The crown isn’t the only thing passed down through the Royal Family as the Windsor clan has some pretty dominant genes, too. Just as it’s easy to see King Charles in Prince William, especially with his receding hairline (no shade, Wills, you’re the Bruce Willis of Britain), Prince George and Prince Louis have a lot of their father in them, too. As for where Princess Charlotte gets her looks from, Royal fans have finally figured it out.
People are just now realizing that Charlotte actually looks a lot like her great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II. The nine-year-old princess, William and Princess Kate’s second-eldest child of three, got to know the late monarch before she passed away in 2022, but obviously there wasn’t a strong passing resemblance between the nonagenarian queen and Charlotte during that time. A throwback photo to Elizabeth’s childhood during the Second World War, however, is opening folks’ eyes to the duo’s close resemblance.
Princess Charlotte is either a clone or a time traveler, according to this Royal Family pic from 1939
The Royal Collection Trust Instagram account got people talking when it shared a rare Christmas card released by the Royal Family in 1939. The card features a long-lost photo of the future Queen Elizabeth and her younger sister Princess Margaret when they were 12 and 8, respectively (the photo itself was taken in 1938, although the card was sent a year later). “With best wishes for Christmas,” reads the card’s message, “from Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Rose.”
Most had only one major takeaway from glimpsing this piece of history: holy cricket, doesn’t Charlotte look like her great-grandma! “And apart from the curly hair, that is Princess Charlotte,” reads one commented, leading others to concur. “Agree!” added another. “Twinning!” shared a third. Some, though, can see Charlotte elsewhere in the photo: “Princess Charlotte looks just like Princess Margaret.”
Others can only see how much like her father the late queen was. “Princess Elizabeth is the image of her father King George VI, when he was a boy,” said one. George VI — most known these days as Colin Firth’s role in The King’s Speech — reigned until 1952, after which his daughter took the throne. George is obviously whom Charlotte’s older brother is named after.
All of William and Kate’s kids have traditionally Royal names, in fact, it’s not just their faces. In addition to 11-year-old George, 6-year-old Louis is likely named after Lord Louis Mountbatten, Prince Philip’s uncle, while Charlotte herself continues a long lineage of Royal Charlottes, going back to King George III’s wife, Queen Charlotte, of Bridgerton renown.
One big change represented by the young princess, however, is that — for the first time in British royal history — she could theoretically ascend to the throne ahead of her younger brother. The Rules of Succession were finally amended in 2015 to allow princesses to have an equal shot at becoming monarch, rather than males immediately outranking females as per tradition. She might look like Queen Elizabeth, then, but Princess Charlotte is quietly rewriting Royal rules.