Lilibet has turned five, and her doting parents Harry and Meghan have posted a couple of photos to mark the happy day. Nothing wrong with that, you’d think.
Here she is, barefoot on the grass in Montecito, in a light summer dress, her glorious flame-red hair flying loose and unbrushed as she reaches out to touch a sprig of agapanthus in the garden. And there she is again, squirming in Harry’s arms, her hair obscuring her face, Meghan leaning in beside them both. It is entirely charming.
Only, a large portion of the online royal-watching population seems to be clutching its pearls. ‘Why why why can’t she comb her daughter’s hair? Or put shoes on her feet? Poor child always looks unkempt,’ says one social media comment. ‘Clothes look as if they’ve been rescued from a trash bin,’ adds another. ‘Nothing laid-back or hippy about it. More like neglect and bad parenting,’ opines a third, after worrying about Lilibet’s exposure to athlete’s foot, fungus and parasites on her little bare feet.
Oh, do give it a rest.
And I say that as someone who has had plenty to say about Harry and Meghan over the years, and no doubt will again. You won’t find me defending every decision they’ve made – not the books, not the Netflix series, not the talent for grievance that has characterised their recent career. But none of that is Lilibet’s fault. She is five, and she is doing what five-year-olds should do: running around in bare feet and poking at flowers. She is free to be a child and I, for one, couldn’t be happier.

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Meghan posted a photo of her daughter Lilibet to mark her fifth birthday. She is barefoot on the grass in Montecito, in a light summer dress, her glorious flame-red hair flying loose and unbrushed as she reaches out to touch a sprig of agapanthus in the garden

I bet that many of the people criticising these photographs would also lament the pressures placed upon modern children in other contexts. We worry that childhood is disappearing. We complain that today’s young grow up too quickly. We fret about social media, image consciousness and impossible standards of perfection. But the moment we see a child – even more so a famous one – blissfully unaware of all that, we criticise her for not looking polished enough.
If Lilibet’s parents had stayed as working members of the Royal Family, what would her fifth birthday photograph have looked like? I can tell you exactly. A formal portrait, taken in some well-appointed room at Kensington or Windsor. Lilibet in a smocked Liberty-print dress, probably pale blue, with a white Peter Pan collar.
Her feet encased in white ankle socks and round-toed leather shoes from the high-end children’s shop Trotters, almost certainly, as they have been for every royal child for the past four decades. Her red hair brushed to within an inch of its life, pulled back in neat plaits tied with ribbon to match the dress. Positioned by a royal photographer. Told to smile – and smiling, no matter what she was actually feeling.
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of this. It’s what happens when you are born into one of the most famous families in the world, and we all hoover up the adorable photographs of George, Charlotte and Louis – their side partings and shiny shoes and general air of being characters in a children’s book from another era brought to life. It’s tradition, and tradition matters.
But there is no getting away from the fact that it’s also a performance, carrying with it the full weight of royal expectation. Even poor Louis chafes at the bit sometimes. I’d wager he’d rather be barefoot in a garden than standing to attention on a palace balcony.
Lilibet, by contrast, looks as if she is having a rather more normal childhood – and, dare I say it, a happier one.

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In another photo Lilibet is squirming in Harry’s arms, her hair obscuring her face, Meghan leaning in beside them both. It is entirely charming, writes Vanessa Tait

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I brought up my own three children largely barefoot in our garden in the Cotswolds. When they had wellies on, they quickly ruined their clothes in puddles; I learned not to bother dressing them in anything adorable. Bonpoint descended very rapidly to Primark.
My middle one’s particular superpower was climbing trees – a skill I was told she could have parlayed into a career, had I been willing to put the hours in at the indoor climbing wall. She also cut her own red hair into a wonky fringe once, when I wasn’t looking, and got scouted for an ‘edgy’ photoshoot shortly afterwards. Perfection, it turns out, is not always what it’s made out to be.
Some of the most beloved photographs in any family album are the imperfect ones: the gap-toothed smiles, the windswept hair, the ice cream down a T-shirt, the look of complete absorption in whatever adventure happens to be unfolding. Those pictures are real and unscripted.
Lilibet’s hair is a mess because she’s been having a childhood. There are far worse things to be accused of.
And I say: Happy birthday to her.