My Love Letter to a Future King

Dear Prince William,

There is something strange about growing up at the same time as a future king.

We are less than a year apart in age. You were born into palaces. I was born into a world watching them. And somehow, across oceans and headlines, we grew up together.

When I think of my childhood, I remember grainy television clips of a boy walking behind his mother’s coffin. I remember your face on the cover of all my Teen Bop magazines.

 I did not yet understand monarchy. I did not understand constitutional duty. But I understood loss. The world saw a prince. I saw someone’s son, who was the same age as me.

And perhaps that is when admiration became something deeper than fascination.

History will record you as the heir to the throne of the United Kingdom — the son of King Charles III and Diana, Princess of Wales — the future sovereign of a thousand-year-old institution.

But those of us who grew up alongside you remember something quieter:

That shy smile on those teen magazines.

The university years.

The courtship that did not rush.

The careful choosing of a partner in Catherine, Princess of Wales who did not just marry a man — but steadied a dynasty. (We love her, by the way.)

You have never seemed dazzled by your own proximity to power.

You seem aware of it. Measured by it. Maybe even restrained by it.

And in an era where spectacle often masquerades as leadership, your steadiness feels almost radical.

While the institution around you shifted — scandals, departures, public reckoning — you did what future kings have always had to do:

You endured.

Not loudly.

Not theatrically.

But steadily.

There is history in your posture.

There is modernity in your marriage.

There is restraint in your public grief.

And perhaps that is what makes this love letter less about romance and more about recognition.

We grew up too.

We learned what responsibility feels like.

We learned that legacy is not something you inherit — it is something you build carefully, choice by choice.

One day, history will call you king.

But some of us will always remember the boy we watched become ready. And we have been cheering for you all along.

And from across the Atlantic,

I curtsy — in American.

— L 👑