A television ad shows a new father gently placing his infant into a car seat, then proudly driving his wife and child home for the first time.
In London on Tuesday, Prince William re-enacted that charming Everyman tableau: the prince, in a blue shirt, sleeves rolled up, buckled a baby seat into his car - a Land Rover - then gently placed his day-old son in it. He took the wheel and drove away from the hospital with his wife, Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, and their as yet unnamed son, heir to the British throne, in the back seat. (The driver-bodyguard slipped discreetly into the passenger seat.)
The first is an ad for Nissan, the second, a commercial for the British royal family.
Both are artful displays of salesmanship.
Far more than even the royal wedding of William and Kate in 2011, the unveiling of the newest Windsor signaled to viewers worldwide that this is a new generation of royals, less isolated and more down to earth. Their wedding, watched by as many as 3 billion people, was an infomercial for the ancient British art of pageantry and tradition. Tuesday’s tableau was a nod to modern stagecraft â€" Pampers, not pomp.
CNN and others obligingly spit their screens between Tuesday’s first glimpse and the moment when Prince Charles and Princess Diana proudly presented their firstborn in 1982. The Duchess of Cambridge on Tuesday wore a light blue dress that matched her husband’s shirt, but also had white polka dots, like the green dress Diana wore when she carried her baby, not yet named William, out of the hospital.
Back then, Prince Charles and his young wife seemed quite modern, at least by royal standards, but he wore a suit and tie, and when they drove off, a chauffeur was at the wheel. His son, who joked to reporters that the baby has more hair than he, chose an even more laid-back look and casual manner, driving his newborn home much the way he took the wheel to drive Kate off after their wedding.
And these seemingly simple rites of ordinariness are as calculated as the formal posting of the royal birth announcement on a gold-trimmed easel in front of Buckingham Palace.
They happen because they happen to work. The doting and intense coverage, the Kate Waits, the crowds, the parade of royal experts (most of whom are attractive young women who look and sound a lot like Kate Middleton) are all testimony to how well Prince William and his wife, a commoner from a middle-class family, have managed to redeem and restore the royal image after the fiascos of the past few decades - and there were many more than just one annus horribilis in the scandal-soaked era of Charles, Diana, Camilla, Dodie and Fergie.
A new baby is usually a private joy, a screened-off leap into love and terror. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge managed to protect their seclusion without seeming at all exclusive. They are uncommon celebrities who together have mastered the knack of seeming like any other ordinary couple sharing an extraordinary moment with the entire world.
