When Prince Guillaume, the heir to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, and Princess Stephanie took their new son, Prince Charles, home from the hospital on Wednesday, they reenacted a familiar royal birth ritual. They paused on the steps of Grand Duchess Charlotte Maternity Hospital, waved to well-wishers, and thanked the gathered doctors and nurses. Since this is the age of the coronavirus, there was one small alteration: everyone in the scene was wearing medical masks, save for the new baby. Charles, the couple’s first child, is now second in line to the throne, but some of the fanfare of a new heir was diminished by the turbulence of the world he arrived into.
Outside the hospital, Guillaume, the oldest son of Grand Duke Henri and Grand Duchess Maria Theresa, spoke about what it meant to have a baby amid the pandemic. “A birth is a message of hope. It’s a blessing,” he said, according to People. “I think this is what we’re so happy to be able to share with Luxembourg, but also over the borders with all the different countries.
Eventually Guillaume and Stephanie took the masks off to pose for a few family pictures, with suited up doctors still looming behind them. All week the family has been forced reinvent the playbook for announcing a royal birth. Earlier in the week, the Grand Ducal court released a few close-up shots of Charles from inside the hospital, alongside photos of the newborn meeting his grandparents from a social distance. In a few soft focus shots, Henri and Maria Theresa gaze happily into an iPad perched on a table draped with a white tablecloth. In another, Guillaume and Charles look back at them via FaceTime.
After they arrived home from the hospital, the celebrations continued when Luxembourg City’s mayor Lydie Polfer came to present Charles’s birth certificate for his parents’ signature. At first, she and Guillaume greeted each other with masks on, but eventually took them off for the photographed signing ceremony. Polfer didn’t actually meet the newborn, but she did come with a very large teddy bear as a gift.
Some of the most traditional aspects of a royal birth went on as usual. A 21-gun salute went off in Charles’s honor, and in lieu of gifts, his parents asked for donations to child welfare charities.
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