When Prince William and Kate Middleton chose Prince George’s godparents in 2013, most were old friends. Only one was blood: Zara Tindall. Over a decade later, that choice is reportedly shaping the future king more than most people around him.
“Regardless of the event, one of George’s first questions is always ‘will Uncle Mike and Aunt Zara be there?’,” an insider tells Woman’s Day. “He and his siblings are always excited if Mike and Zara are going, and it’s not because they’re so down to earth. They manage to make the most formal and austere occasions fun.”
Why Prince George feels at ease with Zara Tindall
Royal author Robert Jobson, speaking to the Daily Mail, has described watching Zara with George and noticing she doesn’t treat him any differently for who he is – she teases him, and he’s relaxed around her, the way kids are with adults who don’t want anything from them.
Robert puts that down to Zara’s own upbringing. Her mother, Princess Anne, famously turned down titles for Zara and her brother Peter when they were young – a move Robert has called one of the smartest calls the family’s made in decades.
Without a title behind her, Zara had to make her own name – and she did, winning World Champion honours at Aachen in 2006 on a horse she’d found for sale in an ad, before being named BBC Sports Personality of the Year that December, the same award her mother won back in 1971.
That’s reportedly the quality George responds to most. “William appreciates the level-headed [Tindalls’] influence on George,” our source says. “It’s impossible to not love them, they always come with a solid sense of humour and an ability to see through some of the fakeness in the Royal circles.”
A bond older than George himself
Robert has also pointed to something else obvious: Zara isn’t just George’s godmother, she’s known William his whole life. The two are only around eighteen months apart in age, and they grew up spending the same Scottish summers and Norfolk Christmases together.
That history, Robert says, is exactly why she’s one of the few people who can tell the future king when he’s being pompous – and why he listens.
“It’s literally a follow-on from Mike’s close friendship with [William], but it goes both ways,” the insider adds. “All their kids have grown up together, and [Zara and Mike] want their kids to be as responsible, kind and gracious as Kate and William’s.”
There’s also reportedly something in it for George when it comes to learning how to lose. “William and Kate love nothing more than having Zara, Mike and the kids over for a Sunday lunch,” our source says.
“They’re both incredibly positive influences on their three children, and believe George’s confidence starting at Eton is largely due to [them]. Zara’s exactly the same [as Mike], and perhaps it comes from their incredible success in their chosen sports. George knows how to be competitive, and that the only thing worse than a bad loser is a bad winner.”
George has never known life without Zara nearby. She and Mike married in Edinburgh in 2011, less than two years before George was born, and their eldest daughter Mia arrived just six months after him in January 2014.
Their family grew alongside the Wales kids from there – Lena born in 2018, the same year as Louis, and Lucas in 2021 – with the two sets of cousins spending Christmases and holidays together ever since.
What George needs most before Eton
As Prince George prepares to start at Eton, Robert has suggested what he needs most isn’t more people invested in the institution around him, but adults who’ve earned their own achievements and don’t take any of it too seriously.
By that measure, Robert says, Zara might be exactly the influence a future king needs.
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