The rolling inexperienced lawns of a Twelfth-century citadel perched on a windy stretch of the South Wales beach hosted no longer one however two kings of Europe remaining weekend.
The goal of the discuss with to St. Donat’s by means of the royal households of Spain and the Netherlands was once the commencement in their daughters from UWC Atlantic College, a highschool housed in a far flung citadel as soon as owned by means of the newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst.
Under surprisingly vibrant blue skies on Saturday, Princess Alexia of the Netherlands, 17, smiled in a white linen trouser swimsuit flanked by means of her oldsters, Queen Maxima and King Willem-Alexander (a former Atlantic College pupil himself) in {a photograph} posted on Instagram.
Princess Leonor of Asturias, who may be 17 and the inheritor to the Spanish throne, wore a scarlet crimson button down blazer get dressed with cut up sleeves as she posed for selfies together with her oldsters and more youthful sister Princess Sofia, who’s set to start there in September.
The scene was once a mirrored image of the way Atlantic College, which is a part of the United World Colleges group, has turn out to be the college of selection for lots of younger royals. It an increasing number of attracts scholars who could have as soon as long gone to better-known puts like Eton College in the shadow of Windsor Castle or Institut Le Rosey on the fringe of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, regarded as the most expensive boarding school in the world.
Other contemporary alumni of the college, which educates scholars for his or her ultimate two years of highschool, come with Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant, who’s Belgium’s long run queen. She graduated in 2021 and went on to check at Oxford.
The British press has pondered whether or not the British royal circle of relatives might smash with custom and ship its personal younger heirs to a faculty that has just lately skilled a number of long run queens of Europe.
One Enduring Tradition: Discretion
Although UWC could have extra of an up to date surroundings and curriculum than its extra conventional opposite numbers, it does seem to subscribe to a minimum of one very previous — and really royal — conference: the artwork of being tight-lipped. The college didn’t reply to a lot of requests for remark for this newsletter, and turns out to most commonly keep away from talking to journalists.
Tori Cadogan, the schooling editor of the British society mag Tatler, mentioned that the attraction of Atlantic College has in large part to do with an positive ideology rooted in “deliberate diversity” and global peace. The college enrolls a lot of kids of royalty and different rich households, however there also are an important collection of much less privileged scholars.
Tuition is pricey: about $82,000 for the two-year global baccalaureate program.
Many scholars obtain monetary assist, on the other hand, together with an important cohort who’re sufferers of battle or refugees on complete scholarships. Their programs pass to the U.W.C. nationwide committee, which then assigns the scholars to Atlantic College campuses round the global, possibly in Thailand, Costa Rica, Norway or the United States.
Last week, the Dutch royal circle of relatives introduced that Princess Ariane of the Netherlands, the 3rd and youngest daughter of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima, would attend the United World College Adriatic close to Trieste, Italy.
Atlantic College opened in 1962 — the top of the Cold War — and the thought to make a various pupil frame a concern got here from Kurt Hahn (who based Gordonstoun, King Charles’s alma mater). He made up our minds a brand new type of educating, which emphasizes accountability, internationalism and democracy, was once had to keep away from every other global battle.
A statement on the school’s website says the venture of the college is “to bring together young people from around the world to help create an atmosphere for peaceful coexistence between cultures and nations.”
Leave the Rolex at Home
What, then, does a teenage princess do together with her days at Atlantic? According to the “A Day in the Life” section of the college web page, categories run from 8 a.m. to simply after 1 p.m., with afternoons left open for group carrier at native hospitals and colleges, in addition to actions like kayaking, archery, planting in the greenhouse or running on the college farm, and even serving on the college’s personal lifeboat carrier. (According to the BBC, the extensively used Rigid Inflatable Lifeboat was invented by students at the school in the early Nineteen Sixties.)
Cellphone reception is claimed to be ghastly (more likely to the satisfaction of academics and fogeys). “E.D.W.s” (over the top shows of wealth) are banned, which means that no pricey watches or dressmaker equipment.
Louise Callaghan, a former pupil who’s the Middle East correspondent for the Sunday Times, wrote a column in 2018 about her time at the college. She mentioned it pressured many scholars to “get very used to being around, and getting along with, people who are nothing like you.”
These incorporated, she wrote, “refugees from West Africa, Brits from across the social spectrum, California hippies, religious Malaysians.” Learning learn how to engage with one of these various team, she mentioned, “is a useful life skill — one, I imagine, you do not gain at a normal private school.”
She additionally had a extra lighthearted tackle her time there. Atlantic College, she wrote, was once a bit like “a hippie Hogwarts.”