Britain’s future king

Celebrations were held around the world this week to mark the eagerly awaited birth of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s son, George Alexander Louis, the third in line to the British throne. The prince was delivered after 12 hours of labor, weighing 8 pounds and 6 ounces. He appeared before the world the next day, swaddled in blankets, as Prince William and his wife, Kate Middleton, left a London hospital. “It’s very special,” said William to the waiting reporters. “He’s got more hair than me, and his mother’s looks, thankfully.” Prince George’s birth was marked with a series of gun salutes in London, while an official bulletin announcing the news was displayed at Buckingham Palace. The British economy was expected to enjoy a $380 million “baby bump” through a combination of celebratory spending and a tourism surge.

For America, too, the “Great Kate wait” is finally over, said Nick Bryant in BBC.com. For weeks, local networks throughout the U.S. replaced their thumping news anthems with “regal-sounding music,” while newspapers speculated endlessly over the baby’s name. Even the royal easel erected on the forecourt of Buckingham Palace became “an object of great fascination.” When Prince George’s arrival was finally announced on the big screen in New York City’s Times Square, the cheers were resounding.

Am I missing something? said Lionel Shriver in The New York Times. “Did we not cut our apron strings to the British monarchy emphatically and at some cost?” Let the Brits celebrate—anything to distract them from crippling austerity, waning influence, and increasingly diluted national identity. But the hoo-ha in the U.S. is mystifying. For some reason, “many Americans seem to believe that Elizabeth II, her curmudgeonly son Charles, his strapping sons Will and Harry, and the winsome duchess and her newborn belong to us.’’

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Don’t be such a killjoy, said Louise Branson in USAToday.com. After 237 years of independence, Americans have the best of both worlds. They get to enjoy the endlessly entertaining spectacle of the royal family—seen as “real-life Downton Abbey characters”—without having to pay taxes to support them, or be crippled with guilt about how a democracy can still have a monarchy. Long live the royal soap opera, and long live the future king!