Gen Z Royalty are Starting or Going Back to School

Some things remain the same. Mother worries about her little ones going off to school. Do they have enough food in their lunch boxes? Do they have the no-talking-to-strangers code drilled into their skulls enough times? Are the buckles on their shoes too tight, or loose enough to become unfastened, and thereby cause them to trip and suffer a sprained ankle, or worse? Of course, royal moms have a lot of assistance. The bodyguards are there, in the shadow of the royal kids' every step, and the nannies and cooks at the palace ensure no little high-born darlings are going to be underfed or neglected in anyway.  Of more pressing concern to the royal moms of Generation Z, perhaps, are things like texting or tweeting when they should be attending to the lessons. Bullying, too, is a potential, and much more serious problem. Just look at what happened to poor Princess Aiko of Japan! Aiko's uncle Akishino and his wife, Kiko, decided not to send their little son, Hisahito, to Aiko's school, which their daughters have attended. What a blow to the Gakushuin school, which prided itself on being the choice of Japanese royalty! Perhaps Gakushuin, like other schools around the world, will embrace Save the Children's anti-bullying campaign. That in itself was a major factor in the decision of Denmark's crown princely couple, Frederik and Mary, regarding their eldest child's early education.

Today there is much concern about the future of Generation Z. Some reports have called these kids a lost generation because many are finishing school and unable to find work, and still many more are dropping out of school because financial hardships. Being royal does not exempt the following kids from such problems. In fact, as the world changes at ever more dizzying paces, there must be serious questions as to how much longer monarchies can remain relevant. If monarchies don't survive, what happens to the lives of these royal children? Will they too be forced into an incomprehensible new age?

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Belgium:

1. The children of Prince Philippe and Mathilde, Duke and Duchess of Brabant:
1. Princess Elisabeth--then three, now ten--entered the maternelle division @ Sint-Jan Berchmanscollege, a Dutch-language school in Brussels on 1 September 2004. In September 2007, Elisabeth began studies @ an academy of fine arts and dance in Asse, Flemish Brabant.
2. Prince Gabriel probably began classes @ Sint-Jan Berchman's school in September 2006.
3. Prince Emmanuel began classes @ Sint-Jan Berchman's on 1 September 2008. {See Zimbio Gallery}
4. Princess Eléonore will probably start school next year.
2. The children of Princess Astrid and Archduke Lorenz:
1. Prince Joachim attended Malvern College, England through 2010. He is currently an officer in the Belgian Navy.
2. Princess Luisa-Maria, who will be 16 this October, attends Sint-Jan Berchman's.
3. Princess Laetitia-Maria was seen arriving @ Sint-Jan Berchman's, ready for school with her Hello Kitty backpack, in September 2008. {See Zimbio Gallery}
3. The children of Prince Laurent and Princess Claire:
1. Princess Louise attended a French-language private school in Tervuren, {Source} where she studied in the French language, and studied English as well, but never learned a word of Dutch. Since the age of six, she has attended Lycée Français de Bruxelles in suburban Uccle. Her parents have been criticized for not sending their children to Dutch-language schools. {Source}
2. Her twin brothers, Nicolas and Aymeric, who are a year younger than Louise, should have started at LFB in September 2010.

Denmark:

1. Prince Christian, who will be 6 on 15 October, started school at Tranegårdsskolen, which is a public school instead of a private school. It is located in Hellerup, a very affluent area to the south of Copenhagen. In order to prevent disruption at the school, his parents, the Crown Prince Frederik and Mary, only appeared with him outside the Palace of Amalienborg on Thursday, 11 August. Their choice of school was a big surprise in the Danish media. It had generally been expected that Christian would be enrolled with his cousins @ Krebs--see next points. But this particular school happens to have implimented Save the Children's anti-bullying campaign of which Crown Princess Mary is a champion. See video of Christian and his parents leaving the palace: TV2. Christian appeared excited. He could hardly stand still as he held onto his parents' hands and tried to answer the reporters' questions. He nodded a lot, always smiling, and seemed to want to set off every moment. He had his new school supplies on his back (no lunch box--apparently that is to be a state secret.) After the press conference, parents and son reentered the inner courtyard of the Palace and apparently made the journey to the school in privacy. It is expected that Christian will be a student @ Tranegårdsskolen (Tranegård's School) for the next ten years. Presently, he is in class 0 (kindergarten) where the children are assigned and reassigned throughout the term into four groups, each represented by a color. The reassignments allow the children to get to know more of each other throughout the term. {Source} Tranegård is a cozy school; it only has 510 pupils and 55 teachers, and it is among the top percentile of all Denmark.
2. Princess Isabella is a pre-K student @ Garnison Parish Church, near Amalienborg, since last January. Christian and their cousins Felix and Nikolai also were enrolled there for pre-K. In Danish, it is: Garnison Sogns Menigheds Børnehave.{Source}
3. Prince Nikolai, who turns 12 this month, attends the Krebs School in Copenhagen. It is a very elite private school, previously attended by his father, Prince Joachim and uncle Fred (Christian's father.) On his and his brother's first day back @ Krebs, a reporter asked how things went, and he said they were fine, overall, besides the slight annoyance of French being added to his schedule!
4. Prince Felix, 9, also attends Krebs. Krebs is described in the Danish press as a very "fashionable" boys-only school. It is actually in the Copenhagen suburb of Østerbro. Prince Felix took up English on his schedule for this year.

Great Britain:

1. Lady Louise, 8, attends St George's School, Windsor Castle. She will be in year 4.
2. Her brother, James, 4, should be in the last year of nursery school.

The children of the royal Earl and Countess of Wessex are attending the same school chosen by Sir Elton John and David Furnish for their child, Zachary, who is two years old. St. George's School, Windsor Castle was founded by King Edward III in 1348 to train choristers for St. George's Chapel. The school is, of course, most notable for its emphasis on music. All students begin training with an instrument around the age of seven and the best are eligible for the 24-boy choristers @ the Chapel. Tuition is about £18,000. {Source} Lady Louise and James' cousin, Princess Eugenie, was a pupil at the school.

Japan:

1. The only daughter of Crown Prince Naruhito and Masako, Princess Aiko, might be enrolling @ a Swiss boarding school. Last year, she was bullied by some boys @ Gakushūin, a private school in Tokyo. She missed enough classtime to raise eyebrows in the media, apparently because she stayed home from emotional distress.{Source 1, Source 2} In April 2010, it was reported that she would continue @ Gakushūin almost as normal. She began the third grade only attending morning classes, accompanied by her mother, and not eating with the other children in the cafeteria. She also skipped the opening ceremony of the school term.{Source} From that time, she slowly increased her attendance to afternoon classes.{Source} But now it is rumored that she might be sent to a boarding school either in Switzerland or Australia.{Source}
2. Her cousin Prince Hisahito, now four, entered "kindergarten" (nursery school?) back in April 2010. The school is in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, and is run by Ochanomizu University. {Source}
3. His eldest sister, Princess Mako, attended the Gakushūin School through high school and then entered the International Christian University in Tokyo.{Source} She did the summer 2010 abroad, in Ireland, at the University College of Dublin.{Source 1, Source 2} Now she should be doing her second year @ ICU.
4. Princess Kako, the middle child of Prince Akishino and Kiko, is a high school student @ Gakushūin.{Source}

Norway:

1. The son of Norway's Crown Princely couple Haakon Magnus and Mette-Marit, Prince Sverre Magnus, began school @ Jansløkka School in Asker on 18 August.{Source} See the video of the prince arriving for his first day at the school with his parents and to a sweet, singing welcome from the other children.
2. His older sister, Princess Ingrid Alexandra, began school @ Jansløkka in August 2010. It was reported as a break from tradition for Norwegian royalty to attend not only a public school, but one that is so close to the royal home. Ingrid's father and aunt attended Smestad, an elite and private school that was a long distance from their childhood home @ Skaugum. Like Sverre Magnus got this past week, Ingrid was greeted on her first day by the children singing the "welcome song" and was accompanied by her parents and her grandfather, King Harald V. But unlike her brother, who had a sunny first day, Ingrid skipped to her first schoolday in a drizzle!
3. Their older half-brother, Marius Borg Høiby, 14, began school @ Jansløkka on 18 August 2003. His royal mother and stepfather, and his biological father, Morten Borg, accompanied him to the door of the school on his first day.{Source} On picture showed Marius outside the school, just as his parents were preparing to leave, with a mobile phone pressed against his ear, and Haakon reaching out as if demanding that Marius surrender the phone! Oh, those Gen Z kids!
4. Their cousin, Princess Märtha Louise of Norway's oldest child, Maud Angelica Behn, attends the private Bærum Waldorf School in Bærum, Norway. Maud will be in her third year at the school, having begun her enrollment on 17 August 2009.{Source} According to the same source, Maud's father, Ari Behn, is an alumnus of the Waldorf School, which translates from "Steinerskolen" in Norwegian. (Märtha Louise, Maud's mother, began first grade @ Smestad School in 1978. Smestad is the more traditional school for Norwegian royalty and nobility.)
5. Leah Isadora Behn, who turned six this past eighth of April, must be joining her sister @ the "Steiner" (Waldorf) school in Bærum. It is possible that her parents successfully prevented any reporters from covering Leah's big day, because it is said that they were extremely upset by the publicity that Maud had to endure two years before.

Maud and Leah live with their parents about 15km outside the town of Bærum, west of Oslo. They also have a summer home, Bloksbjerg, at Hankø, which was Leah's birthplace--her mother made the interesting decision to have the second child born with a midwife at home, and she repeated this for the third child, Emma Tallulah, in April 2009, only Emma was born at their main home of Lommedalen. It is said, in the aforementioned source, that the girls ride the bus to school. But the girls are accompanied by a police escort, as reported in originally in Norwegian Aftenposten. Märtha Louise has received death threats, so the local police around Lommedalen provide a measure of protection for her family, though the details are strictly confidential.

The Netherlands:

1. The daughters of Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Maxima attend school in Wassenaar, which is an affluent suburb of The Hague. Their school, which is a state school, is an easy distance from the family's home, Villa Eikenhorst.
1. Princess Catharina-Amalia (mostly known just as Amalia) began kindergarten @ Bloemcamp School in Wassenaar in December 2007. She was four years old then. {Source}
2. Princess Alexia also started school @ Bloemcamp at the age of four. Her first day was on a Monday in June 2009. {Source}
3. Princess Ariane, now 4, started school @ Bloemcamp on this past fourth of April. {Source}
2. The two daughters of Prince Johan Frisco and Princess Mabel van Oranje-Nassau: {probably attend school in London, where their father does a lot of his work}
1. Countess Luana, Jonkvrouvwe (Heiress/Dame/Lady) van Amsberg {a title inherited from the grandfather Claus van Amsberg, the late prince consort of Queen Beatrix}
2. Countess Zaria, Jonkvrouvwe van Amsberg
3. The children of Prince Constantijn and Princess Laurentien:
1. Countess Eloise, Jonkvrouvwe van Amsberg, attends school in Brussels, to which the family moved after April 2004 for career reasons. .
2. Countess Leonore, Jonkvrouvwe van Amsberg, attends school in Brussels.
3. Count Claus-Casimir, Jonkheer (Heir/Sir/Lord) van Amsberg, attends school in Brussels.

Spain:

1. Infanta Leonor and Infanta Sofía--the daughters of Felipe and Letizia, who are the Prince and Princess of Asturias--attend Santa Maria de los Rosales, Arvaca, near Madrid. Leonor is in her fourth year at the school and Sofia will begin her second year. {Source} This school was also attended by their father and aunts. It is a private school, of course Catholic, and the children wear a uniform of the colors navy blue and grey. Even the blue backpacks seem to be part of the uniform code. {Source} Prince Felipe has called his ten years @ Santa Maria his "golden years." He said that he made "great friends, which I still have. It was the happiest time of my life." {Source} Besides being a family tradition, the school was chosen largely for its convenient distance to the Palace of La Zarzuela, in which the family of the Prince and Princess of Asturias officially reside. {Source}
1. Infanta Leonor attended nursery school for one year @ the Palace of El Pardo. (See Point 3.)
2. Infanta Leonor began Kindergarten @ Santa Maria on 7 September 2008. {Source}
3. Infanta Sofía began preschool @ El Pardo in September 2009. {Source} Leonor also attended nursery school @ the Palace of El Pardo, which is in a zone restricted by the Royal Guard--La Guardia Real. Hence why the daughters of the Prince and Princess of Asturias opened their earliest education among the children of the Guard.
4. Infanta Sofía began Kindergarten, with a pale blue Hello Kitty bag on wheels similar to the one Leonor used, @ Santa Maria on 15 September 2010. See video: http://youtu.be/nUTnaV2jGIQ
2. The children of Infanta Cristina--Juan Valentín, Pablo Nicolás, Miguel, and Irene Urdangarín--live in Barcelona, the capital of Catalan, which culture happens to be heavy on the Occitan language. The Urdangarín children, whose father is the former handball player, Iñaki Urdangarín, are the first members of the Spanish Royal Family to be born and raised there. Per Spanish tradition, the children were christened with the double parental surname--in their case, de Todos los Santos Urdangarín y de Borbón. Todos los Santos (literally, in English: All Saints) is a unique sobriquet for members of the Spanish Royal Family. The kids also have the honorific prefix of Don, or in Irene's case, Doña, due to being children of ducques. Being children of an Infanta--which is the exclusive title of a King's daughter--the Urdangarín kids are "Grandees" of Spain, who additionally carry the style of His/Her Excellency before their names. Despite that Cristina and Iñaki are the Duchess and Duke (pluralized as Los Duques) of Palma de Mallorca, they are obviously hands-on parents. Iñaki walks with the boys to school everyday and the boys often travel alongside him on their scooters, bikes, or skateboards. Cristina typically walks Irene to school, and on the girl's birthday--5 June--takes treats for her classmates. There is a bane, however: Paparazzi!
1. The three boys attend a French school. Occitan is, after all, the marriage of Spanish and French.
1. Juan Valentín--also known affectionately as Juanito--began school @ the Carlos Riba preschool in January 2002. {Source}
2. In November, Irene will start her sixth year @ the Carlos Riba preschool. She first donned the Carlos Riba colors--yellow and blue--at the age of three in November 2006. {Source}
3. The children of Infanta Elena are Felipe Juan Froilán and Victoria Federica Marichalar de Todos los Santos Marichalar y de Borbón, or more casually, just Felipe and Victoria Marichalar. The Spanish media sometimes refer to young Felipe as Froilán in order to distinguish him from his uncle. However, no one in the family circles calls him anything but Felipe. As in the case with the Urdangarín kids, Felipe and Victoria have a noble rank and style. As children of the Duchess of Lugo, they are respectively Don and Doña, and they are "Grandees." Elena and her now-ex-husband, Jaime de Marichalar, have raised them in an affluent suburb of Madrid. Felipe and Victoria began their formal education at Madrid's Colegio San Patricio. But in the summer of 2010, it was reported that, in September 2010, Felipe would be sent to a boarding school in Sussex, England, in order to improve his English and detach from the media attention in his homeland--attention which intensified with the legal separation of his parents. {Source 1,Source 2} It could be Ardingly College or Worth School, which are both in West Sussex, are Catholic in religious affiliation, and provide the International Baccalaureate alternative to the GCSE/A-level system. If he attends Worth, he is a Worthian. If he attends Ardingly, he is an Ardinian. Victoria continues on at San Patricio, which is a private school, in Madrid.

Monaco:

1. Princess Alexandra, the youngest of four of Princess Caroline, will be in Cinquième (5) @ Collège François d’Assise Nicolas Barré. {See the List of Formations at FANB} FANB is a private Catholic school in Monaco.
2. Her cousins, the children of Keith Sébastien and Donatella Knecht de Massy
1. Christine is a year behind Alexandra @ FANB, so she will be in Sixième (6). Christine and Alexandra are friends.
2. Alexia is now either in 7ème or 8ème. Either way, she's still in the primaire (primary) division @ FANB.
3. Vittoria could be in the second year of the two-year nursery school.
4. Andrea could be starting the first year of nursery school this year. (If anyone knows if Andrea is a boy or a girl, please comment on this article. Thanks!)
3. Antoine de Massy, the youngest child of Christian Louis and Cécile Gelabale de Massy, should be attending 3ème (kind of like ninth grade; he was born in 1997) at a Lycée in Monaco--probably Lycée Albert Ier. He previously attended the public Collège Charles III, like his cousin Camille Gottlieb.
4. The children of Laetitia de Massy (daughter of Christian Louis de Massy) and Thomas de Brouwer--Rose and Sylvestre, who are fraternal twins and were born in 2008--could be starting nursery school this year in Antwerp, Belgium.
5. Camille Marie Kelly Gottlieb, younger daughter of Princess Stéphanie, will be in Quatrième (4) at Collège Charles III--this is roughly equivalent to 8th grade, because after it, Camille will enter the three-year "Lycée" (secondary) level of Monegasque-French education, and she will probably be enrolled @ Lycée Albert Ier, as did her elder siblings.
6. Pauline Grace Maguy Ducruet, elder daughter of Princess Stéphanie, passed the general Bac exam this year. She is believed to be attending university somewhere or perhaps is taking a year off to focus on her Olympic goal as a competitive diver. 
7. Louis Robert Paul Ducruet, only son of Princess Stéphanie, will be attending his second year of university, at the SKEMA Business School's Sophia Antipolis campus. He passed the technological Bac exam back in 2010.
8. Jazmin Grace Grimaldi, only daughter of Prince Albert and Tamara Rotolo, will be attending her second (sophomore) year at university as well, at Fordham University in New York, NY, USA. Jazmin was a previously an honors student in her native southern California.
9. Alexandre Éric Stéphane Coste, only son of Prince Albert, will be in 10ème in a school, probably in the Villefranche-sur-Mer, France area, where he reportedly lives in a villa owned by his father. This is equal to the second grade in the US System. His mother, Nicole Coste, has an apartment in Paris as well, so he might go to school there.