Royal Baby Has a Life of Palaces, Great Expectations Ahead

Royal Baby Has a Life of Palaces, Great Expectations Ahead

The Duchess of Cambridge has been admitted to a London hospital but no one knows for sure when the royal baby will come.

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What royal watchers anxiously awaiting the birth do know for sure is that this royal baby, whether a boy or a girl, will live a life like no other baby born the same day as he or she.

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"You might say that being born is the last normal thing that's going to happen to this baby," Patrick Jephson, former chief of staff to the late Princess Diana, the baby's grandmother, said today on " Good Morning America."

"The royal family, unlike politicians, they don't serve a term. They serve for life," he said. "This little baby will have to live up to a life of extraordinary duty along with any privilege it might enjoy," Jephson said.

The royal baby, who will automatically become the third in line to the British throne upon birth, will have access to at least four palaces.

Those palaces include Kensington Palace, where he or she is expected to grow up; Buckingham Palace, the 775-room palace where his or her great-grandmother, the queen, lives and where he or she will reside upon inheriting the throne; Sandringham House, the estate in Norfolk where the royal family spends Christmas; and Balmoral, the sprawling Scottish castle where the royal family members spend their summers.

The royal baby will travel to those places in style from the get-go.

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"Kate has been telling people that she's bought the trendiest pram around, the Bugaboo," ABC News royal consultant Victoria Murphy said, referring to the must-have stroller that retails for upwards of $1,000.

Once the royal baby is past stroller age, it can look forward to a lifetime of transportation via horse-drawn carriages and Aston Martins, just like the one in which its parents, the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William, were spotted at their 2011 wedding.

The royal baby likely won't be driving such fancy cars or steering carriages on his or her own, either.

While Kate and William, both 31, have indicated they plan to raise their first-born child with as little an entourage as possible, all signs point to the reality that the royal baby will have at least a part-time nanny and a full-time security detail monitoring its every move.

That doesn't mean, however, that Prince William, who plans to take two weeks paternity leave from his job as an RAF search-and-rescue pilot, will be an absent father.

"He'll want to be there most evenings to bathe his child and put his child to bed and to maybe even read him a story about helicopter pilots," said Arthur Edwards, a royal photographer.

William will also likely be there for his son or daughter's first day of school at one of Britain's premier schools. The young heir will also likely stay close to home for schooling until he or she enters high school, just like Prince William did.

After high school, one day in the future, the royal baby will inherit something none of his or her classmates have to consider, a crown jewels collection valued at as much as$ 30 billion.

That future of dazzling jewels doesn't mean royal watchers should expect to see Kate dressing the baby in over-the-top designer baby clothes, however.

"One thing that makes Kate different from pretty much any royal mother before her is that she comes from this fantastically strong, happy home background," said Jephson. "She has a very good dose of working class blood in her veins and I think we can already see the benefits of that."

"Historically, it's the royal women who have kept the show on the road and Kate looks like she is following in that tradition," he said.