Prince William and Aston Villa: How His Devotion Is Another Way Princess Diana's Legacy Lives On

The narrative goes that Prince William began supporting Aston Villa as a schoolboy. “A long time ago at school I got into football big time,” he told the BBC in 2015. “I was looking around for clubs. All my friends at school were either Man U. fans or Chelsea fans. I didn’t want to follow the run-of-the-mill teams.”

Indeed, there is another royal connection to Aston Villa. William’s great-grandfather King George VI, then Duke of York, visited Villa Park in 1924 and stayed for a game, which Aston Villa blessedly won 1-0. It’s unknown if the future king cried.

William described wearing a “red beanie” at his first Aston Villa game in 2000. “It was fantastic…. I was sat with all the Brummie fans and had a great time.” Even his apparent use of the colloquial “was sat with” signals a departure from the received pronunciation (“was sitting with”) of his father and grandmother.

Prince William receives an Aston Villa artwork as he speaks with young guests at the Edinburgh YMCA's Youth Forum in Leith, Scotland, on May 21, 2025.

Traditionally, the Windsors are a horse-forward bunch, with the minor exception of Mike Tindall, who is married to Zara Tindall, daughter of Princess Anne. Mike, a former rugby player, cohosts a podcast called The Good, the Bad & the Rugby.

The late Queen Elizabeth II spent part of Charles and Camilla’s 2005 wedding reception in a side room watching the Grand National horse race, according to Tom Bower’s book Rebel Prince. Both Anne and her daughter Zara are former Olympic equestrians. Prince Philip helped establish a new horse sport, carriage driving, and cowrote the official rulebook for international play, before winning many major competitions.

Prince Harry’s California dream seems to be largely occupied with playing polo. Indeed, his Netflix docuseries, Polo, was mainly criticized for being too much about, well, polo, or as the Guardian’s Stuart Heritage put it, “It’s a show about privileged people showing us exactly how privileged they are.” And these days, the success of royal PR seems to depend on shedding such obvious signs of privilege.