For many royal fans, it may seem like only yesterday that Prince William and Kate Middleton posed for photographs outside the Lindo Wing at St Mary's Hospital with a newborn Prince George in their arms - but the young royal will be celebrating his 9th birthday next month.
While he won't be taking the British throne any time soon, he is expected to one day become King - and it's something that royal experts believe will change things between him and his siblings, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, as he begins to prepare for his role.
But when it came to telling their eldest son what the future holds for him, William and Kate are said to have come up with a plan to ensure that George wasn't made aware in a 'haphazard fashion', with William feeling unhappy about his own experiences of learning about royal duties.
Royal biographer Robert Lacey, author of Battle of Brothers, writes in an updated version of his book: 'William has not revealed to the world how and when he broke the big news to his son. Maybe one day George will tell us the story himself.
'But sometime around the boy’s seventh birthday in the summer of 2020, it is thought that his parents went into more detail about what the little prince's life of future royal 'service and duty' would particularly involve.'
He added: 'William’s unhappiness at the haphazard fashion in which the whole business of his royal destiny had buzzed around his head from the start.'
While the Cambridges are said to be shielding their son from learning too much too young, royal commentator Rhiannon Mills told the Express: 'You can’t forget that Prince George is hugely important as a future heir to the throne and inevitably there is, over the coming years, going to be more and more focus on him.
'But William and Kate are going to want to do anything they can to try and keep him out of the spotlight as much as they can.'
The Cambridges will be relocating to Windsor later this year, with insiders claiming that one of the motives for the move was to give their children as much freedom and normality as possible as they grow up.
