Long considered society’s bible of the most eligible men and women in Britain, this year’s Tatler Little Black Book has just been published. And topping the list for 2025 is 18-year-old Albert Windsor, who, at first glance, might appear a surprising choice.
But Windsor – as you might have already guessed from the surname – is seriously well-connected. The Gen Z aristocrat is the cousin of King Charles and grandson of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, whose title he’ll one day inherit.
Born in 2007 at Chelsea and Westminster hospital, Albert was the first of three sons born to Lord Nicholas and Paola Frankopan, a member of the Croatian and Italian nobility. He made history within the first weeks of his life as the first royal baby to be baptised Catholic since 1688, and during his childhood made a handful of public appearances. He was at King Charles’s 60th birthday lunch in 2008 and the wedding of Lady Gabriella Windsor in 2019 and memorably on the Buckingham Palace balcony for the Trooping the Colour that same year, when he sported a sling for a broken arm.
Rather than growing up in Britain, Albert was raised in Rome with his two younger brothers, Leopold, 16, and Louis, 11, meaning he was largely removed from public life in the UK until he turned 18 this September. He would have been 37th in line for the throne, were it not for his father Lord Nicholas converting to Catholicism in 2001, which forced him to renounce his position in the line of succession and, therefore, Albert’s too.
Attention around Albert has been steadily increasing in the last month. He attended the funeral of his grandmother Katherine, Duchess of Kent, where he was reportedly close to William, Kate and Charles at Westminster Cathedral, hinting at a good relationship between him and the senior royals. And according to Tatler, Albert is set to rub shoulders at the annual debutante and fashion ball Le Bal in Paris later this month, where he’ll be considered the “catch of the season”.
If he goes on to follow in his father’s footsteps to read Theology at Oxford, it could cause quite a stir among single students, much like William’s time spent studying at St Andrews, during which the university saw a 44 per cent increase in applications, largely from young women. But Gen Z socialites might want to take pause before racing after Britain’s most eligible bachelor.
Marrying into the royal family is, as many have found out to their peril, not always the fairytale it’s cracked up to be. The Duchess of Sussex described her brief time living in a world of warring palaces run by courtiers, as “almost unsurvivable” and this week, Peep Show actor Sophie Winkleman, who married King Charles’s second cousin Lord Frederick Windsor in 2009, echoed that life as a working royal is “total hell” and a “form of torture”.
She told The Times: “The more I get to know the royal family, the more I get that their lives are total hell and that level of unasked-for fame is a form of torture.”
She continued: “None of them went on Pop Idol or something to be famous. To have that sort of blinding spotlight in your face from when you’re born, not knowing quite whom you can trust, not knowing if someone’s going to betray you, people writing lies about you the whole time, is just brutal. I feel for them all. I don’t think a life with that much scrutiny and pressure is remotely healthy, but they have no choice.”
Of course, Albert is pretty far down the pecking order for this type of pressure. But he moves within the same circles and is listed alongside the likes of the Duke of Marlborough’s daughter Lady Araminta Spencer-Churchill and Bhutanese prince Jigme Ugyen Wangchuck, who studied his A-levels at Marlborough. You get the vibe.
So, remember, you wouldn’t just be dating Albert – you’d be dating an entire royal backstory too.