“Is it really a year since William and Kate, high on elation and smiling through exhaustion, carried that swaddled bundle down the steps of St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, and into the electrical storm of cameras?

“The birth was marked by a 41-gun salute, and the fountains in Trafalgar Square ran blue. So far so traditional.

“From the start, though, there were signs that his parents were intent on their boy being a very new kind of royal.

“Kate later told girlfriends how incredibly nervous she felt showing the newborn to photographers for the first time.

“After the primal experience of childbirth and the tender intimacy of new motherhood, here was unwelcome, even disturbing, evidence that the baby was not hers and William’s alone…”

- NationalPost