baby born to be King. Then they went off to their new home in Kensington Palace.
The infant, who will be breastfed, will sleep in a century-old, cast-iron cradle in a yellow-and-white nursery bedroom.
One of the first toys the young Prince may grasp is an ivory-handled rattle that was given to his great-grandmother, Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. More than 2,000 gifts from all over the world flooded in on the family; most are to be passed on to hospitals and orphanages.