Babies are born every day but only once or twice in a lifetime a child arrives who will inherit the throne. This summer the nation will be watching as Catherine Duchess of Cambridge delivers our future monarch. There will be predictions expectations & a flurry of media attention around the new parents but apart from the flashing cameras & internet headlines this is nothing new. Royal babies have excited interest since before their births for more than a millennium. When a queen or princess conceived the direction of a dynasty was being defined & the health & survival of the child would shape British history. Amy Licence explores the stories of some of these royal babies & the unusual circumstances of their arrivals from the Normans to the twenty-first century. 1470 saw the arrival of Edward a longed-for son after three daughters born in sanctuary to Edward IV & his beautiful but unpopular wife Elizabeth Wydeville; he was briefly King Edward V at the age of twelve but would disappear from history as the elder of the two Princes in the Tower. In 1511 amid lavish celebrations Catherine Aragon gave birth to the future Henry IX whose survival would perhaps have kept Henry from having six wives; alas he was to die after just seven weeks. In 1817 came George the stillborn son of Charlotte Princess of Wales; had she not died as a result of the birth she would have been queen instead of Victoria. This book explores the importance & the circumstances of these & many other arrivals returning many long-forgotten royal babies to the history books.