Prince George starts at Eton in the rain, in his father’s tailcoat cut

Prince George arrived at Eton College on the morning of 8 September with the Prince and Princess of Wales, under umbrellas, for his first day as a boarder. Head master Simon Henderson and provost Sir Nicholas Coleridge met the family in School Yard, under Lupton's Tower. "Welcome, good luck and enjoy," Henderson said, shaking the 13-year-old's hand. They spoke about the weather and went inside to sign the entrance book that records each new boy.

Kensington Palace later released three photographs of George in the school dress: black tailcoat, waistcoat, pinstripe trousers and a stiff white collar. It is the same cut his father wore on 6 September 1995 and that his uncle Harry wore after him. Twenty British prime ministers passed through the same yard. Annual fees, covering tuition and full boarding, are £65,673. Eton does not take day boys.

George had been a day pupil at Lambrook. Eton is a short drive from Forest Lodge in Windsor, so the boarding is real and the distance is not. William, as a boy, could walk to tea with Queen Elizabeth II. George will be able to do something similar with his parents. Charlotte and Louis stay at Lambrook and begin their term on 9 September. They were not in School Yard for the handover.

The day fell on the fourth anniversary of Elizabeth II's death. Catherine wore a dark green Emilia Wickstead dress. William and George wore matching blue ties and brown suede shoes in the wet. One difference from 1995 was the missing sibling in the arrival party. Another is the media plan. The Palace only confirmed Eton in June and kept the children's school life tightly limited. The official portraits do the public work. The house assignment and the name of George's "uncle," the older boy who steers a new arrival, were not put out.

Eton still runs on its own dictionary. F block is Year 9. Beaks are teachers. Dry bobs play cricket. Pop are senior prefects. A "timelord" helps a new boy keep the timetable. On day one, boys take the colours test, an oral quiz on the colours of the 25 boarding houses and the map of the buildings. The glossary is on the school website. The test is not.

The political reading writes itself and should be kept short. A future king is entering a fee-paying school that has trained a large share of the country's cabinet class, on the day the country also marks the late Queen's death. The family chose continuity with William's education rather than a state sixth form. That choice was always likely. The pictures make it official.

What a reader can keep is the small protocol. Handshake in the rain. Entrance book. Tailcoat portraits in the afternoon. Boarding from a house a few miles from home. Fees published to the pound. A colours test before the first proper lesson. The rest of the five years will happen off camera, which is the point of sending him there.