Bumper year for royal babies as Queen’s 12th great-grandchild due in autumn

By Laura Elston
News of Princess Beatrice’s pregnancy has made 2021 a bumper year for royal babies, with the youngster set to become the Queen’s 12th great-grandchild.

He or she will be the fourth royal newborn to arrive this year, following Princess Eugenie’s son August in February, Zara Tindall’s son Lucas in March, and the Sussexes’s daughter who is due in the summer.

Beatrice’s pregnancy has been announced six weeks after the death of the Duke of Edinburgh, the baby’s great-grandfather.

The Queen’s great-grandchildren currently are: Savannah and Isla Phillips; Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis of Cambridge; Mia, Lena and Lucas Tindall; Archie Mountbatten-Windsor; and August Brooksbank.

The Cambridge children call their great-grandmother Gan-Gan, and the Queen always leaves a small gift in her great-grandchildren’s rooms whenever they come to stay.

When she was introduced to George soon after he was born in 2013, it was the first time in almost 120 years that a reigning monarch had met a future king three generations ahead.

But the royal family, like the rest of the nation, has been separated from one another in lockdown during the Covid-19 crisis.

Beatrice will be hoping for a more straightforward delivery than her cousin Zara, who gave birth to Lucas at home on the bathroom floor after she was unable to make it to hospital in time.

The princess’s son or daughter, due in the autumn, will be 11th in line to the throne.

The first 10 places will remain the same, but the baby will enter the line of succession below Beatrice and above Eugenie.
(PA)